Friday, March 21st, 2008
an iron fist in a velvet glove.
well, there are lots of questions and ideas to explore there. the one that jumped out at me from the post was the relationship between income levels and some sort of ‘cultural awareness’ [sorry to resort to such a such crude term; i think i need to read up on my cultural theory =/].
first off, i think there are elements of local and global cultures that would be above any income-cultural awareness equations, if any such equations exist of course. so, take, for example, cricket in pakistan. yes, there was a big increase in the numbers of basketball hoops at elite schools and massive bungalows in the 90s, and there are the exclusive golf courses too, but i’d say the passion for cricket works on a level above wealth.
we could say the same thing for many music icons like nusrat fateh ali khan, noor jehan, nazia & zoheb, vital signs, junoon, etc.
i think the really interesting thing is how the greater access to different media outlets - that greater wealth allows - affects our views of different cultures. it’s definitely a valid point, i think, that access to a satellite dish or cable television creates a distance between those who have such access and those who don’t.
in comparison to foreign ones, many pakistani forms of cultural representation, just don’t hold their own. i think this has to be clearest when we look at films. pakistani films are generally produced horribly. someone with access to foreign film channels is almost bound to give up on pakistani cinema and to make favourites of films that come out of other cultures. i don’t know if that’s because people find other cultures more attractive, or if it’s because other cultures are just better represented in their films. i’m guessing it’s because of both these reasons.
and, speaking of representation, witness how the internet and the english media killed, or at least maimed, junoon - a band that mainly stayed away from english lyrics. i think the harsh criticism they started getting earlier in the 00s came, almost entirely, from journalists and critics writing in english, on the internet or in newspapers, or both. since only the privileged had regular access to the internet and newspapers, besides being literate in english, i think we’d find that junoon became a lot less popular amongst richer kids around this time. the bands that the same critics hyped, became a lot more popular - like entity paradigm, despite their attempts at ‘rapping’.
so, i guess all of this also plays into the idea that pakistan needs a stronger sense of identity. i think that’s definitely true. more cultural icons - people, books, songs, films - that appeal to a large number of people will help that. but then i also think that pakistan’s cultural diversity is something to hold onto. i guess, in a nutshell, that’s pakistan’s story - the tension between guarding local cultures and creating a national one.
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