Art Studies 151: Group Report on Southeast Asian Media (Advertisement)

WF 4-5:30
2nd Semester 2013-2014
Prof. Norma Respicio
ABSTRACT
As a region comprised of countries that are largely different because of their varied
national experience and memory, it is difficult to identify a definitive Southeast Asian cultural
character aside from its diversity. A shared colonial experience from European countries,
however, unites the region as they face several postcolonial issues such as the formation of a
national identity independent of a prevailing colonial influence.
One of the most prominent devices that the colonial powers have employed is mass
media, a term that refers to various communicative forms such as film and broadcast
communication. The dominance of mass media and the rising social media platform within
Southeast Asia is a symptom of the prevalent grasp of the West around the region. The
subversion of this hegemonic hold becomes the aim of various mass media practitioners such as
filmmakers, who utilize the cinematic form to contribute to the formation of a national identity
for these Southeast Asian countries.
Another manifestation of mass media is found in advertising, a communicative tool that
aims to sell products to its viewers. Advertising is primarily employed by Western multinational
corporations. As such, the form similarly carries Western ideologies as those seen in other media.
Advertising becomes an avenue for the exploitation of culture within the region, as these
capitalist multinational companies appropriate indigenous sensibilities as a means to make their
products more marketable.
Southeast Asian Mass Media
The formal recognition of Southeast Asia as a region through the establishment of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in August 1967 entails the development of a

particular identity representative of all its members. As an organization initially formed by

Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand subsequently expanded to include
Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, ASEAN faces the difficulty of
projecting an individual character that unites all of its member nations because of the regions
cultural diversity. This constraint is addressed by the organization by restricting its focus on
economic and political unity among the nations through the acceleration of economic growth,
social progress, and the protection of regional peace and stability. Cultural development, another
of the organizations aims, is limited to exchanges between the various cultures within the
region. (Overview n.p.)
However, members of the ASEAN are united through their shared colonial experience
from European nations which greatly influenced the entire regions cultural identity. One of the
devices that reinforced this hegemonic influence is mass media, which is an umbrella term for
various communicative forms mainly (mostly Western in origin) associated with technology such
as film and broadcast communication. Its Western provenance indicates that these forms carry
Western ideologies, such as notions of beauty, familial ties, the cult of celebrity, and other values.
FILM
ASEAN cinema is largely overshadowed by its East Asian and South Asian counterparts
in the realm of Asian cinema, a subdivision of a concept called world cinema, a term which
only refers to the industry that lies outside the scope of Western cinema (i.e. Hollywood)
(Curran, v-vi). The notion of a regional cinematic identity relates to the aforementioned difficulty
in establishing a specific character for the region due to its diversity, as some countries (such as
Singapore) even find it difficult to define its national cinema. However, the emerging
subversive force that is independent cinema is gaining traction within the region, as these

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cinemas aim to deviate from conventions as an assertion of their national identity. Filmmakers
such as Lav Diaz and Brillante Mendoza from the Philippines raise the bar within their nations
film industry by challenging the mainstream establishment that is Hollywood. (Nelepo, n.p.)
ADVERTISING
In the history of globalization and advertising in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia,
Singapore, and Malaysia, its seen that the highest advertising expenditure from 1990 to 1998
was mostly given to TV and newspaper (Khattab and Ibrahim, 163-167).
TV commercials are a way for corporations to communicate their products to consumers
or their would-be customers. Every culture is a complex web of social relations, religious
beliefs, languages and consumption attitudes and habits (Tse, Belk, & Zhou 1989). It is a
basic principle in communications theory that, for any communication to be successful, the
sender of the message must understand the frame of reference of the receiver of the message
(Schramm 1954). (Khattab and Ibrahim, 169) Multinational corporations have dominated the
advertising industry throughout the world, as in the case of Malaysia. Some of the top advertisers
are Nestle, Procter & Gamble, McCann-Erickson (Khattab and Ibrahim, 168-169). Due to the
diverse cultures of their target audience, multinational corporations take advantage of cultural
differences to make their advertisements more familiar to each culture.
Due to globalization, the need for multination corporations to communicate their products
in a manner appropriate to certain cultures has lessened, as can be seen in several of the Pantene
commercials aired across Southeast Asia. The Pantene commercials from the Philippines,
Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia all feature similar figures: beautiful, young, and famous
women with long, dark, and silky hair. Even without English subtitles or understanding what the
women are saying in the foreign commercials, one has the understanding that Pantene offers

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silky-smooth, healthy, damage-free hair, which will in turn make one beautiful and popular like
the women in their commercial.
But despite the globalization phenomenon, standardized advertising methods (especially
those that stem from Western standards) have been given much criticism as the power of each
cultures fine nuances should always be given consideration in advertising ones products to
other countries (Khattab and Ibrahim, 170).

REFERENCES
"Overview." Association of Southeast Asian Nations. N.p., 2012. Web.
<http://www.asean.org/asean/about-asean>.
Curran, Daniel. Foreign Films: More than 500 films on video cassette, pages v-vi. Evanston.
Illinois: CineBooks. 1989.
Khattab, Umi and Ibrahim, Farida, eds. Communication and Media Studies in ASEAN: Bridge to
New Frontiers. Selangor, Malaysia: School of Media and Communication Studies,
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2002. Print.
Nelepo, Boris. "Cannes 2013: Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz, Philippines)." Cinema Scope.
N.p., 2013. Web. <http://cinema-scope.com/spotlight/norte-the-end-of-history-lav-diazphilippines-by-boris-nelepo/>.

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