세계화와 문화산업

Globalization and Culture Industry: Broadway Musical, the Global Brand

The idea of a ‘culture industry’ obviously combines culture with economism. In the 1930s, the Frankfurt school used the term in order to indicate the merger of culture and industry in the capitalist mass culture, and it became a flash point of social debate. Today, as a product of the postmodern phase of capitalism searching for ‘marketable difference’ in every corner of the globe, the culture industry formed the socio-economic landscape of our globalization era. In this paper, I examine the socio-cultural meaning of global culture industry of Broadway musical in relation to our Korean musical industry from the perspectives of cultural studies. According to the researchers of cultural studies, globalization refers to the disjunctive flows of people, goods, technologies, capitals, images, etc. Following Arjune Appadurai, I explore the five global flows of musical industry. Globalization is a twofold(multifold) process of global domination and dissemination. In other words, global and local are the two faces of the same movement from one epoch of globalization. Therefore, it is not an easy task to map out the complicated web of trajectories and interactions of globalization, nationalism, and localism transpiring around the production and consumption of musical performances. Nevertheless, cultural studies provide us with tools of explanation and interpretation regarding the global fad for musical performances. Especially, I pay attention to Broadway mega-musicals produced by such multinational corporations as Disney. I assert that we need to take the socio-cultural meaning of Disney musical productions because not only do they influence the public consciousness in the realm of American culture but also they affect the life styles of people from other cultures by disseminating the images of American life styles. Adopting the concept of culture as ‘journey’ or ‘flow,’ I try to sketch the seeming global flow of Broadway musical, rethinking the (im)possibility of emergence of global musical culture. I agree with Anthony Smith in that he rejects the possibility of singular global culture. Since cultures and cultural interactions are so complicated, we need to discuss the global flows in terms of cultural dynamics. In this sense, we can explain why our mainstream mega-musicals contain nationalist propensity. Also, we can make meaning of the emergence of little musical movement and the community-based musical theatre in our nation.