The article explores the impact of global commercial media on young people’s developing perceptions of their own cultural identity. It works from the premise that local cultures are not so much getting replaced by ‘global culture’ as inflecting it by coexisting with it. The discussion draws on data collected in the course of focus group interviews with young adults living in the Mediterranean island of Malta, in order to stress the specificity with which young people from different cultural contexts consume global media. I argue that, as in other postcolonial communities, though the choices available to Maltese youth have become strongly inflected (or ‘hybridized’) by the commercial imperatives of global media, the ways in which they are appropriated and played out retain very idiosyncratic characteristics, which mark them out as uniquely Maltese.
This article reviews, critiques and politicises the positivist approaches that presently dominate alcohol advertising health research, and considers the benefits of a culturalist alternative. Positivist research in this area is identified as: (1) atheoretical and methods-driven; (2) restricted in focus, leaving critical issues unconsidered; and (3) inappropriately conceptualizing the 'normal' drinking person as rational and safe. The culturist alternative proposed is argued to present a more adequate framework, which can include and address problematic issues that are presently excluded, including: the pleasures associated with alcohol use, the involvements of 'normal' people in problem drinking, the inadequacy of present risk categories and the complexities of wider mediatory processes about alcohol in society. We argue for the adoption of more informed, culturalist approaches to alcohol advertising research.
This essay considers how contemporary perceptions of literary classics as exponents of cultural value have been modified by the commercial demands of contemporary popular media. Rather than eliminating traditional distinctions between high and low culture, the now habitual interactions and mutual borrowings between 'high' and 'pop' have given rise to significant changes in the discourse surrounding artistic value. Even as they appear to be evaporating or merging into each other, the old distinctions between 'low' and 'high' continue to pop up in dramatically different guises, repetitively reinscribing themselves in new forms of popular as well as educated artworks, but to new ends. The main focus of analysis are film and television adaptations of canonical literary texts, with particular emphasis on the types of choices made by screenwriters and producers when they adapt canonical works of literature with the aim of making them widely appealing to contemporary audiences.
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