The lecture I attended was the Pockrass Lecture featuring Professor Divya McMillan on April 9th. Her lecture, which was entitled “Curing Taste: Lifestyle, Television, and the globalizing subject” focused on media development in other nations and across the globe.
One main point that McMillan brought up was the idea of “soft power”. McMillan described soft power as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments.” Focusing the majority of her lecture to the media market and media outlets in India, she said that this soft power exists in Bollywood, the thriving television industry, and cinema multiplexes. Media is a developing subject in other nations such as India, and they are always a step behind the United States, learning and following them. New things are growing in India that haven’t existed before.
McMillan also touched upon globalization and the concept of it happening around the world. She said that taste is a huge factor in the worlds globalizing market, because everybody has a certain way of looking at different things, products, and rituals. When referring to taste, there is the continuing goal of advancing the global market. For example, McDonald’s exists in India and in many other parts of the world, but in different ways. The McDonald’s in India is not as much of a “fast food” restaurant as it is here, but it is a developing concept. Another example of this are the underground bazaars that exist throughout the country, which are literally underground stores that sell illegal copies of video games and movies that are unavailable in the country. The reasons that these things exist, McMillan believes, is to allow the public to experience authenticity even through the false version of these objects and increase customer satisfaction and happiness. “Facebook” ads are appearing on buses and bus stops, something that’s never happened before. India’s TV industry is growing, with now more than 500 channels available. The world is constantly trying to keep up with the growing media outlets of different parts of the world.
The global market is a developing market. There are media outlets that exist in the United States that have been here for a while that are just reaching these foreign nations. What appeals to the consumers most and what helps this market grow is the attractiveness of the subject. Sometimes, this requires a development in the product in order to make it appeal to different nations since different nations have different values. Overall, globalization is occurring all across the world and in India, and nations are trying to keep up their media with the growing marketplace.