‘Babel’: Western imperialism or global media product?
12 October 2017
Imprudent accidental act of a young Moroccan boy leads to unrelated stories from the US, Japan and Mexico to interweave. Co-produced by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and the US, France and Mexico-based production companies (Bradshaw, 2007), a multi-narrative drama is undoubtedly the result of economic, political, and technological globalization. The processes of deregulation, corporatization, and digitization enabled the global media production and distribution, leading to numerous consequences and causing debates in respect to power concentration, diversification and commodification of media (Arsenault & Castells, 2008). The movie is also a product of the cultural globalization, which is, according to Crane (2002), the ‘transmission or diffusion across national borders of various forms of media and the arts’ (p.1). The debates within this discourse do not end at the controversy of views about multicultural production and reception of media materials and its impacts on national and local cultures. This paper aims to discuss the film from the perspective of critical political economy, the elements of its production in relation to its content, and reception. Using the four principal theoretical models of cultural globalization, suggested by Crane (2002), namely: Cultural imperialism, Cultural flows, Reception theory, and Cultural policy, the paper defends that ‘Babel’, despite its American production, is a global movie, shifting from imperialist ideas, to a paradigm of the network flows, and hybridization of cultures.
As a fair start, it would be ignorant to deny the obvious indications on Western-production imperialism evident in a number of scenes in the movie. Not only the sceneries of Mexico and Morocco are mostly shot in very poor rural areas, or deserts. Stereotypical ways to portray the different cultures are also impersonated in the film’s characters. After Mike repeats his mom’s claim that ‘Mexico is really dangerous’, a merry wedding celebration ends with fear and crime. Santiago, nanny’s nephew jeopardizes children’s safety, by driving intoxicated and dodging the border patrol agent to escape the illegal employment charges; thereafter, leaving nanny and the kids in the middle of wasteland at night. Reflecting on the storyline in Morocco, the American tendency to stereotype exposes on the national television news, which is rushing to judge the wounding of Susan as a terrorist act, and pressuring Moroccan police, prior to deliberate investigation of the truth. The local medical help appears unreachable, due to the political disputes between the two governments, ending up with the American helicopter to arrive only after a few days. Such vilification of Muslims in Western media is not a new phenomenon to media and political communication scholars since September 11, 2001, and has been referred as New Orientalism, Islamophobia, or incendiary racism (Amin-Khan, 2012). Accordingly, on one hand, these parts of the movie tend to confirm some arguments of Western imperialism existent in Hollywood films, by reinforcing negative representations of third-world countries, while showcasing their poverty, inclinations to crime and irregularity, and proclaiming the image of US as a wealthy and socially-progressive country. The Japanese storyline is an exception there, although, that does not fall into specific cultural prejudices.
On the other hand, despite the US movie producers, the film does not feature Americans as the main characters, rather giving equal appearances to all the storylines; and even, unveils the flaws in the ‘dominant’ American behaviors, at the same time discouraging the viewers from the imposition of American values and behaviors. As it is also pointed by Hesmondhalgh (2013), in the history of US media development, not all American media products showed their culture in a positive frame, but could also raise some deep and sensitive societal issues thanks to the ‘principles of creative autonomy’ (p.272). Explicit are the scenes where Susan acts arrogantly at the local cafe in Morocco, or where Richard shouts at the bus driver, the man who hosted the couple and was trying hard to help the tourist’s wife; or when the fellow group of tourists rudely and selfishly insists on leaving the winged woman behind for the sake of individual safety. The number of scenes, thereupon, illustrates the counterargument to the cultural imperialist view on globalization in this movie. Rather, they might be the signs to acknowledge the concept of ‘network flows’, which, according to Crane (2002) are apparent when the international conglomerates are expanding, and simultaneously compel the smaller-scale regional media production and importance. So, despite that ‘Babel’s’ distribution process was led by Paramount Vantage, a daughter-company of Viacom conglomerate (Viacom, n.d.); in the list of producers, we see the collaboration of smaller American and French production companies. Not to mention the Mexican origin of the core team: director, screenwriter, cinematographer, and a composer. In this sense, ‘Babel’ exemplifies the diversification of global media, is sometimes referred to as the ‘world cinema’ product (Shaw, 2011).
Moreover, when theorizing upon the perception of ‘Babel’, conclusions based on Crane’s Reception Theory (2002) rather lead to hybridization of cultures, than homogenization, which the imperialism model implies. Inspired by the biblical story, the film travels through diverse locations and cultures and intends to illustrate the global division experienced nowadays and the need for connectedness. And even if the viewers whose cultures were shown are more able to identify with certain scenes easier (Biltereyst, 1991, 1995), there is a diversity of ages, languages, beliefs, social classes, norms and values, and physical abilities present within the country. The perfect example is embedded in the Chieko’s, Japanese girl’s story. Her way of suffering is not attached to her place of birth or country reputation but is inherent in her disability to hear and speak, so even in her homeland, she encounters interpersonal clashes and misrepresentations of her personality. For any viewer, despite his or her origin, the sympathy for the girl is triggered from a deeper, more personal level. Thus, as a transnational media piece, it still has a great potential in going across the national identities, and in redefining the perceptions of other groups in society (Crane, 2002). While showing these stories in distinctive environments, the viewers’ can still identify with care and forgiveness, injustice and suffering — the emotions that serve as bridges. So, by recognizing and, at the same time, neglecting the geographical, cultural, and linguistic differences, the filmmakers believed in achieving simple human consensus, or how New York Times describes it, ‘Emotion needs no translation’ (Scott, 2006). This goal may resemble but also differs from the notion of media or culture homogenization. Of course, we can debate the equality of comparing solely rude verbal behaviour of Americans to the imprudent gunshot of the Moroccan boy, and a Mexican man abandoning his aunt and the children in the desert. Yet, no by any means, the movie has pure hegemonic rules or beliefs, but more willingly, it shows the universal value of a family, also of honesty and equality. As the director explains during one of the interviews, there is a range of barriers existent between individuals, which are rather ideological than real. What makes us happy can be different things, but “what makes us miserable and vulnerable beyond our culture, race, language or financial standing is the same for all,” — this message Alejandro González Iñárritu tried to convey (as cited in Shaw, 2011, p.23), by constantly changing the settings from everyday hard lines of deaf-mute Chieko, to Abdullah’s older son being wrongly accused and shot, critical suffering of Susan, and Amelia’s turnabout of her son’s wedding and the deportation.
Additionally, due to the technological developments, we see the American media market allowing the penetration of the French and Mexican production companies. In that sense, the piece should not be seen as a pure strategy of ‘glocalization’ applied by American filmmakers, relating to the Crane’s last model of Cultural policy strategies (2002, p. 17). The production team does not seem to follow a neutral, or uniform culture to appeal to the foreign markets, as it is not trying to hide those wide-known social stereotypes. Furthermore, with its multi-narrative storyline, out-of-sequence events, and often irrational and disturbing actions by all characters, the content goes beyond the ‘safe’ Hollywood formula (Yoshimoto, 2003).
Finally, ‘Babel’ is one of the cases of the complex phenomenon of media and cultural globalization. Co-produced by the international creative team, shot in very different cultures, yet attempted to bring up the basic human emotions, the multi-narrative drama is rather a global media product, than the Western imperialist one. Globalization, furthermore, is not static, neither is it predictable, meaning that no one theory is ideally applicable to the media product, so it combines the ideas of global networks, reception theory, and cultural policy model. The concept of globalization should fall under determinism, also due to the fact that procedures of production are not explicitly exposed to public information, as well as that global audiences are differentiated and have their own agencies for interpretation.
References
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