ASFF Extra Credit - Option 1

ASFF: Short Film Screenings

The first event that I attended was the screening of the short film festivals. The night started with the showings of the documentary features, followed by the fiction features. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and the creativity that was displayed. The documentary subjects were all very touching, and I liked the diversity of the subjects going from electronic festivals to hacking to an orphanage to the individual personal journeys of people.

I was very proud of what AUIers made and particularly of Soulaima’s documentary, especially because she was actually my teammate all throughout the introduction to filmmaking class that we took, so seeing her progress from the beginning was great. I thought her documentary was the best story-wise.

The fiction short films also showcased the talent of young filmmakers in Morocco, who were able to tell great stories with such a limited budget and time length. I especially noticed the influence of Western ideas from Western productions, but I thought they were well-adapted to the Moroccan context in general. 

Overall, I thought this event was very successful.

ASFF: Burnout Screening

The next event I attended was the screening of Noureddine Lakhari's movie, Burnout, followed by a discussion with the director and some of the actors.
The movie was great, and followed Lakhmari's tradition of telling individual stories of pain and tragedy with Casablanca as a backdrop. Although this movie was certainly more daring than his previous ones, it is consistent with Moroccan filmmakers pushing away from the limits of censorship more and more.
I also noticed here the pattern of depicting the rich, privileged elite of Casablanca as living like Westerners, using foreign cars, displaying foreign art, and speaking French almost exclusively, while the working class was the one depicted as speaking the local language, wearing traditional clothes, and listening to local music. This movie did not shy away from showing the huge influence of the West in what our society considers as "high class" culture.
I really enjoyed the talk after the movie, and getting the opportunity to hear about the behind-the-scenes feelings and impressions of the cast while filming the movie, and after its reception by the Moroccan public. It was also a very important discussion when it concerns the state of Moroccan cinema.

Paper sources

reaction paper 7

In Chapter 6, the author showcases the efforts that Western media conglomerations have made to penetrate foreign markets and to create the “global popular”, through various strategies. With the help of Western globalization, they were able to reach beyond the elites and into mass foreign audiences in developing countries, helped with the creation of a multitude of satellite and cable television channels. This had positive consequences, since it led to a huge growth in the media industry and the creation of many jobs in all areas that are related to media and media production. Another positive effect evoked is the potential for the promotion of democratic principles, freedom of speech, equality and universal human rights. Opening up to foreign markets also allows citizens of developing countries to discover a wide variety of programming and have more choice. It has also influenced journalism, since news organizations started to adopt a liberalist, independent (from the government) format in many areas of the world. Moreover, content creators such as authors and filmmakers had platforms that were willing to publish/broadcast their work, sometimes in multiple languages.

All of these changes are undeniably positive and have served to greatly improve the media industry. Ultimately, because of the huge influence of the media, it has contributed in changing people’s daily lives for the better. But nevertheless, all these positive changes remain the product of Western involvement, and is the result of Western dominance when it comes to technology and media infrastructures.

I think this is similar to the dependency theory, as the credit for the development of culture and production of content in developing countries is only attributed to either their adoption of Western models or to the Western influences themselves directly investing and involving themselves in that market, making any development depending on Western states.

This personally reminds me of something that is common in Morocco, with the fact that the overwhelming majority of Moroccans that are internationally known or have succeeded on a global scale, are either born abroad or have been able to succeed because they had an opportunity that came from abroad. Still, Moroccans take credit for them as Moroccan success stories and proof of the development of Morocco on the international scene. I think it is the same logic as thinking entertainment and media platforms in developing countries are improving when the sole reason for that improvement comes from outside Western involvement. It might be considered development, but it will always be seen as a development that was dependent on a Western model and on Western thinking.

Reaction paper 6

Chapter 5 explores the effects of the rapid evolution of international communication and its relationship with globalization. The chapter particularly talks of the way globalization can be said to have become synonymous with Americanization, and how this Americanization impacts global communication.

The Americanization trend involves the sheer number of imported products, especially entertainment-related programs, from the major Western states and most notably from the United States to other countries. Case in point, in Latin America almost all imports are from the US, and even in the UK and the EU, which already have fairly solid production systems of their own, there is a lot of reliance on US imports for entertainment programming. Here, the chapter talks of a “Hollywood Hegemony”, which the author proves through statistics showing the dominance of movies coming from the United States in foreign markets, as they take a huge chunk of that market even compared to locally-produced movies. 

When it comes to Europe, the market for movies is usually considered when it comes to statistics as homogeneous, which is one of the explanations that can be offered for US domination: since Europe is an eclectic mix of languages and has no official “lingua franca”, English is one language that “works” all throughout the continent. When it comes to movies that are locally- produced, it is evident that they would not profit from the same distribution as English-language movies since they can only target a much smaller portion of the population worldwide. In general, this is an issue that concerns all non-English movies. Usually, people tend to stick with the languages and the culture they know, and since everyone is so exposed to the American/English-language culture, and considering the enormous quality of Hollywood productions that cannot be compared to any other market today, US domination in entertainment is only natural.
I think this can be changed by encouraging people to open up to other markets, cultures and other genres of movies away from "blockbuster" movies that are intended to mass audiences. The language barrier can also be improved by promoting the use of subtitles and dubbing.
But I would not qualify the Americanization trend as hegemony, as I believe each market does allow space for other trends as well. In Morocco, as much as the U.S. has a huge influence, there were also trends that were very influential coming from Mexican productions, Egyptian productions, and most recently Turkish productions. These trends have not translated to the filmmaking industry, but their presence on television, which is the biggest media influencer in the country, is undeniably impactful.

Reaction Paper 4

International communication was majorly impacted by the growing trends of privatization and deregulation worldwide.

The results of the Uruguay Round, of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that later evolved into the World Trade Organization, established a worldwide trade structure based on liberalization of the market and free flow of information, including, and most importantly for international communication, in the services sector. Free flow of information was especially important for the WTO as one of the key component for an effective communication infrastructure that would allow optimal economic growth and trade. The efforts for market liberalization and state deregulation by the WTO had the goal of opening up foreign markets to outside competition, especially in the telecommunications sector. The latter’s quality as a particularly fast-growing and profitable market made it a priority for Western advocates, which resulted in a GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) Annex on Telecommunications. This annex allowed private companies, generally from the West, to make investments in the private sector of developing countries. The privatization of infrastructures in developing countries meant that national suppliers had no advantage over foreign suppliers, and were to be considered in the same respect.  In short, the purpose was to establish the structure for Western corporations to be able to integrate foreign markets especially in “Southern” countries.

Trade is a major part of international relations, and a very beneficial one at that. Seeing the importance of commercial trade, it was only a given that free trade and free flow of information rules would spread out to include the services sectors, and of course the telecommunications sector, of which the importance surged at the time and continues to grow even today. In general, I do not regard privatization as a negative thing, especially when it comes as a response to state control and regulations. It also avoids creating a monopoly by the state. I also agree with the liberalization argument that competition makes for a better service and better prices for customers.

However, that only applies when there is the potential for fair competition. Often, and especially in the case of developing countries, privatization of the market means that a Western foreign competitor is able to come and dominate the sector, simply because national corporations lack the means and the infrastructure to be able to compete. In this case, the argument for better services and better prices becomes invalid as the market simply switches from state monopoly to corporate monopoly.

Reaction Paper 3

Dependency theory, originating from Latin America during the 1960s, came as a critique of the modernization theory and aimed at demonstrating the theory’s faults and the negative consequences of its practice in the countries of the region, with the United States as the main political antagonist of the region at the time due to its support of authoritative regimes.

Dependency theory argues that TransNational Corporations (TNCs), which are overwhelmingly from the West, use the practices of “modernization” to keep full control over developing countries by making their development dependent on them. These corporations make the rules for everything that has to do with the market, the distribution of resources, the production and the labor, leaving developing countries little choice in how and on what terms they might want to develop. TNCs also undermine the individual cultures of the developing countries by creating a dependency on U.S. technologies and U.S. imports of media, including entertainment programs, creating a sort of “cultural imperialism”. This latter term came to use because of Western efforts to undermine the cultural autonomy of developing countries by imposing technologies that shape their social reality, their values and their ideas according to those of the dominant country, under the pretext of simply offering them technologies that would help them join the “modern” world.

The reasons for this discourse as proposed by dependency theory is that the West, and especially the U.S., seeks to continue a form of neo-colonialism for political and military interests as well as for commercial gain.

Dependency theory in my opinion nicely encompassed everything that was wrong with modernization theory. The monopoly of the West over communication technologies and any tools for the development of a country only increased inequalities between them and the Third World, despite offering the use of those technologies. It comes at a heavy economic price at the expense of the developing countries, and makes it hard for them to develop their own technologies, which I think in the long term would sink them further in under-development.

However, I think dependency theory has many faults. Its critique of “modernization”, while justified in my opinion, is too simplistic, focuses only on the faults of another theory and fails to provide a legitimate and viable framework for international communication. Dependency theory also assumed that U.S. imports of media being consumed by Third World audiences would suffice to establish new capitalist ideas and to completely undermine local cultures, which I think is too far-reached and greatly underestimates the ability of audiences to be anything other than passive. Although media consumption is definitely a good way of effectively exerting influence on populations, I do believe that strong cultural beliefs and practices, especially those established throughout centuries, can trump any new ideologies being spread at the end of the day.

All in all, I believe that dependency theory is right in its analysis of the negative intentions behind the West’s efforts to modernize other countries. I think the cultural imperialism notion is very legitimate as well, but I think the theory fails in the fact that it completely disregards local authorities and influences, as well as overestimating the cultural impact of the West over developing countries.

Reaction Paper 2

The second chapter of the textbook is all about the theories of communication, which first appeared in response to the Industrial Revolution in Europe, and what it brought when it comes to social and economic changes. This is because communication had a huge impact on provoking these changes.

Theories of international communication became prominent during the Cold War. One of the first concepts that was greatly debated was the concept of “free flow of information”. This concept was on par with Western ideas on what the role of media should be, following their view of international communication as a tool for promoting democracy and liberal markets. It was, on the contrary, the complete opposite of what the Soviet wanted, which was regulations imposed by sovereign states.

Free flow of information essentially means that media proprietors are able to “sell wherever and whatever they wished”. This reasoning, for the West and especially for the United States, is ideal for avoiding the censorship and propaganda that would come from the states regulations that the Soviet Union was promoting.

Because the West was more technologically advanced, free flow of information was also beneficial from an economic point of view, since media proprietors were concentrated there and thus contributed more to the enrichment of their governments and their businesses. Politically, this concentration of media production allowed them to also dominate ideologically, by overpowering the diffusion of Soviet doctrine with their own.

I think the concept of “free flow of information” itself seems like it would be the most compatible with democracy and freedom of expression, but in reality it only serves to stifle the freedom of expression of others, which is completely the opposite of what the true meaning of democracy is.

It is clear from the very reasons why the West was in favor of this concept being applied to international communication. They wanted it so that they could maintain their dominance and suppress the spread of the Soviet ideology as much as possible. This in itself is censorship.

Their dominance in media ownership and production also meant that only Western ideas, lifestyles and opinions were presented in the international scene. As capitalism being the main Western ideology, it was applied to international communication as well.

Capitalism is, in my opinion, a genius system when you are a rich person trying to get richer, but a cruel system when you are a poor person being exploited for minimum gain. In the same way, capitalist ideas being applied in international communication is only a way for the West to remain the hegemonic power and to impose their ideas while preventing others to have any say, which is again a form of censorship.

Of course, this a pessimistic way of viewing things, but in any case, the concept of free flow of information, while not necessarily a more evil alternative to state regulations, might achieve freedom, but does not achieve equality.