Take Home Final

Paris, France & Elche, Spain

13 Arrondissement

Elche, Spain

Les Olympiades

Street View Elche, Spain

In the European Union today everything is changing. Immigration and a need for more efficient and cost effective modes of production have changed the landscape of many European cities and those who live in them. In Paris, a large high-rise building, originally built to house middle-class Parisians, is now home to thousands of Asian, mostly Chinese, immigrants who have made it into a kind of vertical, small Chinese city with businesses and restaurants. In Elche, Spain, the lucrative shoe-making industry has moved out of large industrial factories and into the homes and small workshops of the town’s inhabitants. This new phenomena in European cities changes the lives of working minority populations because their work spheres and home spheres become not only intertwined and connected, but in some cases inseparable.

“Les Olympiades,” the building in Paris that houses the Chinese city, greatly affects the urban landscape of a city like Paris. The existence of a place like Les Olympiades can have both a negative and positive effect on the city of Paris. For example, a building that was once deemed useless now holds a thriving population. A population that starts businesses and contributes to Paris’ economy. However, in some ways the building could be seen as having an economy all its own that contributes very little to the Parisian economy. Along with an economy all its own, it also creates a kind of in-between world for those living in Les Olympiades. With all the comforts of home, inhabitants can take advantage of work opportunities in Europe, but still have friends and businesses around them that speak their language and understand their culture. The living arrangement also offers opportunities to those Chinese immigrants who live elsewhere in Paris, but want to start a business with a Chinese clientele. Wong Shixiong is and example of this. He lives in the Banlieue, but started his restaurant in Les Olympiades because he wanted to cater to Chinese immigrants.

Because a structure like Les Olympiades houses not just apartments, but also businesses and distribution centers the spheres for work life and home life often merge. For some never have to leave Dalle Italie their work and home life all exist in Les Olympiades. Similarly in Elche, Spain, with the recent expansion of shoe making into at-home workshops, one does all the work within the confines of their household. This, according to Multiplicity, can have a negative effect on the household by interfering with workers’ life-patterns and the way we view workers in our communities. “In this zone,” Multiplicity says of the home, “the intimacy of the household does in fact absorb the repetitive gestures of manual work, transforming them into domestic rituals.” (Multiplicity, 152). Most of the people working in these at-home workshops are women, and many of them are underpaid and mistreated by the companies they work for. It could be argued that this mistreatment and disregard for their rights comes from the merging of the work and home spheres. By bringing the work into their home, they are, in a way, losing control of the one place they are supposed to be sole manager of. Because someone besides themselves are now allowed to oversee what happens in a female workers’ home, her whole family becomes associated with production, and the rituals once left behind after a day at work in a factory now constantly surround the family unit.

The global market has changed many urban landscapes, and greatly affected the lives of workers. For the residents of Les Olympiades, the merging of work and home spheres creates a community where Chinese immigrants can feel at home and culturally comfortable. For those working in the shoe-making industry in Elche, Spain, their domestic lives are turned upside-down, and the idea of the woman as a homemaker is turned on its head.

Franchise: American Idol

American Idol is a reality television show that seeks to find America’s next pop sensation. After a rigorous cross-country audition process that attempts to find a diverse group of talented voices, contestants on the show compete against each other each week to gain the most votes from the viewers who vote for their favorite performance from the week before. The contestant with the least amount of votes is eliminated from the show, and out of the running for a cash prize and record contract. Inspired by a British television show from 2001 called Pop Idol, the American Idol program and subsequent franchise was developed by the Fox Network and producer Simon Fuller and Cecil Frot-Coutaz in 2002. Since then, American Idol has become an Emmy award winner and an international phenomenon. Not only is it broadcast in Australia, Asia, and Latin America, countless nations across the globe have joined the franchise developing their own versions of “Idol.” In Germany the show is called Deutschland sucht den Superstar. South America and Mexico recently came together to create Latin American Idol marking the first time the franchise has crossed national borders bringing together an entire region. In the Philippines the show is called Pinoy Idol, and links all the Philippine Islands together in one program. But does a Franchise like the Idol franchise bring people from around the world together? Or does it work to homogenize and indoctrinate the world with Western ideologies? Good or bad, the Idol franchise is just another step in globalization and the world wide obsession with interacative media and technology.

Personalized technology is taking over people’s lives all across the globe; the Internet, X-box, i-phones, Blackberries. We now can perfectly tailor everything just for us, and our entertainment is increasingly interactive. According to Michael Keane and Albert Moran in their essay Television’s New Engines, this obsession with being involved in our own media has caused television networks to create new engines that will involve and inspire viewers, and because the personalized technology phenomenon is world wide, the new engines tend to spread through franchises like the Idol franchise.

Keane and Moran say included in this engine format is the concept of “voting off.” They state, “The voting off engine in turn plays off in-built conflict, often carefully integrated into the mix in the contestant selection stage” (Keane and Moran, 160). “Voting off” allows viewers to feel as if the show is being catered to them and makes them feel that “their” idol is uniquely their/ their nation’s own. In the early audition processes the show generally goes from city to city doing casting calls. Before each of these episodes there are always shots from around the city, giving viewers a tour of different parts of their country. This makes it difficult to not see the show as uniquely Philippine, German or American.

Despite this feeling of national pride the concept of Idol evokes, it is impossible not to see the homogeny that comes along with it. Indeed the contestants are all the viewers’ fellow countrymen from the places they live and recognize, however the format of the show is exactly the same from nation to nation, and most often contestants are required to sing songs made famous by Americans in America. For example, in the aforementioned mass audition sequences, contestants all attempt to sing American songs in English, and for each country the way the audition process is captured is exactly the same. The long line of hopefuls is seen cheering, the attractive host interviews potential contestants who are either praised or disparaged by the three judges, and of course there is always someone who makes a fool out of him or herself.

Here are images from Idol casting calls in Germany, The Philippines, and the U.S.

There is no argument that the homogenization of pop music and media around the globe has been happening for years, and whether or not Idol alone squelches a country’s local sound and color is difficult to say. However, there is no doubt that behind all the corporate (for lack of a better word) B.S., there is something positive about giving people a voice in their nation’s mass media. In her article from Newsweek Lorraine Alli says of the Idol franchise, “In places where the concept of democracy is still shaky, “Idol” lets viewers have the vote” (Alli). This above all, is the core reason for Idol’s success as a franchise. It allows people to feel connected to not only their fellow countrymen, but it also provides a global connection and a hopeful glimpse at a positive global future.

Sources:

Keane, Michael and Albert Moran. “Television’s New Engines.” Television and New

Media. 9.2 (2008): 155-169.

“American Idol.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Inc. 2009.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Idol October 19, 2009.

Ali, Lorraine. “True or False: ‘Idol’ Airs on Every Continent but Antarctica.” Newsweek.

July 2-9, 2007. 67.

Pinoy Idol. Fremantle Media. 2008. http://www.igma.tv/pinoyidol/videos/auditions/1

American Idol. Fremantle Media, Fox. http://www.americanidol.com/

Deutschland sucht den Superstar. Fremantle Media. 2009.

http://www.rtl.de/tv/superstar.php.

Case Study Works Cited

Appudurai, Ajun. “Disjuncture and Difference in a Global Economy.” Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. 1996. Public Worlds Series. Ed. Dilip Gaonkar and Benjamin Lee. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

The Namesake. Mira Nair. Tabu, Irrfan Kahn, Kal Penn. 2006. DVD. Fox Searchlight Pictures and Mirabai Films.

The Nation Case Study

Mira Nair's The Namesake:

The Struggle

Mira Nair’s film adaptation of The Namesake touches on many of the issues of globalization today. In the film, a young Indian couple moves to New England, and starts a family in their new country. Their son, Gogol, is forced to face many obstacles in holding onto his Indian nationality, but also growing up in a distinctly American setting. According to Appudurai “a main problem in today’s global interactions is the struggle between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization” (Appudurai, 32). In the film adaptation of the Namesake the character of Gogol can be seen as a mediascape that exemplifies this struggle.

Appudurai says that a mediascape is an “imagined world” (Appudurai, 33). For us, we see young Gogol’s world as one that is always in transit. In the film, travel is a constant theme. Gogol is constantly going on trips and bringing us with him. We see that he does not feel at home with his parents when he visits India, however, he also does not fully fit in with his White American girlfriend’s family when he travels with them to their lake house in New England. As a result of this constant push and pull, he eventually settles in New York City known for its cosmopolitan mix of cultures. The cosmopolitan in this sense can be seen as a place where imagined worlds collide making a sort of mishmash with no real cultural history where no one and everyone belong. A cosmopolitan setting is where young Gogol feels most at home. At the end of the movie, Gogol continues his search by taking off in a plane traveling to an unknown destination.

On one of the trips to India Gogol takes, his family brings him to see the Taj Mahal one of the most famous structures in all of India. To us, the Taj Mahal is an Indian icon. We are able to travel to this place that for most of us exists only in the imagination through the travels and experiences of Gogol. Also, in the story, seeing the Taj Mahal inspires Gogol to become a successful architect. His success, however, is more based on a western sensibility than the spiritual and artistic success that the Taj Mahal represents.

Some of the struggles that Gogol faces do not require a trip to India or a weekend away from his parents to be realized. Some actually are more pronounced at home with his family. For example, when Gogol’s father passes away, he feels like he has failed him by allowing himself to be homogenized within American culture and western ideals. As a response to this, he shaves his head for his father’s funeral and leaves his American girlfriend who, he feels, is holding him back from his Indian roots. Through the mediascape of Gogol we begin to see how his struggle to find out his national identity can often interfere with potentially healthy relationships.

Gogol, unlike his father who came to America from India, does not need to create an imaginary nation for himself out of longing for his original home because he does not share a direct relationship to an Indian national identity. However, because of his upbringing, he also does not want to deny his past. Though the idea of the nation may be clear and distinct for Gogol’s parents, national lines are blurred for Gogol himself. Throughout the film The Namesake, these struggles are illustrated, and it is concluded that a person like Gogol must embrace this sense of displacement and use it to discover new things about, not just America and India, but all across the globe. For Gogol, national borders can often have no meaning.