A Changing World 81 movie producer, just behind India and just ahead of the United States. Such projects, often produced on a shoestring budget, are unable to match the slick production values of expensive Western fare, but they are fi nding an audience. The country’s few cinemas are dominated by Western fi lms, so local movies are often shown informally in home theaters and community spaces. In 2011, iROKOtv.com—sometimes referred to as the “Netfl ix of Africa”—launched, offering a wide variety of African-made fi lms on-demand for home viewing. The project suggests the potential appeal of African fi lms elsewhere: the largest numbers of subscribers come from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, and Australia. The opportunities for communication among cultures are greater than ever before. However, because of the imbalance between wealthy and poor parts of the globe, affl uent countries have been doing most of the talking, overwhelming the cultures of other parts of the world. Armed with today’s technologies, though, artists in poor countries can feasibly begin to make themselves heard. Whether they are motivated by pride in a culture, by religious belief, or by opposition to corporate power, campaigns by cultural activists often lead to passionate public expression and debate. Although many of the issues taken on by cultural activists receive scant attention in mainstream public policy arenas, this form of activism often produces broad public discussion, testifying to the signifi cance of culture in our everyday lives. A Changing World CULTURE AND GLOBALIZATION Over 170 million people live in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, where the largest ethnic groups are the Hausa and Fulani, Yoruba, Igbo, and Ijaw. But in the country’s most successful movies, those cultures have been invisible. Indeed, in 2013, the biggest box offi ce hit of the year was the Hollywood fi lm White House Down. The previous year, it had been the James Bond fi lm Skyfall. In 2011 it was the Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp action-romance The Tourist. Year after year, imported Western—usually U.S.—fi lms have dominated the Nigerian box offi ce. Television, too, is full of Western programs, because importing these shows is cheaper than making TV programs at home. Much of the rest of the world has been experiencing a similar media-driven globalization of culture (Crothers 2009). As in Nigeria, media globalization has primarily meant a massive export of Western television, fi lm, music, and other cultural products to poorer nations that lack the resources or technological infrastructure to support a large media industry of their own. While often popular, these Western products also generate resentment as a kind of foreign invasion that is displacing local cultural practices and challenging traditional values and lifeways. As David Makali, director of the Media Institute in Nairobi, put it, “In Kenya, TV has become a major avenue of cultural promotion, and it is really terrible the way Western culture has taken over. The people are being brainwashed, and we are losing out culturally” (Miranda 2003). The fl ood of U.S. media inundating foreign markets may have crested, however (Akpabio and Mustapha-Lambe 2008; Flew 2007). As new technologies have reduced the cost of media production, local media industries have begun competing for local audiences, though their products are almost never seen in Western cinemas or television. Locally produced programs, fi nely attuned to local cultures—and now distributed through new digital media platforms—are very popular, offering viewers alternatives to homogenized global content. In Nigeria, the fi lm industry has exploded, coming to be known as Nollywood. Nigeria is now the world’s second-largest The on-demand Internet streaming service iROKOtv.com is the “Netflix of Africa,” highlighting the work of Nigerian filmmakers and offering viewers around the world an alternative to typical Western fare.
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