Media

Published March 16th, 2008 by Future Atlas

India upgrades its cultural power

India's flagIndia’s vast film industry has generated relatively little cultural power for the country over the decades: its productions have tended to be formulaic and simplistic, and have found only limited audiences beyond South Asia and its diasporas.

That may begin to change. Buoyed by India’s rising wealth, Bollywood is gaining resources, professionalizing, and linking to the global entertainment industry, reports indicate. Indian films are starting to attract global talent, and movies are taking on more diverse and serious subjects, while simultaneously becoming more accessible to non-Indian audiences.

The result may be that India’s values and views will be shared with the world more broadly and more convincingly, the hallmark of a great power.

| Post in Cultural power, Media, India, Asia | 0 Comments

Published March 11th, 2006 by Future Atlas

Mideast media: criticizing Islam on Al Jazeera

A Syrian-American psychiatrist has provoked anger and discussion in the Arab world with her harsh assessments of the current state of Islam, and unfavorable comparison of Muslims to Jews, in appearances on Al Jazeera satellite TV.

Two aspects of this story are salient:

  • Al Jazeera, for all the distress it causes the United States, is a powerful vehicle for bringing new ideas to the Middle East and challenging ossified thinking.
  • The tens of millions of migrants who have moved from the Third World to developed countries are an important source of cultural flows, transmitting ideas about different ways to live back to their homelands.

| Post in Migration, Islam, Media, Cultural flows, Middle East | 0 Comments