Cultural Imperialism

Globalization is a formidable aspect that guides to important changes of trends and patterns in our society. The foreign film such as Hollywood begun to diffuse into Malaysia and caused many changes to the local film industry due to globalization. Nowadays, Hollywood not only engages in dominating the global film market but also successfully threaten the local film market in Malaysia.  According to research, the majority of Malaysians prefer Hollywood movies compared to local movies. This issue may contribute to the domination of western culture and causes our culture to become weaker as the data provided by the National Film Development Corporation (FINAS) states that the increase of foreign films in Malaysia from 2013 to 2014 has doubled (FINAS, 2014).  In this era, the belief, culture, and thinking behaviour of an individual may be altered due to the contents and review of the movie that impresses them. Based on the statistics, movies that were imported from foreign co

Fashion is a language of signs and symbols which convey meaning non-verbally to the individuals and groups through practice of clothing, footwear, accessories, makeup and hairstyle . Fashion can reflect the way of thinking and present yourself to others (What is Fashion, 2015). We are constantly received new fashion idea from magazine, radio, television, movie, books and social media. Furthermore, the advancement of technology enable people to know about the latest trend of fashion around the world.                                                  Nowadays there are many fashion magazine in the current market compared to the older generations. All of these fashion magazine explain the current fashion trends to their readers. It displays a lot of pictures which beautiful models are wearing the new season of collection to attract the attention of reader to make them believes that they will look charming as the model shown in magazines if wearing the same clothing. In this new e

      How many of you will listen to music by using a mobile device? I guess the answer is more than 80%. The continuous advancement of technology had changed the lifestyle of people which they highly rely on it. There are a lot of things that had been innovated and invented to satisfied people needs (Karehka, 2012). In the past decades, people have to buy CD, Walkman, and cassettes in order to listen to the song. However, people nowadays are able to listen to any songs from a different country by making use of the advancement of technology. People can easily access the Internet and search through social media platform such as Youtube. Besides, the radio served as a medium for people to know about the latest songs.        Western music has various genres of music such as country music, hip-hop, punk, electronic music, jazz, rhythm, blues (R&B), and others. However, there are some researchers claimed that western music affects the local culture especially the rap music.

  Have you ever heard of cultural imperialism? To answer the question, cultural imperialism is described as the economic, technological and cultural hegemony of modern nation and it provides the direction of social and economic to define cultural values . (Sarmela, 1977). In this digital era , instant worldwide communication and media proliferation has led to cultural imperialism. (Ketchum, 2016) . As our local culture is not influential enough, other powerful culture could easily substitute our  culture in terms of food, fashion, drama and music. Especially in the era of globalization, every piece of information could easily be spread with only a click of the mouse. Therefore, mass media such as television, radio, newspaper and magazine advertisement may help to boost up the development of the different elements that were imported from another country.   In fact, mass media often promotes western culture . Take an example, the fast food industry. Nowadays, American fast