Korean Popular Culture

Korean Popular Culture

Food for Thought

I think that Julia Child brings up interesting points in her response to the cultural globalism of food. I never really thought of how the medium of TV and satellite INTERNATIONAL TV can really have an effect on a global scale. It is not just the medium of TV that has allowed technologically the “word” of food to spread, it is the dedicated time that more and more people around the globe spend watching TV.

Globalization is usually referred to with respect to technology or other vibrant booming fields of commercialism. However, with fast food chains making leaps across seas as can be seen in any developed countries, food is jumping the borders. Child highlights these “jumps” (to say) very well and her argument is very well constructed. I personally connected with the McDonald’s examples. Having traveled quite a bit to these countries I don’t even really notice it out of place to see a Mac on the corner of a street in Shanghai or in a rural area of Kanto. However, it is with the advent of TV that drives the interest abroad and allows marketing to be done by itself just by people being exposed to international satellite. In other words, the market in a foreign country has already been exposed and is familiar with the popularity of Mac so it is not necessary to heavily advertise. Furthermore, it is important to realize that each segment of the market in foreign countries can greatly differ. Their image is also very tied to cultural globalization but really tied to their own cultural norms and boundaries that companies may not realize nor recognize. For example, Mac in Japan is more of a location of hanging out rather than necessarily eating the bite sized burgers. Yet, they have been exposed to Mac through TV for long times.

One point that Child makes on page 79, notes about imported cuisines. First, this is an interesting because we need to consider cultural popular cultural scopes. As with the commercial global expansionism that we discussed a few weeks ago, we need to remember that having more globalism, especially of food, is a daily cuisine that is essential for daily survival. A lot of restaurants will be forced to go out of business because of the new Mac around the corner. Many nationalists and patriots view that as a takeover of their country and we cannot just excuse the fact that these people will not embrace these foreign brands with open arms. The government might put a stop on the influx of foreign cuisine RESTAURANTS not necessarily the cuisine. There is no reason why these restaurants that currently culturally cannot adapt globally and serve a wide variety of food, even though they don’t want to they may have to stay in business. Thus, in conclusion, I feel that the globalization through TV of cuisines needs to be examined from many different angles taking into account cultural boundaries and customs set by restaurants and the countries in which they exist.