Communication and International Relations

In today’s world the advances in media globalization have brought an increase in the movement of culture around the world. As a result of this increase, many people have focused on what sort of cultural change this will cause. Researchers of this topic have come up with five theoretical perspectives predicting what sort of cultural changes could be expected. One of those perspectives predicts that globalization will only lead to an increase in localism; this perspective is referred to as local resistance perspective. Those who believe in the local resistance perspective feel that local groups will react to media globalization by attempting to preserve and protect their unique local group identity. One way to look at this is by applying Newton’s Third Law of Motion, that states for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In this sense, the initial reaction is media globalization, while the local resistance would be the equal and opposite reaction. Evidence that helps support the local resistance perspective can be found by looking at movements in France during the late 1950’s on through the 1960’s.

To first provide a little backdrop, France, as well as many other European nations, was bombarded with American products as a result of World War II. One product in particular that represents this Americanization is the beverage company Coca-Cola. During World War II Coca-Cola followed the American soldiers by opening up bottling plants wherever the soldiers went in order to make them feel more at home. As the soldiers kept advancing, more Coca-Cola bottling plants were built. The amount of bottling plants reached the point that they became a sign of where American troops were or had been located. Once the war ended, the American troops began to return home, but the Coca-Cola plants remained and continued to stay in operation because the door had been opened for Coca-Cola to reach more consumers. As a result, Coca Cola found great success and quickly became a model that other American companies looked at and began to emulate, leading to an Americanized Europe.

The reaction to Americanization in France eventually came in the form of a resistance to the American products that had quickly become popular amongst the French citizens. As Matthew Frasier writes in an article for The New York Times called “Coca-Cola Was a Threat Too,” “[a]fter World War II, French elites were confronted with a double American invasion. First, U.S. military bases were omnipresent on French soil. Second, the French were infatuated with all things American from Marlboro cigarettes and bubble gum to jazz music and blue jeans.” Initially, the French were infatuated with the American products that were new to them; eventually, however, the American products grew old, and French intellectuals wanted a return to their culture instead of this American culture being pushed onto them. Again, Frasier writes that in France it became “fashionable among Parisian intellectuals at the time to denounce American imperialism. France’s Communist Party even tried to get Coca-Cola banned.” In the 1950’s and 1960’s the fashionable thing, as Frasier puts it, was to reject the Americanization in France in order to try and preserve their culture and protect their local identity. This trend in France is evidence that supports the perspective of local resistance as a reaction against media globalization.