MA Programme Euroculture
Declaration
I, Plamena Slavcheva, hereby declare that this thesis, entitled “Transcultures between the real and the virtual: A challenge or an opportunity? Case study: Transcultural cinema”, submitted as partial requirement for the MA Programme Euroculture, is my own original work and expressed in my own words. Any use made within it of works of other authors in any form (e.g. ideas, figures, texts, tables, etc.) are properly acknowledged in the text as well as in the List of References.
I hereby also acknowledge that I was informed about the regulations pertaining to the assessment of the MA thesis Euroculture and about the general completion rules for the Master of Arts Programme Euroculture.
Signed:
Table of Contents
Introduction... 3
Research question... 5
Research method...6
1. Towards a redefinition of the transcultural 1.1. The study of transcultures so far...12
1.2. Culture/identity, space and memory... 18
1.2.1. What is (trans)culture today?... 19
1.2.2. The role of space and memory...24
2. Cinema in times of globalization: a shift towards transculturation? 2.1. Contextualization of the field study...29
2.2. Case study 1: Biutiful...33
2.2.1. About the film... 34
2.2.2. Interpretation of film reviews... 36
2.2.3 Findings and conclusions...39
2.3. Case study 2: The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner...44
2.3.1. About the film... 43
2.3.2. Interpretation of film reviews... 45
2.3.3. Findings and conclusions...48
2.4. Case study 3: Le Havre... 52
2.4.1. About the film... 52
2.4.2. Interpretation of film reviews... 55
2.4.3. Findings and conclusions...58
3. Transcultures between the real and the virtual 3.1. The role of transcultural diversity in the cultural sector in Europe...63
3.2. What kind of knowledge is needed in order to start thinking transculturally?. .65 3.2.1. Multilingualism and “transcultural communicative competences”...67
3.3. How to sustain transcultural diversity?...70
3.3.1. Project recommendation for a Transcultural Film Festival...73
Introduction
In today’s public debates we constantly hear about culture, diversity, identity, (im)migration, nation, integration, etc. These are also some of the key words present in the endless discussions on multiculturalism, its role in society, politics, and academic field. Apparently, the concept became central to political and media debates at a certain moment when living together by combining cultural diversity and personal freedom of faith, ethnicity, and values were no longer considered as means for evolution, but a major threat for the (European) society. It may not be a mistake if stating that instead of identifying the underlying problem and its consequent solution, multiculturalism was unanimously proclaimed as a failure or, in words of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the concept can only function as “an academic term with no place in political debate” (Cameron cited in CaféBabel 2011). These are radical statements that do not express explicitly what their actual intention is – it is not clear whether “failure” refers to the unsuccessful implementation of policies for dealing with cultural diversity or to the unwillingness to host new immigrant populations.
static, identities are influenced by the interplay between political, economic and socio-cultural power. Culture depends on its participants and their ability to construct meaningful and coherent experience and therefore making sense of the world by expressing their thoughts, ideas and feelings in ways, which will be understood by each other (Hall 1997, 2).
Research question
In the light of the above, transculturality is the concept that describes a certain cultural reality, which, beyond the academic discourse, is not necessarily realized yet. It is a concept of reality that ideally has certain characteristics1, which can be realized more
or less in practice. Departing from MacDougall’s assumption that there is such thing as transcultural cinema, which represents a kind of transcultural reality, the research question becomes: How does the spectator react to a film categorized as transcultural? Does he/she recognize it as such? In other words, through the case study of transcultural cinema, this thesis will investigate how the concept of transculturality functions in practice. The hypothesis that this thesis defends is that the audience is not necessarily aware of the transcultural embedded in a film or at least it does not refer to it directly as such but uses other interpretation patterns that might be related to it. The reason why this reaction is expected is that the discourse of transculturality is relatively recent and the shift from the concept to its practical use has not been made yet. For example, as shown by Kevin Robins in The Challenge Of Transcultural Diversities: Transversal Study On The Theme Of Cultural Policy And Cultural Diversity (2006), the development of transcultural policy for transcultural diversity is still challenging for the cultural sector in Europe. In other words, if there is no action undertaken to communicate transculturality, it is difficult to expect that people would be aware of its existence.
apparently so different from us” (MacDougall 1994, 245). Transcultural cinema as a means of communication negotiates our perceptions of the world and challenges the way we see ourselves in relation to others, and providing “experiences of transcultural transcendence — truly seeing with new eyes” (Johnston 2008, 260). A film is not only situated in social and historical contexts, but also in the experiences of filmmakers and spectators. That is why it “uniquely evokes experience through the re-presentation of experience” (MacDougall 1994, 19).
The reason for selecting transcultural cinema as a case study and not other form of art resides mostly in the fact that film practices are more “flexible” in representing cultural, spatial and political transformations (Galt 2006, 65). In film, the notion of border (visible and invisible, physical and social, literal and virtual, etc.) plays a central role due to the fact that recent European films outline a new cinematic map of the continent, imagining it as a “borderless space” (Galt 2006, 72). In addition to that, film production is now situated in a context beyond the framework of national cinema, which, when coupled with the developments in new media and technology, demands revision of existing film theories and analytical practices by taking into account a series of transnational, transcultural and transmedial (refers to the employment of multiple media platforms for representing the story) factors. Furthermore, one should take into account that films are a cultural format that is relatively easy to access by the wider audience.
Research method
on a variety of contextual factors.2 Stuart Hall rejects the idea that the decoded
message is equivalent to the encoded message, noting that “decodings do not follow inevitably from encodings” (Hall 1980, 136). He suggests three hypothetical ways of reading text: a dominant (preferred) reading accepts completely the ideology of the text, which in this case refers to the transcultural reality embedded in the film; a negotiated reading involves contradictions as it both accepts and resists or modifies the preferred reading in a way which reflects one’s own position; a third oppositional reading understands the dominant code but totally ignores it. The thesis research method will be guided by an interpretative research perspective and will involve the realization of interpretation of film reviews. The process of interpretation will begin with the selection of three films, which put into practice the definition of transcultural cinema, coined by David MacDougall:
The ‘shock’ of film’s transculturality is that through its particularity it evokes the universality of human experience – experience, in a word, that transcends cultural boundaries. Film reveals not only the intersubjective field of consciousness linking Self and Other, but also the gradual modulations and commonalities of experience between different cultural groups. (MacDougall 1994, 21).
This definition will be used as criterion for the selection of films by applying it at the level of film production and director’s intention since the film reception will be studied afterwards in the interpretation of film reviews. In order to be more precise and specific the criteria will be broadened to the following list of common traits: recent release (maximum three years ago), multilingual actors and members of the film crew, a story that goes beyond the nationality of makers/performers and the place of production, distribution to a wide audience and recognition at international film festivals. There is no intention to focus on strictly European cinema.
The collected data (film reviews) will be then analyzed and assigned to the categories culture/identity, space and memory. This means that those words and phrases that relate explicitly or implicitly to one of these categories will be tagged as important and will be taken into account for the film interpretation. These three concepts are essential for understanding how transcultural cinema functions and for measuring how people react to it. Why? On one hand, because culture can be
negotiated through communication, which in the case of transcultural cinema (considered as a communication medium) is performed at two levels: first at the level of content and second at the level of interpretation. The interconnectedness between culture, communication and memory is successfully described by Foresta who grasps the idea by stating that “each society constantly recreates itself through communication by constantly redefining its collective reality, its culture” and “culture is a memory, collective memory, dependent on communication for its creation, extension, evolution and preservation” (Foresta et al. 1995, 19). In addition to that, cinema communicates through the construction and representation of space in such a way that the spectator is compelled to imagine space beyond the borders of a nation-state. The construction of space also evokes “the universality of human experience” which takes place when the representation of a particular story invites the spectator to self-identify and therefore react emotionally to it. On the other hand, such a reaction can be explained with the interplay between space and memory which is central to cinema studies and the theories of Henri Bergson (Matter and Memory 1978) and Gilles Deleuze (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image 2001). What is significant for the present context is the assumption that experiences are never forgotten, but stored and preserved in the brain as memories: “A sensation, in other words, activates forgotten memories. It helps recall not only an antecedent sensation but, more importantly, the entire ambience surrounding the sensation: the feelings, thoughts, impressions, and mood of the self that experienced these things long ago.” (Gross 1985, 378). Thus, Gross differentiates between memory triggered by a certain sensation (involuntary) and memory, which, with the helps of perception, selects images from the past to apply them to an immediate action (voluntary). Far from identifying the type of memory that enters in action, the film interpretation will aim at comprehending how the concept of memory works within the film interpretation.
classifying the data into categories, will proceed with exploring the relationship between concepts and patterns. In this case, the meaning will be viewed as product of the relationship between concepts in a text.
The three films, included in interpretation of film reception, are Biutiful (2010), The World is Big and Salvation Lurks around the Corner (2008) and Le Havre (2011). Biutiful is a Spanish-Mexican co-production, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. The director insists that the film doesn’t belong to any country, as it is “a story about a man and his love for his two children, as well as a journey toward death, therefore making it a universal film that transcends conventional borders” (Hernández 2010). Moreover, Iñárritu compares his work to Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados (The Forgotten Ones) and explains "Sixty years ago Buñuel came to Mexico and filmed 'Los Olvidados’, and now I get to go to Spain and film the forgotten ones, who are the migrants.” (Hernández 2010). The World is Big and Salvation Lurks around the Corner is a co-production between Bulgaria, Germany, Slovenia, and Hungary. According to its director Stefan Komandarev, the story is about the journey to one’s self-discovery – an experience that leads to “overcoming barriers and merging opposites” (The official website of The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner). The third film Le Havre is a French-Finnish-German co-production, directed by the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. It is a story that reflects the treatment of refugees in Europe and stresses the importance of acting collectively, united by a common cause. This is also the critic, raised by the film, to today’s reality in Europe where cooperation and dialogue between diverse cultures is still scarce.
As far as the methodology is concerned, the interpretation of film reviews will be conducted by using transculturality as a research perspective. This means that the research approach will not rely on the traditional meaning3 of cultures, but on the
understanding that contemporary cultural forms are increasingly generated and interconnected across frontiers (Hepp 2009, 1-14). Based on this, transculturality will be one of the guiding principles of the film interpretation, which means that the data will not be interpreted as typical for national cultures, as the main purpose is to look for transcultural specificities in the way people interpret a transcultural film. For
example, one may refer to the “search for cultural identity” by calling it “spiritual journey” in order to imply that the sense of belongingness to one place can be misleading due to its liquidity. This research perspective was developed by Andreas Hepp and basically aims at studying media cultures transculturally (although he does not exclude the nation state as a possible reference point of comparison). His proposal is an alternative to the “imagined community”4 model of research, shaped
predominantly by national paradigms. The problem detected here is that methodological nationalism5 is not a valid approach anymore because it disregards the
actual social and cultural realities. That is why, as discussed at last year’s European Communication Conference, transcultural communication is still a challenge for the research field and media and communication studies (European Communication Conference 2010).
The process of interpretation of film reviews will begin with collecting data, which, as mentioned before, include reviews published online in newspapers, blogs and websites in general. In an effort to collect greater amount of film reviews, I created a Google alert for my e-mail account, which is a method that allows monitoring all the information that is published on the Internet that contains the title of the films. The Google alert was set on the 1st of May 2011.6 This basically means
that from that date on everything that has been posted online in relation to the films has been alerted on my e-mail account and has been included in the study material. Film reviews are only one of the many forms of film interpretation that may not be shared by the wider audience. In any case, the global reception of the films exceeds the scope of the thesis. In addition to that, because of the fact that the film reviews are available online means that everyone who speaks English and has Internet connection could access them from different points in space. In turn, one needs to consider that this content could then have the potential of influencing people’s attitude or opinion, taking in consideration that many of the articles have the option to like, share or recommend via Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
The thesis will be structured in three chapters. The first one focuses on
4 According to Benedikt Anderson, the community is imagined because it exists in the mind of each of its members although they do not know most of their fellow members (Anderson 2003,6).
5 Methodological nationalism is understood as the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world (Wimmer and Schiller 2002).
Chapter 1: Towards a re-definition of the transcultural 1.1. The study of transcultures so far
The discovery of the transcultural world is not recent historically although it is relatively new theoretically. Currently, there is a variety of contributions which frequently offer different interpretations and therefore do not establish a unified definition for it. In order to seize how transculturalism is going to be understood in this thesis, the following chapter will reframe the meaning that has been given to the concept so far.
The concept of transculturalism was coined in 1940 by the sociologist Fernando Ortiz. In Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar) he explains that transculturalism should be comprehended as a process or possibility, from which a new reality emerges, rather than an end result: “The product of a meeting between an existing culture or subculture and a migrant culture, recently arrived, which transforms the two and creates in the process a neoculture, which is also subject to transculturation (…)” (Ortiz 1987). Transculturation is, therefore, a neologism that suggests neither the acquisition of a new and distinct culture, as implied by the term acculturation, nor the perdition of a previous culture (partial deculturation). It is about the process of developing a transculture – a new independent phenomenon which goes beyond the sole coexistence of two cultural systems. This theoretical model describes more accurately the cooperation between diverse cultures which all contribute in their own ways, creating a new third space in which the constituent elements merge into one. Precisely this is the key aspect for understanding transculturation – the act of cultural blending rather than the juxtaposition of different parts.
Adopting Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, which asserts the instability of the existing rules, Bhabha projects a deconstructive critique of the dichotomies of the West and the Orient, the centre and the periphery, the empire and the colonized, and the self and the other. Therefore, notions of race, gender, place, space, and time have become increasingly blurred and unstable, especially when considering identity in a postmodern era. That is why,
What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These “in-between” spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood – singular or communal – that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself (Bhabha 1994, 1-2).
contextualization will show, the definitions of transculturality differ in both meaning and formulation. Thus, one differentiates between transculturalism (Slimbach 2005), transculturality (Welsch 1999), transculture (Epstein 2009) and transculturation (Ortiz 1978). As far as transculturalism is concerned, it seems that it could be used almost interchangeably with terms as postcolonial, global and transnational (a term used to describe the ties between people and institutions across nations): “Transculturalism is rooted in the quest to define shared interests and common values, across cultural and national borders – it addresses global issues like personal prejudice, group violence, environmental protection and human rights.” (Richard Slimbach 2005, 206). In this sense, what differentiates this conceptualization from the rest of notions? It seems that the definition above could equally refer to several themes or clusters – transculturalism as a mode of cultural reproduction, flow of people and capital, social morphology and a type of consciousness. On the one hand, the way transculturalism happens today cannot be detached from globalization as it has been made possible by developments in both cheap global transport and multi-channel global communication. The expansion of airline travel and telecommunications technologies, tourism and student exchanges, immigration and trade agreements have served to connect vastly different peoples and places into increasingly complex relationships. Local, regional, and national economies are now largely integrated into a single interdependent economy, working in real time on a global scale. Buyers and sellers increasingly connect, not through physical proximity, but through electronic networks. At the same time, everything and everyone appears to be on the move. Capital and tourists, products and services, businesspeople and immigrants — all move across borders with relative freedom. These global transformations are being felt at an intensely local level. However, the shift from a diminishing national experience does not necessarily lead to a wider transcultural experience. In the same vein, one should not confuse global society with transcultural society. While the latter transcends national purisms, the former does not. Still, both notions depend from each other and cannot be understood separately. This is how the relation between global and transcultural is viewed by Epstein from a rather optimistic perspective:
their dependence from their native cultures. The global society can be viewed as the space of diversity of free individuals rather than that of fixed groups and cultures. It is an alternative to the clash of civilizations and a hope for lasting peace (Epstein 2009, 328).
Such an idealistic consideration of “transcultural individuals” does not recognize the asymmetric power relationships that are characteristic of places where “not everyone enjoys the same freedom at the moment of combining or interpreting cultural factors” (Onghena 2008, 183). In this globalized climate many people might be involved in global communities such as transnational corporations, advocacy groups and non-governmental organizations that facilitate a constant physical and electronical contact with the wider world, but these relations are often predominantly based on commercial interests. In spite of these developments the question remains: Do physical and virtual travel facilitate the contact with the other by fostering a cross-cultural understanding? (Cuccioletta 2002, 2). Moreover, Slimbach’s definition could be problematic in the sense that it confuses the act of consuming cultural products such as Ethiopian food, Mexican music, German cars, etc. with being transculturally competent:
Today competence of a transcultural kind must exhibit the attitudes and abilities that facilitate open and ethical interaction with people across cultures. For this, we need not travel far. Like Iyer’s “day in the life,” the experience of other worlds can happen within our own neighborhoods. Today, local resources of interculturally-proficient persons have never been greater (Slimbach 2005, 206).
and in the other remains. In other words, the transcultural nature of today´s reality is not necessarily a political and/or economic project. In addition to that, the interpretation of transculturalism should go beyond cosmopolitan ideals and positive effects of multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation-states. Slimbach suggests the reinvention of a new common culture, based on intermingling of different people and cultures, but he does not take into consideration that “cosmopolitan appreciation of global diversity is based on privileges of wealth and perhaps especially citizenship in certain states” (Calhoun 2003, 293).
Another attempt to analyze the transcultural was made by the philosopher Wolfgang Welsch who looks at it from a slightly different angle. The author contrasts the notion of transculturality with inter- and multiculturalism and concludes that it is the most adequate concept of cultures today as it describes “cultures with the ability to link and undergo transition whilst avoiding the threat of homogenization or uniformization” (Welsch 1999, 211). Contrary to the concept of multiculturalism, which considers cultures as independent and self-sufficient, transculturality implies the openness and mutual involvement of cultures. The principle that applies here is not that of difference, but that of amalgamation of symbolic values of each culture in the field of all others: “It is not only Greece and England that can produce their ‘own Platos and quick-minded Newtons,’ as Mikhail Lomonosov, a Russian poet of the eighteenth century put it, but Russia, Africa, or Greenland as well” (Epstein 2009, 328). However, Welsch´s analysis is rather totalizing in the sense that it provides a broad picture of the investigated reality without observing it from different angles and in this way providing a closer look into the current sociological, political, and economic climate. In the same vein, when referring to the case of Europe he fails to establish a deeper insight into the challenges of global migration, and the increasingly successful right-wing trends (in Europe).
cultures, but go beyond these, are found in the same way in other cultures. The way of life for an economist, an academic or a journalist is no longer German or French, but rather European or global in tone.” Welsch idealistically attempts to promote the possibility of developing an “increasingly transcultural understanding of ourselves” which is a difficult task to achieve if people are not aware of the existence of transculturality. That is why, a better approach might be to look for possible ways to “translate” the concept to the society though practical examples which illustrate the transcultural (expositions, film festivals, publications, etc.). Another recommendation might be to use the designation transculturation as it best describes the practical and theoretical nature of the concept – the process of becoming, not of being. On the other hand, culture should not be viewed as just an extension of somebody's inborn nature in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, etc. The journalist Claude Grunitzky, who is a French citizen with multinational citizenship, relates this idea to a kind of transcultural philosophy, which he call “a way of navigating many worlds”: “'I've noticed a lot of people can't figure me out.' he says. 'But once they figure you out, they label you and put you in a box. I like being complex, difficult to understand, because I don't want to be perceived with these stereotypes always associated with black people.'" (The New York Times 2010). This is also the central argument that unites series of essays, analyses and personal tales collected under the title Transculturalism: How the World Is Coming Together which examines different transcultural musical genres and profiles of artists referred to as “transculturalists” (Grunitzky 2004). The basic premise of this book is that the transculturalists that it represents defy race, religion, sexuality, class, and every sort of sociological and anthropological classification. Similarly, Mikhail Epstein describes the transcultural as the freedom to escape from one’s inborn culture and to live beyond it:
Transculture is a model of cultural development, which differs from both leveling globalism and isolating pluralism. Among the many freedoms proclaimed as inalienable rights of the individual, there emerges yet another freedom which is probably the most meaningful one – the freedom from one’s own culture, in which one was born and educated (Epstein 2009, 330).
spite of leaving their “homeland”, become “imprisoned” in their language and traditions, other migrants who become “prisoners” of a newly-adopted culture and “transculturalists” who have found a way to free themselves from the constraints of their own original culture and have explored, examined and infiltrated other “alien” cultures (Epstein 2009, 330). Here, one may argue that defending such an extreme and totalizing vision of freedom, escape and prison is not very safe since none of these notions have a standardized meaning and differ in value for each individual – what is liberating for some could be restraining for others. In spite of that, Epstein’s definition of transcultures successfully distinguishes between transculturalists and cosmopolitan consumers although it is reframed within a rather elitist framework that excludes those unprivileged others for whom the freedom of movement and the state of having escaped is only present in their imaginary. In other words, not everyone is granted the right to the above-mentioned “transcultural” freedom. Another perspective that can be added is the one of the Soviet philosopher Merab Mamardashvili (1930-1990) who underscores the right of individuals to independence from their own cultures as follows:
The defense of autonomous customs sometimes proves to be a denial of the right to freedom and to another world. It seems as if a decision were taken for them: you live in such an original way, that it is quite cultural to live as you do, so go on and live this way. But did anyone ask me personally? (…) Perhaps I am suffocating within the fully autonomous customs of my complex and developed culture? (Mamardashvili 1992, 337).
Mamardashvili points to the need to understand culture as individual experience and a construct that one shapes (un)consciously, depending on his/her cultural affiliations. But in this context, one should also highlight the ability of cultures to link and undergo transitions, meaning that belonging to one authentic culture is purely imaginary. This raises the question of the meaning of culture given the increasingly global nature of today’s reality.
1.2. Culture/identity, space and memory
processes of transculturation such as globalization and decolonization and their position in time and space. It is important to clarify that, for example, transculturation in times of colonization is comparable but not identical to the one in times of globalization although they might share many points of analogy. This means that the process of transculturation needs to be put in a certain timeframe and be studied under the influence of political, social and cultural factors that are specific for that time period. In the context of this thesis, transculturation will be studied in the context of our contemporary world and its representation in cinema. Therefore, it is important to identify certain aspects that characterize and differentiate our contemporary reality from other former ones in order to be consistent when re-defining the concept of transculturality. For this reason, it is necessary to show how concepts change when moved from one place and time to another. Only then it would be possible to identify the challenges and opportunities hidden behind today’s transcultural diversity. With this in mind, the following subsection will address important questions concerning the meaning of (trans)culture today and the role of space and memory for the negotiation of culture and identity. Culture, space and memory are also the three main concepts that will define the structure of the interpretation of the three films in the second chapter.
1.2.1. What is (trans)culture today?
This subchapter aims to raise the awareness of the process of transculturation by addressing key issues in the cultural configuration of an increasingly transnational world, taking account of the new cultural questions opening up in the wake of globalization. This issue will be resolved by emphasizing the transcultural flows across the globe and focusing on the relationship between cultural diversity, identity and transculturation. Special attention will be paid to the limitations brought by nationalistic consciousness. With this in mind, the objective of this section is to critically address the way in which cultures have evolved until now and also to develop new conceptual perspectives for thinking about cultural change and complexity.
actually do happen and should be made visible to a major amount of people in order to deal with the complexity of a changing Europe and the challenges of global migration. In the same vein, cultural theories can no longer be limited to certain geographical spaces and need to be adapted to the actual political, social, and cultural reality, in which the information explosion and the integration of new technologies have led to an environment of extreme interconnectedness, making accessible endless amounts of knowledge of other cultures via online search tools and social networks. One should consider, then, that “many previous assumptions about the social and physical boundaries that define cultures may no longer apply” (Alfrey 2010, 2).
Simultaneously, as the economic dynamics of globalization have created “new kinds of cultural juxtapositions, encounters and exchanges, which have resulted in greater and more complex patterns of diversity within the cultural space”, more people seem to be on the move and the expansion of trans-border relations, tourism, and student exchange has been intensified (Robins 2006, 169). Arjun Appadurai (1999) analyses the global cultural dynamics of economy by illustrating them within five scapes: "ethnoscapes" (the flow of people), "technoscapes" (the flow of technology), "finanscapes" (the flow of finance and capital), "mediascapes" (the flow of mediated images), and "ideoscapes" (the flow of ideas and ideologies) (Appadurai 1999, 306). As a result of these flows, the variety of symbols in consumers' daily life grows in such a way that “much of what is available in one place is also available in any other place” (Waters 1995, 24). This basically means that combining the global and the local in one’s personal experience is now almost inevitable and supposes the building of cross-cultural relationships. Travel writer Iyer Pico successfully describes how such global transformations are also felt at a local level by documenting a typical day in a highly-interconnected world:
Nevertheless, the purpose here is not to highlight the positive aspects of globalization, but to consider the shift from solid, defined, localized, territorialized, nation-bound modernity to postmodernity, or what Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquidity”, meaning that it is redefined by the effects of globalization, migration, nomadism, tourism, social networks, etc. (Bauman 2000, 13). These developments raise the question of the postmodern identity and the way it is being constructed in a new intermingled global context, which also demands an anti-essentialist redefinition of ethnic, racial, and national conceptions of cultural identity. An important point here is the transition from modernity to postmodernity. According to Zygmunt Bauman, “if the modern ‘problem of identity’ was how to construct an identity and keep it solid and stable, the postmodern ‘problem of identity’ is primarily how to avoid fixation and keep the options open. In the case of identity, as in other cases, the catchword of modernity was creation, while the catchword of postmodernity is recycling” (Bauman 1996, 18).
What is most important to save from this logic is that both processes of recycling and creation imply transformation or construction that further relates to the so called “cultural metamorphoses”, taking place in a pluralistic society in which people from diverse cultures come in contact. This assumption relates to two possible consequences for the notions of culture, namely the perception of authenticity as purely imaginary and the interpretation of culture as individual experience.
this argument could be further developed by applying the understanding of culture as not belonging to people and places. Rather, it is measured with the standards that people adopt for their daily interaction” (Erickson, 1997, 47; Goodenough, 1976, 4-6). Standards, in this case, refer to an agreed upon set of meanings, scripts, and rules that guide behavior and govern relationships (García et al. 2005, 2). The understanding of standards as the fundamental building block of society and culture is essential for imagining possible ways for re-defining the meaning of culture.
According to the definition of the term “propriospect”, culture could also be studied as individual experience or personal versions of culture, referring to the ”private, subjective view of the world and of its content, which includes the various standards for perceiving, evaluating, believing, and doing that an individual attributes to other persons as a result of his or her experience of their actions and admonitions” (Goodenough, 1981, 98). In turn, Harry Walcott uses the same term to describe the process of development of individual versions of culture through contacts with others, with whom one may not share the same set of standards but may acquire some new ones (Walcott 1991). As a result, the more standards individuals incorporate into their individual culture, the more multicultural they are. It is useful then to embrace this idea in the micro reading of multiculturalism as an insightful tool when exploring multicultural societies on a macro level.
These tibus or little masses (popularized as neotribes) are fundamental to our experience of life in general…the consumption of cultural resources circulated through markets (brands, leisure experiences, and so on) are not the sine qua non of contemporary life, rather, they facilitate what are meaningful social relationships (Schouten et al. 2007, 5).
Boundaries of time and space are progressively blurred, creating, in this way, opportunities and challenges for old and new forms of social ties and communities. Real and virtual communities generated by shared experience such as language and culture have become a place where people find others who share their interests and values. Importantly, the Internet revolution is transforming the world of communications and like any other revolution it impacts different groups in different ways. Virtual geographies have to do with new senses of place, location, and can challenge the way we perceive distances and the relation between us and others. Thus, the social interaction between people is being transformed by progressively shifting from the physical to the virtual. Moreover, the loosening of ties to a particular social and cultural structure, mentioned above, stimulates diverse forms of self-expression, which are basically aiming at the distinction between what we are by birth and what we are by choice (Slimbach 2005, 205). As a result, identity is becoming a name given to “material entity”, which means that distinction is frequently measured in material terms through consumer patterns and the expressions of taste, which are used as tools for signaling divergence from undesired social groups: “We cannot directly observe others’ beliefs, experiences, or what they really think of us; instead we rely on signals such as facial expressions and consumption patterns (…)” (Donath 2007, 3).
1998, 150). The point here is that instead of subordinating individuals to social and cultural integration, cultural practices are seen in terms of “the capacity to construct one’s own personal, coherent, and meaningful experience” (Touraine 1998, 155) And the exercise of this capacity is related to one’s cultural choices, which arise in a new kind of “social contract”, based on the principle “culture-as-creativity”, rather than simply as “culture-as-belonging” or “culture-as-groupishness” (Robins 2006, 37). This does not mean that the national cultural agenda remains eliminated. On the contrary, it is still important but a new “transcultural frame” has settled over the national frame, which demands to rethink the ways we talk about culture (Robins 2006, 37).
1.2.2. The role of space and memory
Within this framework, the question of space and particularly the role of spatial dimensions in the negotiation of identity and (trans)cultures plays a key role. In order to explore how exactly that connects to the study of transcultures and transcultural cinema, the following section will focus on theorizing space and its relation to culture and memory.
For this purpose, one needs to first clarify what the definition of space is. According to James Clifford, “space is never ontologically given. It is discursively mapped and corporeally practiced” (Clifford 1997, 54). Hence, space is where political and cultural encounters establish the connection of people with territory, cultures, and societies. As Clifford points out, “space is composed through movement”, it is the result of action or practice (Clifford cited in Butt 2008, 3). It is important then to distinguish between “space” and “place”. The difference between both notions has been studied by several authors from cultural and postcolonial studies. Place is often related to a sense of belongingness, as well as “the concrete manifestation of home, culture, and community before the arrival of the colonial rulers”, whereas space is seen as a colonial creation that “virtually dislocated” the colonized when the Western colonizer conquered the land (Aschcroft 2000, 22). Consequently, after the postcolonial transformations, the perception of “delocalized” transformed into “spatialised form of global consciousness” (Aschcroft 2000, 15).
postcolonial theories, does not go beyond cultural difference and opposition, as it focuses predominantly on territorial struggles (Kumar 1999). It does not take into account the interaction between global and local influences, as well as cultural dynamics, active in the construction of space and its role in transcultural processes in the age of worldwide global cultural transactions that blur the boundaries of cultural and ethnic identity. In the context of this thesis, the understanding of space will go beyond (post)colonial studies and the perception of space as territorial conflict and cultural clash. The study of cinema’s potential for mapping transcultural spaces will be studied through the interpretation of three film examples in the next chapter as an attempt to disentangle the construction of space as a point of connection and conjunction among divergent cultures and to move beyond the transactions between the colonizer and the colonized (Thomas 1996, 47).
The notion of space will be used in relation to transcultural theory to negotiate different representations of space as imaginary, remembered and national (Butt 2008). More precisely, the transcultural dimension is important to understand the representation of space in cinema because it is an emotional project that has the potential to compel the spectator to imagine space beyond a singular culture, nation, territory and community. Spatial practices work on a variety of levels such as telling stories by evoking the role of imaginary and real places across distant cultures and communities. In film, the act of simultaneously living and telling a story is central for constructing and/or imagining a transcultural space, theorized as “a space of cultural and ethnic transactions where characters seek to overthrow artificial frontiers to come to terms with the reality of cultural and political transformations” (Butt 2008, 4).
consideration is that the role of memory and spatial transformations shows that culture is not only lived in daily interaction but is also imagined, multiple and moving. In this context, the concept of the map is one that logically renders the relationship between place, its representation and the production of space. Moreover, it signifies the conceptual disparity between place and space. It is important to bear that in mind when referring to cinema as a map of cultural differences in the following chapter, where the question of mapping transcultural space in film will be discussed (Bruno 2002).
Space, as many critics have argued, does not merely provide a background for cultural configurations; rather, it is an essential part of cultural and political transformations. The field of social sciences has responded to that by applying the “new mobilities” paradigm. It takes into consideration theories of “liquid modernity” (Bauman 2000) and usefully attempts to “redirect research away from static structures of the modern world to see how social entities comprise people and information in systems of movement” . Yet clearly, the new mobilities paradigm does not comprehend mobility as something new, although its scale is progressively growing, nor it is a mere reference to the shifting boundaries between nation-states. It is rather about “sociology beyond societies” in the sense of imagining space beyond “fixed geographical containers for social processes”, as well as questioning the logics of the local and the global, which define mobility as “a resource to which not everyone has an equal relationship'' (Skeggs, 2004, 49; Morley, 2000). It is important to consider that mobility does not only have a cosmopolitan “romantic” side, since the rights to travel are highly uneven (Kaplan 1996, 24). Mobility can create economic, educational, and cultural benefits in some cases and social exclusion in others.
The way space is being “produced” is represented by the multilayered vision of space expressed through the concept of social space, coined by Henri Lefebvre and later projected into Edward Soja’s perception of the third space. Edward Soja borrows the concept of social space and develops his own concept of “trialectics of spatiality”. But before proceeding to its conceptualization it is necessary to come to terms to what Lefebvre means by social space and its integration into the so called “spatial triad ", the central pillar of The Production of Space (1991).
space itself, but only a way of looking at space – or aspects of the real space, which is the space of social practices (Lefebvre 1991, 122). The life and development of society are seen from the prism of space production and described as “dialectics between different kinds of human practice in space” where there is distinction between “mental” and “real” space (Haslum 2008, 64). Urban transformation, for example, comprehends two different kinds of dialectics between physical and architectural space and mental and social space. When investigating the relationship between mental space and real space, Lefebvre distinguishes three aspects of spatial production: spatial practices, representations of space, and spaces of representation.
Spatial practices explain how space is being perceived, which in this case refers to the instant perception of mental space in the spatial practice. It is the most important to spatial production and includes human and social action in and with space: “The spatial practice of a society secretes that society’s space; it propounds and presupposes it, in a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it” (Lefebvre 1991, 38). The representations of space reflect the way professionals, working with urban transformation, “identify what is lived and what is perceived with what is conceived” (Lefebvre 1991, 38). According to Lefebvre, the representations of space dominate the spatial production in society as they “intervene and modify spatial textures” (Lefebvre cited in Haslum 2008, 65). Based on this, spatial representations, understood as the conception of space by urbanists, include a prescription for the representation of the urban form in terms of design and any other cartographic, statistic, numeric, and verbal representation, as well as the material manifestation of these configurations in built urban forms. In other words, these representations of space suggest “how people might live” as they predetermine the spatial practices of the users by applying certain symbolism carrying the intentions of arquitects and other figures involved (Davey 1981, 204).
the images and symbols associated to it.
What is important for my purpose here is Lefebvre’s understanding of a social space as “dialectically linked triad of sociospatial configurations” composed by the perceived (spatial practices), conceived (representations of space) and lived (spaces of representation) realms of space. These spaces are in no way detached from each other but rather strongly interconnected in such a way that allows “the individual member of a given social group move from one to another without confusion” (Lefebvre 1991, 40).
According to Edward Soja, "Lefebvre was probably the first to discover, describe, and insightfully explore third space" without ever using the specific term . Lefebvre’s trialectic between the perceived, conceived, and lived space resembles, respectively, what Edward Soja calls firstspace, secondspace, and thirdspace. In his “trialectics of spatiality”, Soja explores and incorporates the work of Henri Lefebvre and Homi Bhabha, seeking to “open up a distinctive new interpretive realm” (Soja 1996, 22).
Chapter 2: Cinema in times of globalization: a shift towards transculturation? 2.1. Contextualization of the field study
While the first chapter was devoted to the (re)conceptualization of the transcultural, the second chapter will deal with the same theoretical issues but placed in the context of cinema. More concretely, my aim is to revisit the notion of transcultural cinema and to reconsider the experience of border-crossing by interpreting the reviews of three previously selected films. In this sense, the main concern is to study how cinema operates on a transcultural basis and how its message is being decoded and received by the audience. The levels of film production and director’s intentions will also be taken into consideration although the level of interpretation will be central.
When referring to cinema in times of globalization, one may encounter denominations such as global, world, immigration or simply transnational cinema. Yet, clearly, these notions are all interrelated with each other and generally describe films made as co-productions, bringing together resources and experiences from different nation-states, which are finally distributed far more widely than within their country of production. In an effort to delimit and concretize the field of study, this chapter will deal with examples of cinema operating on transnational and transcultural basis, which, according to MacDougall, motivate the transcendence and blurring of cultural boundaries by enabling one’s identification with and in the other (MacDougall 1994, 245). This assumption will be taken as a point of departure at this initial stage of the research and will be critically contrasted with the once concluded results.
Rowden,
The transnational can be understood as the global forces that link people or institutions across nations. Key to transnationalism is the recognition of the decline of national sovereignty as a regulatory force in global coexistence. The impossibility of assigning a fixed national identity to much cinema reflects the dissolution of any stable connection between a film’s place of production and/or setting and the nationality of its makers and performers (Ezra and Rowden 2006, 2).
The portrayal of people caught in the crack of globalization and their particular experiences of mobility has inevitably become almost omnipresent in cinema. This migratory phenomenon refers not only to the central theme within a growing number of transnational cinematic texts, but also to the transnational distribution that allows film productions to “migrate”, which is “to circulate” more freely than ever before, reaching a wider range of audiences.
Moreover, transcultural cinema constructs a common cultural space in an age of globalization by representing transcultural diversity and simultaneously using it as a source of creativity. In relation to that, the European Council’s Declaration on Cultural Diversity highlights the synergy between cultural diversity and cultural creativity by stressing that “where large-scale industries encourage linguistic diversity and artistic expression, they reflect genuine diversity and have a positive impact on pluralism, innovation, competitiveness and employment” (Council of Europe 2001, 11). In turn, transcultural cinema could be viewed as an important tool that contributes to the successful functioning of these synergies. What matters here is not the economic benefit that this process may have as a consequence, but mostly the way common people could benefit from it. That is why, it is important to study transcultural cinema and its potential to function as a “key territory, in which change could be imagined” (Galt 2006, 89). And change here refers to all developments mentioned earlier, especially in relation to globalization. Therefore, transcultural cinema engages not only with questions of artistic expression, reflecting the confluence and flows of diverse populations, but also with questions of their coexistence in society.
Cinema is therefore an important tool for communication in audiovisual terms. If nowadays one’s experience exceeds the boundaries of a single nation, religion or place, filmmakers try to tell stories about this type of experiences. And this ongoing and complicated reality certainly inspires new cinematic narratives because “you can show things, you can show people and you can go to places with a camera that brings these issues to life in a very real way" (Qureshi 2011). Many of the films, produced in the last decades, are global by design – most are co-productions, jointly financed by studios in Asia, Latin America and Europe; and they are premiered at festivals in Venice, Berlin and Toronto. These co-productions certainly contribute to the creation of “an aesthetic of global mapping”, helping spectators situate themselves in a global space (Hoefert de Truégano 2002, 9). Indeed, fantasizing distant cultures and other lifestyles has become a major social practice as spectators are exposed to more and more transnational cinema. As explained by Bergfelder, “supposedly stable indigenous cultures (in their cultural practices, but also in their readings of cultural texts) actively and continuously participate in, perpetuate, diasporic imaginings”, and cinema has become a very important medium to foster transcultural imaginings (Bergfelder 2005, 322).
arguments, this chapter explores the unpredictable direction in which European cinema is now going and reflects on possible ways for remapping cinema in times of transculturation.
The approach of the interpretation of the three films will not be limited to concepts of traditional cultures enclosed by territorial states but, instead, will be conducted by relying on the assumption that contemporary cultural forms interconnect and emerge from each other. What is meant here is that the purpose of research is not limited to the study of reception of national cinema with the change of cultural contexts.7 In order to comprehend how cinema operates on a transcultural basis, the
structure of the interpretation will be based on the following three concepts: culture/identity, space and memory.
Regarding the role of cinema in mapping transcultural spaces, it is important to recall Appadurai’s notion of landscape as a category for understanding the disjuncture between culture, economy and politics grounded in concepts like ‘ethnoscapes’ (ethnic), ‘technoscapes’ (technological), ‘mediascapes’ (mediated), etc. According to him, landscapes are not idealized communities but are rather irregularly shaped and fluid (Appadurai, 1990, 296). Furthermore, he points out that those landscapes are spaces for social relations although they are not necessarily geographic places. To this perspective, Cauquelin adds that the landscape is “an image, an artifice and even a rhetorical construction” . One can see how transcultural cinema integrates this mechanism by mapping in-betweeness and constructing the imaginary space of transcultural co-existence.
The interpretation of the reviews of the three films will be based on the search for expressions that could be related to the categories culture/identity, memory and space. This process will involve tagging those key phrases that correspond to the proposed categories, as well as those other patterns, which seem relevant. Other relevant point is the diversity of ideas, similarities and disparities in expressing the same concept, alternative perspectives, and/or different interpretations. The aim is therefore to find both confirming and disconfirming evidence of the thesis hypothesis. Moreover, the overall process of interpretation may suggest new questions that were
not anticipated at the start of the research.
The film reviews were gathered with the help of a Google alert, set on the 1st
of May, 2011. It is a tool useful for monitoring content online as it sends an e-mail notification every time a content containing the title of the film is being published online. This basically means that from that date on everything that was posted online in relation to the films (except for Le Havre that was officially released later) was alerted to my e-mail account and was included in the study material. Of course, these are not considered as interpretations, shared by the wider audience although the fact that the reviews are available online means every person who speaks English and has an Internet connection could access them from different points in space. The following three sections will be focused on the interpretation of the films Biutiful, The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner and Le Havre. Each section will first start with a brief comment on the film synopsis, director’s intentions, film distribution and the prizes that have been awarded to the films at international festivals. In the second part of the section, the analyzed data will be classified into categories of culture/identity, space and memory, presented in a graphic table where the expressions that relate more directly to the coding unit will be highlighted in bold. And a third part will focus on presenting the conclusions, based on the results and findings of the interpretation.
2.2. Case study 1: Biutiful 2.2.1. About the film
When you are portraying somebody that has a very specific emotional weight, you feel like you're really starting to abandon your own body and go to someplace else. And then when you come back to yourself, people that know you well, they ask, 'Why did you say that?' or 'Why are you doing this?' or 'Why are you behaving this way?' But you don't realize. Because it's so unconscious, you don't have control over it (Bardem cited in Nash 2011).
reflected in the act of transcending one’s own identity, and film reception, reflected in the actual identification of the viewer with the represented figure of Uxbal.
The integration of the transcultural can also be grasped when looking into the director’s intentions. According to both Bardem and Iñárritu the film represents three different journeys, which further reveal Uxbal’s multi-layered identity. He is going through one internal journey entirely within himself, parallel to another external one, taking place on the streets where he tries to find way to provide the basic needs for his family and another third journey to mortality and spirituality. Interestingly, all three journeys interfere with each other in a way that put Uxbal and the needs of his family in opposition. The narrative is based on precisely this contradiction between the voice of body and mind and the urgent needs for survival.
Biutiful is a Spanish-Mexican co-production, shot in Barcelona, Spain and released in May 2010 with an international distribution. Produced by the Mexican company Menage Atroz, the film was co-produced by Spain ´s Mod Producciones and Ikiru Film with investment from Televisión Española and Televisió de Catalunya, as well as backing from the ICAA (Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales). It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at Academy Awards in 2011, British
while doing the same type of labor as represented in the action. Biutiful is basically about a single father, Uxbal (Javier Bardem) and his overwhelming love for his children, Anna (Hanaa Bouchaib) and Mateo (Guillermo Estrella). The film's title comes from his son's misspelling of the word "beautiful" which refers to the orthographical spelling of the word in Spanish or as it would sound to native Spanish speakers. Uxbal is constantly struggling to “reconcile fatherhood, love, spirituality, crime, guilt and mortality” while living in a very poor and grey area of modern and cosmopolitan Barcelona (Biutiful Official Website). The never-ending obstacles are always lying on his path: his unstable and fragile wife Marambra (Maricel Álvarez), the illegal immigrants he is responsible for, and a cancer diagnosis that leaves him a couple of months to live. Thus, Uxbal acts almost as a father figure for all these people, which becomes overwhelming when it turns out that taking care of all of them can only mean conflict. He helps his brother to import illegal Chinese immigrants into work at a warehouse where they are unavoidably victims of slavery. What is being produced by them is afterwards sold on the street by other African immigrants. Eventually, his well-intentioned efforts to provide a better life for his children and to help the underpaid immigrants not to be deported reach a crisis with a shocking and terrifying effect: the heaters that he buys for the Asian immigrants cause everybody’s death as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning.
And all that takes place in a city which reveals a picture that is far from the perfect tourist destination, as demonstrated by Antonioni's The Passenger (1975) to Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) and Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control (2009). In Biutiful, Alejandro González Iñárritu represents the underworld of Barcelona where everyone lives within the margins of society – “it's everywhere we don't want to live, it's everyone we don't want to meet; it's all the struggles we'd rather not face and then some” (The Internet Movie Database 2010).
2.2.2 Interpretation of film reviews
culture & identity
Uxbal goes through a metamorphosis
living our lives inside this frame of normality and everything outside it frightens us Uxbal goes through a lot of pain and suffering to understand who he is and his true destiny
journey towards love, towards the light, towards the positive things
Uxbal is a normal person who has to face a very tough experience, who has to face reality
all races and classes are destined to wallow in the filth of the cellar of a metaphorical
prison built on hypocrisy and humankind's destiny to misunderstand itself nearly everyone in Uxbal's orbit is a double-crosser
However much Uxbal tries to help Barcelona's dispossessed
Illegal (Chinese/African) immigrants
migrants from various African countries
African immigrants selling knockoff goods on the street Chinese workers
Biutiful doesn't really have anything to say about the modern world's economic migrants. Indeed, it could even be said that the movie exploits them.
“You have to create a normal person under strange circumstances, and that's always
challenging because you don't have a stereotype to create.” – J. Bardem
another stereotypical figure, a good-hearted Senegalese mama
he struggles to make things right, not an easy task when the world keeps dumping moral
obstacles in his path
Uxbal, a kind of black-market middle man for a Chinese sweatshop and Senegalese street vendors
He messily tries to balance morality with money
an impossible struggle to be decent, to leave the world improved The Mexican director binds his existentialism with ethics
Iñárritu displayed an egotistical flair for reducing all human experience to an unending
carnival of misery
Alejandro González Iñárritu is famous for integrating multiple storylines throughout a film to explore the deepest emotional recesses of what it means to be human.
Biutiful is a relentless downward spiral of one man’s journey to provide for his family and seek forgiveness for his sins.
Bardem takes Uxbal’s emotional range through the entire gamut of the human
condition.
The final scene… mimics the last stages of the journey of life itself.
Biutiful is just that, a beautiful portrait of the messy situations we all find ourselves in from time to time. Biutiful is not perfect, but neither are we.
You will not only observe the dynamics and difficulties of Uxbal’s business, but you will begin to empathize with the reason behind what he is doing – for the love of his children and the people he exploits.
Biutiful serves as an excellent example of social realism.
Iñárritu is a celluloid mediator who captures the pain that connects us, despite our
differences.
The director indeed portrays the lives of three interconnecting people.
the characters are often intertwined with each other in a long, geographical rope of misery and tragedy
There is an incredible authenticity to this film.
Uxbal can see the spirits of the dead (…) this thread reminds viewers how much more closely in tune some countries are to death than what we are used to in the West.
…Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu is showing no signs that he's been co-opted (…) by the American studio filmmaking.
