Globalization: Cultural Dominance or Recreation?

Globalization has its benefits and consequences that make this concept, or perhaps also an effect, a controversial topic. Globalization tends to modernize through international influence, and repress cultural tradition as a result, pushing culture out of developing metropolises and into the rural countryside. Lost in Translation is about two unavailable strangers, Bill and Charlotte, becoming romantically acquainted in a foreign land, Tokyo, Japan. Bill and Charlotte’s story is less important than the experiences that their story reveals through the Tokyo backdrop. Lost in Translation demonstrates globalization, perpetrated for capital, through various forms of iconism that form barriers between an old, resulting in an acculturation, and a rising culture.

Tokyo, Japan itself is an icon as a globalized metropolis because it is a center for generating capital. One way Tokyo generates capital is through tourism. Examples of key elements that attract tourists are gambling, buildings, and monuments. During Lost in Translation, the audience sees examples and exhibitions for each of these three aforementioned components. For example, gambling is seen in mass quantity for such close quarters when Bob and Charlotte are running from a guy they and their friends are playing with. In fact, the room they run through is so packed with slot machines that neither the runners nor pursuers are able to move with their body completely facing forward; they all had to turn their body left or right in order to squeeze past the slot machine chairs. Gambling isn’t anything new to Japanese culture, but the multitude of in- public participation with which gambling in Japan is portrayed is unusual for the country’s more modest and frugal traditional history. Italy, Germany, and the United States, throughout different points in history, made public gambling wildly popular far before Japan undertook this marketable finance, and in effect created a new profitable market of revenue, tourism. Japan has taken a popular tourist attraction and placed it in a cross- cultural city; the open presence of gambling in Tokyo is evidence of globalization and demonstrates a specific purpose for making money.

The replica of France’s Eiffel Tower, viewable in the Tokyo skyline, is a building that serves as another example of the globalization of tourist attractions. The same is the case with the giant luminescent Ferris wheel. However, the Ferris wheel is not a solely Japanese globalized attraction, it’s one of history’s more light-hearted monuments; developing Ferris wheels as famous attractions has history across several countries, providing evidence for presence of worldwide globalization. According to David Harvey, in regards to cities as places, “Space is a construction and material manifestation of social relations which reveals cultural assumptions and practices” (Harvey, 2nd slide). All of these attractions have influence or inspiration drawn from other country’s popular icons. Japan’s adoption of these icons reflects Japan’s utilization of globalization and therefore the existence of it within the country, exemplified through Tokyo.

Globalization is further emphasized through the absence of it outside of the city. Charlotte travels outside of the bustling city where, through her visit, viewers can see another side of Japan: rooted cultural tradition. One of Charlotte’s outings is to a temple. The temple and its surrounding area are noticeably quiet and less populated; the countryside distinctly tranquil compared to the city. The temple’s architecture is notably Asiatic in origin, whereas the buildings in the city are fundamentally an “average” skyscraper, indistinguishable as uniquely Japanese. During another outing, Charlotte sees a Japanese couple involved in some part of a wedding ceremony. Their garments and the quiet, respectful decorum of the party’s demeanor are identifiably Japanese, or at the very least of Asiatic descent. Their clothing, especially, differentiates itself from the popular high fashion wedding clothing one would expect from a major city. There is one instance in Lost in Translation that Charlotte discovers Japanese cultural roots within the megalopolis that is the Tokyo city: Charlotte, feeling overwhelmed with one feeling or another finds herself in a room with a group of Japanese women, who are dressed in classical Japanese kimonos, and are creating Japanese flower arrangements. The reserved and soft poise these women maintain throughout this scene is obviously identifying. In addition, the difference in noise level between the modernized city and traditional country, and the parts that represent the traditional culture, is a primary way in which the two are purposely separated from each other in the film, further emphasizing the effect of globalization.

Globalization, as demonstrated in Lost in Translation, does remove a cultures’ ancestral roots from the main city for the purpose of producing income, consequently hindering the endurance of those cultural traditions, but it also creates a new culture by doing so. According to Fredric Jameson, author of “The Politics of Utopia”:

Perhaps the most momentous specification of this opposition between the country and the city – a shift into another register, which does not guarantee that the proponents of each term remain ideologically committed to the same position when they change floors, so to speak – is that between planning and organic growth. (48)

For example, language barrier aside, many Lost in Translation viewers would probably agree that the talk-show portrayed in the movie was spontaneous, complicated, and/or confusing; the combination of various colorful literal and figurative elements involved in the talk-show have made it distinctly Japanese. In addition, even though it’s plausible that Japan adopted certain aspects of other cultures or countries, the fact that all of these elements have been brought to a single city, even if it is for money, makes the city of Tokyo its own, brand new, unique culture; the combination of so many ideas and objects being brought to Japan and integrated into the culture has resulted in substantial culture modification rather than elimination. The cross- culture influence present in Tokyo has created an amalgamated culture rather than the isolation or corruption of other numerous cultures.

Similar to most things, globalization has its pros and cons, and the arguments for one side or the other are many. A person’s view of this concept and effect are individually dependent and, realistically, sort of a moral “grey area.” Globalization can destroy cultures, but it can also inspire new ones. Japanese culture, for example, was largely influenced by Chinese culture due to centuries of war and trade. Unfortunately, some cultural denigration, integration, and recreation must take place in order for any country to substantially progress economically in today’s world market. In an ideal and probably boring world, everyone would get along while maintaining all of their cultural differences, have a comfortable life in which they truly want for nothing, and politicians would be honest and as charitable as they propagate everyone else should be, but the present world is reality, and in reality everyone doesn’t “get their cake and eat it too,” the world is too big for large-scope applicable ideals. Like globalization, capitalism and socialism both have their individually dependent successes and failures. Historically speaking, neither capitalism nor socialism has proven to work with even a loosely relative minimal number of flaws, and yet people still rally behind one or the other, just as globalization and all of its positive and negative effects will continue to exist. All of these things are driven by humans looking to make money, and as long as currency and human imperfection are intermingled, all of these systems will be flawed.

Works Cited

Harvey, David. “Cultural Space and Urban Place: The New World Disorder.”

Jameson, Fredric. "The Politics of Utopia." New Left Review (2004): 35-54. Moodle. Web. 14 Dec. 2013. <https://moodle.csun.edu/pluginfile.php/1690811/mod_resource/content/1/http___www.newleftreview.pdf>.