Investigation of Public Literacy Artifact—Movie: Team America World Police and South Park.
“This fall, freedom hangs by a thread. -- From the creators of South Park: Team America World Police.” Movie is a form of video text that relies on cultural reinforcement and visual fascination heavily to influence its audiences. According to Scholes, “By cultural reinforcement, I mean the process through which video texts confirm viewers in their ideological positions and reassure them as to their membership in a collective cultural body (369).” The purpose of my study of the movie Team America and comparison to South Park is to find out exactly how they influence their audiences in the aforementioned ways. I conducted an investigation with my focus group consisting of two students from South Korea and one student from America. Their responses to my subject of study show that one movie can have very different impacts on different people because of their various cultural backgrounds therefore different interpretations of the same artifact.
Team America: World Police is a parody to satirize American Jingoism, with particular humorous emphasis on the global implications of American politics. The plot is a fictional team of political paramilitary policemen known as "Team America: World Police," who attempt to save the world from a violent terrorist plot led by Kim Jong Il.. So the movie consisted of much sarcasm about both Americans and the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. I deliberately selected my focus group consisting of both Korean students and American student to reflect how their cultural differences resulted in different responses.
In the movie Team America, Kim Jong Il is portrayed as a lonely figure who is egocentric and supples the terrorists around the world with weapons of mass destruction in order to destroy every country in the world to make them all third world countries. One of my group members Il (who happened to have the same name as Kim) responded that the portrayal of Kim is overly simplified and biased based on American point of view about him. In reality Kim is a strong leader in his country rather than the funny clown in the movie. Another group member from South Korea, Tong responded that “The movie is spoiling children by influencing them in a wrong way, exaggerating characters and dealing with political issues the wrong way. It is a cliché American heroic movie with a mocking tone and American ego.” However the American group member, Mark did not mention as much about the satire of Kim but rather thought that the film was twisted, obscene but hilarious. He described it as “one of the funniest movie I’ve ever seen”. So I think cultural reinforcement shows its effect here very clearly. My two group members from South Korea know more about Kim Jong Il as South and North Korea have the same origin and language. They therefore disagree with the twisted portrayal of Kim because their earlier cultural reinforcement has formed an impression of Kim in their minds; and when encountered with certain artifact that involves a different type of cultural reinforcement, they do not feel belonged. In contrast, the American group member has been constantly exposed to Kim’s portrayal that agrees with the movie; therefore he feels “confirmed” and “reassured” as a member of the American society because most of the people from this society share the same opinion on this matter. Ultimately, each person’s previous cultural and literacy experience plays a crucial part in how he responds to new artifact of cultural reinforcement.
Team America is written by Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Pam Brady and directed by Trey Parker, who is also known for the popular animated series South Park. So I think South Park is a good artifact for comparison. I showed the episode of “American History” which is a simplified, shortened history of America to my focus group and interestingly, they again had very differed view about it. In the episode, Americans are portrayed as a scared group who first flee from England and then killed the Indians because they were afraid. Then they got afraid of the black people and killed them, after that they were scared of each other so a civil war broke out. Mark thinks this episode is “totally silly” that it twists historical facts and sees things in the shallowest level. However Il and Tong think that it is an effective summary of the American history, “Though with a mocking tone, it briefly says it all about American history and one of the most important motive of the past wars—insecurity and self-absorbedness” Il also mentioned that though it is meant to entertain, it reveals the fear of the Americans that is still causing wars like Iraq war today. Obviously Mark made his comment according to his previous opinions about American history, the cultural reinforcement in South Park therefore provoked negative feelings in him that he disagreed with it because “it’s not true” On the other hand, Tong and Il did not have strong pre-instilled opinions about American history that contradicted with what South Park was saying so they saw it in a light-hearted way and were more open-minded about it. Again, by analyzing the difference in my group members’ responses, we can see how different cultural standing points can result in different interpretations of the same artifact and that is the power of cultural reinforcement in artifacts—it provokes various feelings, whether positive or negative.
There is a big similarity between my two artifacts of investigation—they both use artificially created images such as animation and puppets rather than real scenes. I feel it is a kind of visual fascination used by the creators to attract audiences’ attention. It is related to the targeted audience group which is young people. As all of my group members reflected, they prefer the more animated visual effects rather than the conventional ones. So I conclude that visual fascination is a successful strategy employed by the creators of these artifacts, as they provide us “a change from the normal, a defense against the ever-present threat of boredom” (369) according to Scholes.
Through the investigation of the two artifacts and the analysis of my focus group’s responses I gained a deeper understanding of literacy—the ways they are used to influence people and how people are influenced. Throughout our lives we are constantly exposed to ideas—cultural reinforcement from all kinds of sources like TV, video, newspaper, or radio. They entertain us and provide us with an escape from the boredom resulted from our mundane lives, at the same time they form opinion in our minds without us realizing it. Forming opinions in our minds and reassure us again and again—that is how cultural reinforcement works through multiple artifact of the same community and that is how they make us who we are.
References
Robert Scholes. On Reading a Video Text. A Reader for Writers.Collin Craig, Staci Perryman-Clark, Nancy C.Dejoy, McGraw Hill, 1998
