I am not an avid watcher of films or TV or social media. Partly thanks to a nice internet connection and partly due to my self-restraint on spending money (sophisticated way to say i am cheap). I have very limited ‘entertainment’ escapades often focusing on news, standups, etc. I never noticed this social rife between me and the remaining mainstream society, until these COVID19 lockdown days.
2 observations:
- I now realize why i don’t understand the society around me and why in return they don’t understand me. There is obviously a severe lack of common relatable content, as infotainment and entertainment forms a huge part of every ‘normal’ being.
- When i began to give into the escapades of entertainment by binge watching “Friends” (in broken parts as i only have access to Youtube at 144p), i realized i was imitating the characters or using these characters as prototypes for people i know and interact with.
The latter is concerning. This is in no way new. I have often found myself mimicking people that i observe closely either with fascination or if working closely with. When i worked with my supervisor (Hervé Jeanmart) during the PhD days, i often found myself laughing in his style or inquiring about others in his style, with no intent of mockery. There could be many such habits i may have picked up from many people whom i admire or observe for one reason or the other. Isn’t it fascinating to extend this phenomenon? Is this how society learns a cultural language? Is this why people from a certain region speak and work and think similar? They are all imitating their peers!
Since i have remained so isolated from the society for so long, i probably have developed very unique weird habits that others can easily identify in me as different and unique, un-relatable and possibly even uncomfortable to have around! This difference is evident to me when i go into ‘civilized’ zones of someone’s home, or hang-out (try to, if allowed) among non-nerd friends. I am sure my peers could point out the rough edges in my social outline. I am a mis-fit.
So we see a spectrum here – the more people you are connected with, the more common you and your views are with subtle differences. And the same on the opposite end of the spectrum, the less you are connected with the more unique and weird your perspectives are. The two ends have a hard time meeting. The highly connected ‘mainstream’ folks must feel very comfortable, as everything around them is agreeable and according to dominant socio-cultural views. They have the crowd on their side! However they may also miss the basic human desire to be unique? Is this the basis of hierarchy – a scheme of differentiation within the commons? Poor and rich? Is it the ground for the idea of fashion – the agency for distinguishing from the crowded ‘other’ ?
What has social networking technology done to this mimicking nature of the human being? When i watch and laugh and react to the stories of 6 friends of a remote country, of a remote unconnected culture, i also learn to be like them. Or to use those characters as templates and stereotypes to understand my being here in my own locality and within my peers. Why we need to do this templating and stereotyping? Big question, i dont know. However, the point is, by participating (in a consumerist passive fashion) in a non-local culture thanks to technology, i become a local cultural outlier. When i meet someone with local cultural ethos, we are unable to relate to an extent we could have, had we been both fed on the same cultural food. No wonder when i write in english here, the many ideas and worries and concepts are alien to my local language medium and hence the local culture. So, network technology has been the force behind global culture, a culture that has lesser and lesser geographical relevance. At the most left with a local geographical flavor.
A similar investigation could be made into our education system, that caters to global cultural needs than local, often overpowering and neglecting local requirements. Imagine the kid of a farmer learning and knowing more about geopolitcal situations of the world rather than the potential rice disease threatening his family’s survival. Architectural designs aping ‘successful’ ideas in far distant regions and missing the point, like glass clad buildings in hot sunny India?
Also imagine what soap operas are doing to the masses? For example the ones found on Indian TV networks, like Tarek Mehta ka ulta chashma or Saas bhi kabhi ghar ki bahu thi. How are these popular programs shaping the constantly evolving culture? How do characters portrayed affect the daily lives of common people? I am sure, just like i am influenced by ‘Friends’, each one of us is influenced from TV series or movies. Acting out in imitation, at the cost of one’s own brain and its unique perspective, resulting in a significantly low cognitive load.
All these bind people to a great extent, creating a safe zone for commonality earlier created by religious texts, local specific practices and traditions. Common mass culture creates a safe zone, but now a days significantly displaced from the context of our physical lives. So many migrations are taking place at any moment within our minds, the gullible one.