Intro This will be a bit of a ramble
“What’s your favorite Taylor Swift song?” “Lebron or Kobe?” “Do you play Minecraft?” “Ronaldo or Messi?” “Who’s your favorite in BlackPink?” “I want a Nintendo Switch.” These are the questions I am most commonly asked by my students that aren’t simply about my life and where I am from. They ask me between classes, during small groups, and occasionally while I am teaching a lesson on zoo animals. I’ve had students who speak very little Chinese have written notes on how to translate National Basketball Association or come up to me with a paper gun they made and proudly exclaim, “This is a gun! You have a gun in America!”(When I say I don’t own a gun, they often rely with a declarative that I do because I am from America which is a whole other can of worms.) I’ve had students shout, during a game of fishbowl/charades about animals, “Blue! Gary!” And everyone immediately knew “snake” because the whole class (really the whole of China it seems) had become obsessed with Zootopia 2. Maybe I am constantly noticing the impact of media and culture on globalization because I am writing law school essays explaining how global trade is the field I want to work in, or maybe I notice these things because I myself am influenced by my media feeds to purchase the China-only Adidas jacket, or because I teach teens and preteens, but I am constantly noticing how much culture influences global understanding in the modern era.
Many of my classes in college were on imperialism, capitalism, or globalization and I have found that the “soft” influence of cultural imperialism is absolutely relevant to the shape of the international 21st century. My students obsess over my “苹果手机“ (Apple phone) because there are class and wealth divides between who has an iPhone vs other phone brands in China. There are also fluctuations in influence and perceptions of Western/American culture and Chinese culture over time and through generations (right now there is a backlash to viewing US brands as luxury goods amongst GenZ Chinese and an effort to emphasize Chinese brands.) At the same time, the Adidas jacket I bought has taken off on social media for Americans but is less prominent in China itself. While there is absolutely overt imperialism in the modern world order, see Venezuela, (on which I have too many thoughts to record here) I am fascinated currently by how media is and will continue to influence international relationships. The US fear of TikTok is partly an anti-Gaza thing, partly a fear of the Chinese government thing, but I also think it is a fear of the shape new technologies and changes to the media landscape may influence younger generations. We know that politics can be changed by media (look simply at the often remarked presidential debates of Kennedy and Nixon in the radio/tv era) but there is also a subtle change to how social media influences our teens and young adults. It took months for 67 to finally reach my students (although it now has) meanwhile they were saying the word 91 constantly. 91 is a euphemism for male genitalia, but it was a euphemism that I knew before any of the Chinese adults around me, because my students kept saying it, and they are in the teenage social media landscape (less so than American kids but still) and that is a separate landscape to the media of their parents. In small and large ways, our understanding of the world is shaped by the media that we consume, and the media of teenagers is and will continue to be shaped by their own perceptions of trends. In the era of radios and then televisions, the culture of young parents was often what shaped the culture of their children (either through rebellious backlash or through agreement,) but in a world where individualized technology and individualized algorithms allows children and teens (who shape culture to a large degree) to start to have radically different experiences and knowledge bases than their parents.
I have often felt that there is essentially a “13 year old girl culture” that can influence national perception in ways that is normally not noticed by the masses (thank you to Every Single Album podcast for giving words to my love of Taylor swift and why no one understood Fearless) but that culture is becoming more visible as an international culture. My thoughts on Zootopia, the NBA, Kpop Demon Hunters, and video games (the latter of which I unfortunately have no street cred in) are as relevant to discussions with my middle school cousins in the US as much as with my 7th grade students in China. And, knowingly or unknowingly our perceptions of a nation can and are shaped by these little things. An American YouTuber goes to China and essentially does an advertisement for the modernity of Chongqing. A Chinese dad goes to Paris and posts a bunch of Gen X style pictures that deinfluences everyone from seeing it through a curated social media lens.(If my dad had instagram I’m sure his pictures of Beijing would equally deinfluence American young adults.) Now, certainly we can know the impact of media on global perceptions, I mean think about the joke that any movie set in the Middle East during the early 2000s will have a sepia filter on it, but at the same time, living in China makes it overtly obvious to me (at least in recent days).
As I said, this is mostly a stream of consciousness ramble on the ways in which I can view cultural influences in China, and by no means a conclusion to what that means on a larger scale or whether or not this is positive or negative. But, it is an area that I want to watch. How does the Gen Alpha desire for short form content (like the 2min movie industry being cultivated in second tier cities in China like the one I live in) going to shape their future and the future of Hollywood? How will industries and culture adapt to that “XFactor” phenomenons like Heated Rivalry (Canadian) have that enable them to compete with media mainstream franchises like Stranger Things? How will the US and China specifically, continue to adapt to these changes, shape these industries as a means of “soft” global power struggles, and how will we even recognize the extent of what entails a phenomenon? The kids all know Taylor Swift and BlackPink (yes I realize Korean group not American) but they don’t all know Sabrina Carpenter or Beyonce. (Although one of my students roguely LOVES Imagine Dragons.) The kids all know the NBA but they don’t watch the MLB (it not being a major sport in China.) What makes things “break through” these global barriers, and then once they do, what impact (if any) do they actually have?