Globalization, Cross Culture Pollination, Oh My!

This week in class we focused on the idea or globalization and cross culture pollination. We discussed how different African cultures take other countries cultural items and make it there own. This is what we call cross culture pollination. It's the idea that one culture takes the other culture's items or ideas and changes it to make it meaningful to them. Such as the extreme canvases talked about in the article we read called, "The Radiance of the King."

Extreme canvases are paintings for movies. They are commissioned in Ghana and were brought about because of a group of young people who wanted to start a business of taking a TV to different villages and showing them these different kind of movies. Their way of promoting these showings was to take a flour sack and oil paints and paint a poster to promote whatever movie they were going to show that night. Some of these movies were ones out of Hollywood and some from their own country. These posters were their way of getting people to come. These movie posters are a good example of cross culture pollination. They show how the Ghanaian people took a Hollywood movie poster and made it their own. It's not like our electronically made movie posters, or nor should they be because this is why they are so appealing to a tourist or someone of not Ghanaian descent.  (Picture of Ghana movie poster below)

To the left Ghana Movie Poster compared to our electronically made movie poster to the right. You can see the different ways on how they portrayed the movie poster to how we portrayed ours.

I will admit I think they are fascinating and decided to do a bit of research outside of just the readings and lectures from this week. I found this video of a guy named Glen Joffe, talking about the movie posters from Ghana. (see movie below) He talks about why they are fascinating and why the are unique to the Ghana area. One of his saying that he said at the beginning of the movie I found to be very true. He stated that, "Every culture is similar it just the way that we express ourselves is what makes us different from culture to culture ." Which is so true! We all have similar ways of living and doing things its just how we do them is what makes us different. Just like we have coffins and so does Ghana but the way we express how they look is what sets us apart from one another.

Cross culture pollination is also a way to connect ourselves with other cultures too. It's our way of keep up with everyone else, because if no cross culture pollination were to happen everyone would not be able to relate at all, but with this cross culture pollination we can to some sense. We may interpret it different but we can relate to it in some form. Just like when I saw the picture entitled Obama the Humble African, from the article The Radiance of the King, I thought he was holding a surf board and was the Hawaiian Obama but I was wrong. Even Cosentino, the author mentioned this too. He had thought the same thing but after doing some research into it he found out it was actually a shield Obama was holding. He was a Maasai warrior. I would have not thought of this if I hadn't read this article but I still was able to relate to it in some degree. This is what globalization does, it makes it so you can still relate but maybe not in the same way as the culture itself. It just very interesting to see how things can be interpreted from culture to culture and how different cultures use or see these different items.

It will also be strange to see if our next president will have the same impact to the Ghanaian people like Obama does now. Since they have so many painted posters of him. I sometimes wonder if they like him so much because he has the same sort of racial background as them? Would it be the same if the president were to be white? Would the paint as many pictures of that president as they do of Obama? These are some of the question I had as I went through this week and read this article. It's something to keep in mind for when we get a new president and to see if the future president will have this big of an impact in the Ghanaian culture in the future.