The cutting edge of the alien film culture penetrating our country today is not crude pornography, crude racism or senseless violence. The cutting edge is the propaganda of commodities.” Tafataona Mohasa, Director National Arts Council of Zimbabwe, 1990.
Text and Photography: Dominik Lehnert
Media programmes and formats have been imposed around the world by the North, based on a stereotyped roster which turns media into the opposite of true life – chopping the entirety of society into segments – atomism instead of holism. Things in real life situations are interconnected and relate to each other through a network of mutual dependencies. In modern media things have to be fitted into artificial pigeonholes of imported programme structures. Life is reduced to handy packages of slots and statements. Sounds, images and words have been the most visible and fundamental carriers of civilization; media utilizing each and all of these carriers separately and combined could therefore be considered the ultimate carrier of modern civilization. The media play an extraordinary role in promoting the gospel of modernization based on the dominant western paradigm.
The dominant paradigm reflects an optimism not tempered by reality, therefore incomplete, revolving around stereotype ideas left over from the colonial period. What threatens the cultural future of African and Third World societies is the naivety and presumption that small acts of censorship can protect the culture of a nation against the harmful consequences of modern multinational film and communication monopolies while that same nation, happily and unconsciously, celebrates its participation in the global capitalist economy. The permanent brutality in most western products attacks an audience not ‘only’ directly, preaching the obnoxious morale that the best way to solve problems is to use violence and weapons. The more dangerous and lasting effect on people’s minds comes from the ‘soft’ products in an economic environment where all wishes are fulfilled, where the heroes and heroines plunge in consumer commodities. Proliferating the image of ‘developed’ societies where goods are in easy reach for everybody, these media programmes equate the North with success and the cultures of the South with ‘under-development’. Since consumerism is glamorously wrapped in ‘identification-stories’ the African audience is repeatedly reminded that their societies and cultures have never produced anything worthwhile to compete with the North. Indeed – revision of history.
A post modern, globalized, socially motivated and not just economically motivated and westernized media, will not upspring by itself. If we want a more peaceful future we need the commitment and the efforts of all people involved in the media, we cannot only expect the people in power to change. What is the media without its producers and journalists, without the organized civil society and what is it without its audience? It is not going to be easy to break out of this vicious circle, as we are all so much influenced by and dependent on the media, but together in a proactive non-violent, participatory, dialogical and transparent approach, we are able to adjust the media for the benefit of life, as a carrier towards unity.
Dominik Lehnert is from Germany. He has a MA in Peace and Conflict Studies from the European Peace University. He has previously worked with DAPP in Zambia and for the AAH-I South Sudan Programme. He is the founder of Xchange Perspectives, an organization built on the concept of 'Media for Peace' .