Buying Into Globalization

I'm just not sure how much I can buy into the Sturken and Cartwright concept of globalization in Chapter 10. For one thing, either I am living a very sheltered and insular life, or the images of pop culture and global campaigns and global film industries they purport are not nearly as global as they make them out to be.

I do buy into the notion of globalization being an issue of the "haves" vs. the "have nots," because it is this access to the global culture that "makes the world go 'round" per se. And the majority of the world has no access to the jet-setting, globe-hopping pocketbook that seems to be required to experience even a simple trip to a museum anymore, least of all the Louvre in the UAE. We forget that much of the world has no access to the cinema, the Internet, or even a TV. And what about those of us who eschew such global media tools as television, or at least the pop culture part of television. Imagine never being exposed to the important cultural phenomena of "Idol," "Lost," or "South Park," or the "Ugly Betty" forerunner discussed in our textbook.

That being said, I love the idea of the virtual diasporas, the online "countries" established by the disenfranchised and the exiled and the expatriated. One may wonder, though, whether this type of globalization exacts the opposite toll, the ability for one to retreat from the world at hand into the virtual world. Kind of sounds like Second Life!