Modernity is a picture of success given by Western countries of a democratic society, capitalist economy, technological progress and empirical and calculable formulas to attain them. It is a utopian vision and standard that nations around the world are struggling to attain at any cost. At first glance, this displays the dominance of Western thought and modernity as the prevailing and absolute discourse of the world. However, this dominance has deteriorated due to the violence, colonialism, genocide, pollution, and the rise of the authoritarian state caused by modernity itself. In the West, this has caused rise of critical thought and deconstructionism of the concept of modernity in scholarly circles. This thinking has seeped into a variety of fields, including art, psychology, film, literature and communications. However, much of the writing done on the subversion of Western modernity is associated with the West itself, implying that other nations, especially Asian nations, must first achieve Western modernity before being able to subvert that modernity.
On the surface, Asian nations are still struggling to actually achieve modernity, much less subvert it. However, the struggle of Asian nations to achieve Western modernity has actually in itself subverted the very idea of a Western modernity. Following in a similar path as Western postmodern parody and mock-documentaries, the imitation and manipulation of Western standards of culture by Asian countries has decentralized and dethroned Western power and influence. This decentralization has shown that power and influence do not flow in one direction, but is distributed and transformed in a network of connections. The appropriation of modernity has caused a subversion and transformation of an exclusively Western modernity into a new decentralized global vision of modernity (if it can still be called modernity), with localized expressions that have global effects, found in the practices of call centers in India and the pirate economy of Asia.
The nature of Western documentary’s adoption of postmodern values is analogous to the current state of Asian appropriation of Western modernity and provides a possible avenue to understand the subversion and transformation of modernity in the context of Asian countries. Traditional documentary has always depended on the narratives of science and discourses of the Enlightenment to solve social and individual problems (Roscoe, 28). The analogous authority in the Asian struggle for modernity is the West as the standard of progress and perfection. Postmodern discourses question the authority of the dominant discourses of science and empiricism in a “crisis of representation, an implosion of meaning and a collapse of the real” (Roscoe, 28). Postmodernism has caused the medium of documentary, which has always had a close relationship to science and Enlightenment ideas, to stretch and blur its boundaries into a critique of the discourses it once depended on so deeply (Roscoe, 29). In the same way, Asian practices of out-sourced call centers and piracy have become a critique of the Western modernity that it simultaneously depends on for its very existence. Parody and mock-documentaries manipulate the style and techniques of other genres to critique those genres (Roscoe, 29). In the same way, the Asian version of modernity and its attempts to imitate Western modernity have in fact become a critique of their very source.
The Asian quest for the standard of Western modernity relies heavily on its ability to imitate the West. For example, companies that use Indian call centers want to avoid the trouble of a customer feeling like his or her request is misunderstood. Therefore, Indian call centers train their agents to be “modern subjects” that can easily communicate to American customers as if they were American themselves. The training goes from culture training to as far as accent trainings (Shome, 111-112). Thus, some Indian agents have appropriated modern American culture so successfully that many Americans cannot tell that the person on the other end of the phone line is actually on the other side of the world. Similarly, imitations of Louis Vuitton leather products have sprung up in Taiwan that are more accessible than the genuine products and are nearly 95% accurate in imitation (Chang, 228). Taiwan was able take a Western object and imitate it accurately to use it as a status symbol. Piracy of Western film is also prevalent in Asia where these films have limited distribution at high costs (Wang, 104). Although these films are not all completely perfectly copied, they deliver access to the cultural objects (films) that otherwise would have an exclusive Western audience.
The appropriations of Western culture by Asian nations as symbols of modernity undermine the hierarchy of power implied by discourses of Western modernity. Usually, these appropriations are seen under the scope of cultural imperialism and zero sum theory, in which power is unidirectional and cannot be taken from the holder of power (Wang, 117). Instead, these examples of appropriation each demonstrate aspects of actor network theory, in which ideas travel in a network in several directions, experiencing translation and transformation with each transaction (Wang 101). Indian call centers and its agents’ ability to imitate the West show the attainability of Western society. The Indian call agents become the power holders by having the information valuable to customers and invert the power structure that has the West on the top of the hierarchy. Even further, they have shown that they too can acquire the ability to hold the power of information, making the zero sum theory irrelevant to Indian call centers.
Piracy also undermines concepts of Western modernity by destroying notions of a unidirectional transference of power and influence. Fake Louis Vuitton producers have created products that are not even copied from real Louis Vuitton products and have released copies of real Louis Vuitton products before they are available from legitimate stores (Chang, 233). The producers of pirated Louis Vuitton goods have begun to create designs that are further and further away from the influence of Louis Vuitton itself. This exposes deterioration in Louis Vuitton’s creative authority and the dissemination of that authority globally. Pirated VCD’s in China have incited several actions from the Chinese government and the U.S. government. These actions first pushed piracy from above ground to underground, then overseas, and finally back to China itself (Wang, 111). All of these policies did not actually stop film piracy, but exposed the insecurity of the West to control pirated media. In fact, each of the pirated film industry’s reactions to U.S. policies was an expression of power over the U.S. film market, just as the U.S. policies themselves were expressions of power. This again shows a multidirectional flow of power as opposed to a unidirectional flow of power. Pirated film also popularized the VCD format, forcing multinational corporations to change their strategies and delay the implementation of DVD technology (Wang, 108). This again shows a reversal in power in which there is no hierarchy of power and influence can flow in any direction.
Appropriation of Western modernity is a parody of modernity itself. In the film world, it is easy to view parody as merely comic. However, parodies must also be recognized as the generation of critical commentary (Roscoe, 29). In the same way, these appropriations of Western modernity are more than just entertaining cross-cultural stories- they are post-colonial criticisms and subversions of Western dominated discourses of power and progress. Indian call centers and pirated goods form the framework for a new global democratic vision of power, in which influence is no longer in one Western centered location, but is shared in a network and flows in several directions.
Ashis Nandy states that in order for this new cosmopolitanism to become a legitimate dissenting voice, the post-colonial discourse must ally itself with the repressed, pre-modern West (Nandy, 146). However, besides the pre-modern West, post-colonial thought must also find an ally in the postmodern West. The dissolution of Western modernity into a new global modernity can be made complete only through the alliance of critical thought from within the West and outside the West.
