Broadcasting Modernity and National Identity

Anthropology of Media ANTH 2301 Broadcasting Modernity and National Identity Naturally, grassroots instruments for community expression and growth are not necessarily broadcast media. In addition to the commercial sphere, state governments and development organisations generate radio and television content to meet particular development objectives; this is a more hierarchical approach to community broadcasting. The US Agency for International Development implemented a radio-based basic education programme in the Dominican Republic throughout the 1980s. The project's target audience was pupils residing in remote and mountainous areas of the nation. Children gathered around radios in community centres to hear reading, arithmetic, science and history classes. Worksheets and materials were distributed to the students in addition to the audio lectures. By 1982, eightytwo community learning centres had been founded. Funding for the project was gradually provided by the Dominican government and neighbourhood associations. Other nations, such as Kenya and Mexico, have launched analogous radio-based basic education initiatives. Similar to radio, television may potentially reach a large population that is not literate, which makes it a valuable educational medium, especially for children who cannot attend traditional brick and mortar institutions. Because local elites frequently lacked the funds to launch radio and television stations, broadcast media were first established by the state in the majority of nations outside of western Europe and the United States. Utilising their recently established state broadcasting organisations, the newly independent African republics sought to integrate disparate and dispersed people into a unified audience for national themes and programmes in the 1960s. Communication expert Carla Heath (1996) demonstrates in her study how children's television in Ghana contributes to the development of a uniquely contemporary national culture that welcomes innovation and change while maintaining a strong foundation in Ghanaian traditional values. Ghanaian students were enlisted to perform folktales and debate how the moral lessons may be applied to modernday Ghanaian society for a programme called By the Fireside. Children dressed in Africanprint attire and basic smocks began the act with songs and dances against a backdrop of a rural community. They then conversed with the two adult storytellers and exchanged greetings, jokes, and riddles. The kids performed parts of the narrative while a storyteller told it to them, and between musical breaks, they offered commentary on the story's themes. Children were asked to recount the moral teachings they had learnt after the reading. In this way, classic tales were brought up to address modern problems including juvenile misbehaviour, political unrest, and corruption. According to Heath, these kinds of initiatives foster a unique kind of contemporary citizenship based on regional morality and knowledge. Similar to this, anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod (2002) shows how elites in Egypt have cultivated the image of the virtuous contemporary citizen among women, youth, and rural residents through the use of television plays. A particular serial drama, Hilmiyya Nights, followed the lives of a cast of individuals from Cairo's historic Hilmiyya neighbourhood. From the 1940s, when Egypt was dominated by King Farouk and the British, to the Egyptian response to the US-led Gulf War of 1990, the show dramatises their fortunes and relationships. The social lives of the Hilmiyya Nights characters were entwined with historical and political events, as opposed to concentrating exclusively on personal wants, trysts, and betrayals, as American soap operas do. This made the programme a potent form of commentary on Egyptian national life. Motivated by its goal of uplifting the nation, the show's overarching theme was unification. The temptations of sex, wealth, and power misled characters of all social groups, but they eventually saw their mistakes and prioritised love of nation over selfish interests. Abu-Lughod conducted interviews with women who watched Hilmiyya Nights and found that the positive messages about Egyptian citizenship had little to do with the women's affection for the show. Some even strongly associated with the most problematic female characters—the ones that plotted and conspired to get money and sex. Many regions of the world use the popular soap opera format, which is geared towards female audiences. Anthropologist Purnima Mankekar (1999) looked at many television series that Doordarshan, the government television network in India, produced in the 1980s and 1990s. Mankekar looks at text, production, and reception in a comprehensive study that is well-rounded; the latter is a topic that is sometimes overlooked in media studies. Mankekar conducted in-depth textual analyses of the shows as well as interviews with the producers, directors, and authors of these shows. But her attention was on the response from the audience. She inquired about the middle-class Indian women's perceptions of these shows, their interpretations of the material, and their discussions and applications of the themes and concerns to their own situations. An idealised view of Indian women, which is subtly characterised as Hindu, middle-class, north Indian, and upper caste, has long been promoted by Indian state television. Mankekar's examination centres on two Hindu epic plays: The Ramayan (1987–1988) and The Mahabharat (1989–1990). State television created those values through these shows for the target demographic of Indian women. Two conceptions of women are presented in these epics: the docile, obedient, and selfless Sita, and the furious Draupaudi, whose husband's rash political gamble humiliates her in public. Women viewers talked about how they related to each character differently and in reference to various situations in their own life in conversations with Mankekar. The shows grew to represent gendered identities and Hindu notions of heritage and morality as they were broadcast during the height of Hindu nationalism in India. While modernity is usually linked in the West with rationalism and atheism, media anthropologists have extensively researched the ways in which radio and television allow for uniquely contemporary representations of religious experiences and beliefs. Research on television dramas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been done by media anthropologist Katrien Pype (2015), who has focused on the significance of religious themes and emotional forms of involvement. Two intelligent metropolitan ladies turn become witches in a play called The Heart of Man in order to damage their romantic rivals. One of the ladies becomes blind from their occult rituals, which prompts her to confess her crimes to an evangelical preacher. The preacher forgives her and drives the devils out of her body. Some spectators claimed that after viewing the presentation, they felt as though they had been charmed themselves since the portrayals of witchcraft were so potent. The emotional reactions of viewers were perceived by them as indicators of the program's deeper significance. Dramas on Congolese television that are framed by these kinds of evangelical redemption stories are seen as part of a continuous spiritual conflict between the devil and the Holy Spirit, rather than just entertainment. Even though they are fictitious, these television shows use emotional and physiological responses as a means of connecting with evangelical Christians' worldviews.