Soul Searching: Media's Identity Crisis

Explaining the “Crisis of the ‘National’ Media”, Silvio Waisbord argues that “the idea of ‘national media’ needs to be revised.” What particularly caught my attention is his excerpt on the growing challenge of distinguishing the national identity of media content:

 “There is no longer, if there ever was, a direct relationship between the citizenship of cultural workers and the national identity of media content. Defining the cultural citizenship of certain media content has become increasingly difficult when a multinational workforce produces, for example, a vast array of Hollywood movies and European coproductions, recordings of rai music in Paris studios or Pan-American salsa in New York and Miami, and news in CNN and BBC newsrooms. The national identity of content is hard to pin down and cannot be predicted from the citizenship of cultural workers or the location of production.”

While I certainly agree with most of Waisbord’s argument, at the same time I can’t help but question whether it really is the case—at least to the degree of declaring that “There is no longer, if there ever was” a relation between the nationality of the cultural workers and the identity of the resulting media content. This brings to mind the schools of globalization theorists Sinclair mentions. Just as they are divided in their interpretations of globalization’s effects as the homegenization vs. heterogenization of the international community, could it not be argued that the transnational collaboration that marks the 21^st century media production process is not as significant in blurring the content’s national identity as Waisbord makes it out to be? Maybe national identities of media content are accentuated regardless of the behind-the-scenes transnational collaboration.

Sure, a K-pop girl group’s latest hit may have been composed by a Korean songwriter, recorded in a studio in Tokyo and choreographed by New York’s best. But when these girls visit Paris for a long-awaited concert, everyone in the audience knows that the song belongs in K-pop kingdom. Is not the national identity of the song made clear simply by the recognition that the band is from Korea, the song is sung in Korean and the singers on stage look very much Korean? Of course, all of this may be inapplicable to those who are unfamiliar with the Korean band or language. But to the relevant populations who are actively consuming this form of media content, I wonder if Waisbord’s argument holds water. Even if the national identity of a media content is rendered unclear, it is less due to the transnational process by which it was created and more a result of incorrect or insufficient information and interest.

In this regard, the national identity of the artist may hold significant influence over the perceived national identity of the media content. Crudely put, nine Asian girls singing in Korean is more likely to hammer home the point that the song is Korean than 9 blondes doing the same. But appearances can be deceiving. Among the 9, two or three are U.S. citizens and in other cases, a seemingly Korean band member is actually Chinese or Thai. Indeed the borderless collaboration in media that Waisbord raises seems to carry over to the national identities of the artists themselves.

Take Wang Leehom, a New York born and raised Chinese-American singer who is a mega star in Taiwan and China. He barely uttered a few greetings in Mandarin when he first began his career in Taiwan. Now he’s spending months venturing out into the remote mountains of China in search of obscure Chinese musical instruments that are in risk of being forgotten. He incorporates them into his songs in hopes of instilling a love for Chinese heritage among younger generations. Perhaps it doesn’t come as a surprise, then, that this New Yorker sang ‘Beijing, Beijing, I Love Beijing’ to mark the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic games. Karim Karim seems to be on to something—“Diasporics have strong or weak identifications with various global ethnicities; these allegiances may grow or diminish according to the passage of time or the unfolding of events in one’s individual or communal life.”