Cultural Diffusion and Choice

It has long been debated, whether or not culture is created or reflected by the media. However, this type of short-sighted dualism can only be harmful when looking at such a complex and important issue. Media is at once the shaper and refiner of culture as well as the manifestation of culture. The nature of media is reflective and creative, not one or the other. First, in order to understand this dynamic process, we must examine the way in which Humans perceive this dynamic process, we must examine the way in which Humans perceive culture. WE are submerged in culture, we breath, bleed, and sweat culture; in a way, the only “real” identity that we can point to as our won is that mass manifestation of culture, not a personal identity. The images of our future and past (almost never our present) surround us, and through this reflection it is we who are created. Stewart Hall’s theory of Encoding/Decoding explains this complex interaction and the way in which culture is both built, transmitted, redefined (or reinterpreted) and then spread further. The subject reflects upon the cultural identity manifest and transfers their own existence onto the ideological image prepared for it by culture.

Now, as to the assertion that culture creates rather than reflects society, if we follow the logic behind this statement, one begins to see a sort of indeterminism develop which provides the subject with a freedom of creation and self-determination reminiscent of an existential view of life and freedom and choice. In a way, I’m a relativist when it comes to choice. If I choose to believe that culture is merely a reflection of previously determined material, then I am no longer a subject, but rather a passenger with no say over my destination. But this assertion (though I am a relativist) seems to hold little water. Even if we take Hall’s theory of encoding decoding, once can see that the subject plays an integral role in cultural diffusion and transmission; therefore in the creation itself. The idea that an origin of creation is long past; all that remains now is a series of imperfect copies which develop mutations (or novel nuances); these mutations become transmitted and ingrained into the pre-existing flux of culture (baudrillard’s simulacra) Now the bigger picture is beginning to develop; a picture where culture is subject to eternal regeneration and mutation. However, the subject is not left out by this theory. It is within the mutations themselves where the subject can reappear, reshaping its future through choice.