国家认同出了什么问题

国家认同出了什么问题?——青年媒体研究的观点

What’s Wrong with National Identity?——A View from Youth Media Studies

Andy RUDDOCK

论文摘要：

此文赞同一个前提,即：国家认同为国际媒体和国际交流研究构建了一个吸引人的主题。但是,这个赞同却以相反的方式呈现。是否国家认同阻碍了该学科有意义的分析和评论文化经验的能力?

这是有关年轻媒体的问题,受众是如何以行动的方式参与到关于年轻媒体的全国性的具体的例子中来?在2008年,澳大利亚的青少年Corey Delaney宣传了他在网上举办的一个家庭聚会。超过500名宾客参加了这个聚会,导致了一场骚乱。Delaney拒绝为他的行为道歉时,他成了全球媒体的焦点,并且显然引起全球对于青少年变得如此疯狂的焦虑。这个年轻的墨尔本人并没有受到严惩,反而迅速地从一个臭名昭著的人变成一个名人,并且定期参加澳大利亚的大兄弟节目。

从国家的观点来看,可能询问全球公众为什么对Delaney感兴趣是很有意义的。但是对于媒体和全球化的研究指出,把这件事情当成非同寻常的或是帝国主义的同样是很有问题的。这样的观点是以常识型的传播清晰度和对国民身份项目的媒体研究为前提的。在这个描述中,国家认同似乎要跳脱出传播学的范畴。正如Ien Ang不久前指出的那样,他假定国家形象某种程度上很自然地把学者们的注意力从两个焦点中转移开,即：霸权分析和多种身份的形成。这是那些自如地控制了国际媒体动向的受众所促成的。

关于国际辛迪加年轻媒体的研究支持了Ang 1990年的论文。从受众方判断,“全国的”概念对于青年的跨国体验几乎都是不公正的。所以,似乎年轻人常规地使用全球媒体来建立和留存这些跨越国家界限的特性。在这种认识上,考虑文化帝国主义至少需要很大的修订。

笔者更加坚定地认为,以热忱的、文化的方式来理解受众的意愿,促使他们把焦点放在全国。它以设定授权公民的希望为前提。因此,笔者在本文结尾提出问题,即：年轻媒体文化中的共同的要素是什么,并且这些公民是如何通过国际辛迪加媒体适用于各种方式?

lntroduction

There can be no doubt that‘nation’remains a cornerstone in global media cultures.National interests have also driven the disciplinary development of media and communications studies.Yet gatherings such as this encourage us to think beyond borders.In this paper, I will argue that the most valuable feature of national identity as a core concept is its instability.My argument is made in relation to youth media, and the wider point that in many parts of the world, young people are the vanguard in determining the social, cultural and political impact of media practices.Youth is a focal point in locating transnational trends in media studies.To illustrate these ideas,I will tell the tale of Corey Delaney.Delaney was a 16-year old Australian who,in January 2008, found himself in the spotlight of international celebrity.In part, this was a product of global forces in youth, media and youth media.Yet Delaney’s story remained distinctly Australian-albeit that has also highlighted radical shifts in what‘Australia’means.His story drew attention partly because it could have happened anywhere one finds young people with access to media.Delaney also fitted neatly into the structures of global media genres.Nevertheless, his status as a worldwide youth icon also relied on Australian narratives.The lesson is that global media specify rather than threaten what is national.Drawing on international research, I will argue that there is compelling evidence to present this as a universal truth.This establishes a general research agenda in keeping with particular developments in Chinese media cultures.

To phrase the issue in another way, the importance of nation to identities that are formed through media practices can only be explained in reference to the doubts that beset any form of identity, when viewed through the lens of cultural theory.Of course we are all familiar with the idea that in the second half of the 20th century, national identities in the global east and south were threatened by international media systems driven by American and capitalist interests.We are equally aware that cruder forms of the‘cultural imperialism’thesis are easily dismissed.National and regional systems of media production have been proved to be remarkably durable.Localised audiences are adept at appropriating foreign content to serve their own tastes, even in cases where that content appears ideologically hostile.However, these defences do not address a more fundamental question；how are we to treat the national in a discipline regarding any effort to fix identity with suspicion?In short, before asking‘what is national in media cultures’, we need to wonder why this question is worth asking in the first place.Enter Corey Delaney.In my current book project, which charts the centrality of youth in mapping key concepts and histories in media studies, I ask why Australian experiences may be of interest to international readers.However, based on evidence on how young people around the world engage with media in their quotidian settings, it makes just as much sense, to ask why international readers would not be interested in the tale of how an Australian teen became a producer of content in partnership with globally successful media and cultural formats.Delaney’s story marks a shift in how the flow of media power is understood.At the same time, he addresses the enduring interest in how media can bridge the space between the state and civil society, a question that Ian Weber(2008) has recently explored in relation to Chinese youth media.Delaney, then, raises universal questions that can be applied to particular cases of how national identity works in media cultures.

Although it will not be a central focus in this paper, it is worth adding the caveat that these matters also reflect on how media studies positions itself as a form of critical inquiry.Criticality is a notion whose meaning varies between contexts(Maras, 2007), but it is fair to say that something approaching an international consensus exists that communications researchers should constantly ask how their research is shaped by disciplinary conventions, and question how appropriate these conventions are to ensuring the scholastic energy of the field(Gerbner, 1983；Lent, 1998；Maras, 2007；McLaughlin, 1998；Peters,1996a, 1996b,Ruddock,2001, 2007) .In this sense, the‘importance’of national identity, or even identity itself as a conceptual touchstone, needs to be considered, critiqued and asserted rather than assumed.

Unstable ldentities

The tension we must deal with lies between the fact that although the national is an unavoidable reality in our personal and professional lives,the matter of what it means, what it does and how it has come to assume such influence is quite another thing.This is inevitable if we accept the contingency of any identity, as outlined in Stuart Hall’s distinction between‘common sense’and discursive definitions of‘identification’(1996).Hall understands identification as a process.It is not a state of being which naturally expresses allegiances between people born into fixed relations of belonging.The‘problem’of identity, as expressed by Hall, is that the concept is at once politically indispensable and practically unstable.Identity is a necessary but not sufficient concept to explain how people live in the world.However,its vitality depends on its status as a necessarily incomplete process dependent on‘what is left outside, its constitutive outside, to complete the process’(3).

Noted audience researcher Ien Ang(1991) explored how these ideas work when audiences deal with foreign media content.The dynamic nature of national identity was central to any understanding of the changes wrought in and through global communications in the late 20th century.National identity was central to an understanding of how ordinary Europeans managed changing media flows, and Ang suspected that ideas of‘nation’played a similar role in other parts of the world.But it was instabilities in the‘nationaI’that made the idea valuable.National identities were about conflict as much as consensus, particularly for those furthest removed from putative centres of media production.‘Defining national identity in static, essentialist terms’wrote Ang‘ignores the fact that what counts as part of a national identity is often a site of intense struggle between a plurality of cultural groupings an interests inside a nation...therefore national identity is...dynamic...unstable...and impure’(252).

Such a reading naturally invites the theoretical possibility that the national may disappear as a meaningful concept that people use to anchor themselves in the world.Transnational media are only too happy to help in this regard.Youth media practices are often identified as exemplary cases.Endemol’s Big Brother stands as one of the usual suspects.Despite its Dutch origins, the BB franchise has been criticised as a specific threat to the European public service heritage in which national identity plays a key role(Frau-Meigs, 2007).From the audience’s standpoint, there is evidence from other parts of the world that the show’s appeal depends on elements that quite deliberately ignore national borders.In Africa, for example, Sean Jacobs(2007) credits Big Brother with making pan-Africanism imaginable for its viewers.The global triumph of a program starring young people, who spend most of their time doing nothing on a set deliberately fabricated as time-and-spaceless, could hardly be a clearer demonstration of the desire to homogenise the world.Yet if Big Brother’s success is notable,it is not universal.The franchise has never gripped American audiences with the intensities felt in Europe.Also,in Australia Channel 10, who had run the show for several years, announced the 2008 season would be the last, given dwindling audience interest.Significantly, in a final effort to spark public interest, the final series invited none other than Corey Delaney to be a guest star.

Global Media and New/Old National ldentities

The Case of Big Brother Australia reflects a broader truth.Empirical evidence about global media industries and audiences show that national identity is a long way from becoming a spent force.In fact, recent studies indicate that the national becomes a particularly powerful idea when its contingency is most apparent.In strange ways, it is in places where the national seem least possible that it becomes most important.This can be explained in relation to Finland and Kazakhstan.In both cases, economies of scale and cultural fragmentation would appear to impede the possibility of healthy national media industries serving the cultural needs of audiences seeing themselves as more national than global.In practice, the reverse is true.

Aslama& Paanti(2008)note that the theoretical dilution of‘nation’in global media scarcely squares with empirical evidence that, in the main, European audiences prefer national content.European public service broadcast traditions have, problematically or not, ensured that the national has enduring influences on media production and reception.These forces substantially condition how global media formats are moulded to fit local sensibilities.One of the places where this can be seen is reality television, whose international success has only been replicated in Finland when grafted to powerful national myths.Formats where ordinary people compete to survive under challenging natural conditions have become staples of the reality genre, perhaps most notably in the Survivor franchise.Finland’s Extreme Escape, which casts contestants into the wilds of Lapland, apparently continues this format.Its particular success among Finnish audiences, however, indicates that the show strikes a chord beyond generic appeal.Aslama and Paanti note how Extreme Escape cleverly combines‘old’and‘new’national symbols and myths.Competitors are cast back into the very wilderness from which the Finns are deemed to have emerged.Here, they encounter rituals and practices from Sami culture, affecting a reunion with Finland’s essential belonging to the land marked by its physical and political borders.As a sign of their return to this mythical past, contestants give up their Nokia phones；perhaps the most potent symbol of Finland’s present international standing.Thus,Extreme Escape bends a transnational format into a distinctively Finnish shape.

Even nations who have clearly struggled to define their national image in the face of overtly hostile world media industries are far from powerless in setting cultural borders.Consider the case of Kazakhstan.The former Soviet republic shot to international media fame with the release of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat：Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.In the movie,the English comedian played the part of a Kazakh journalist, dispatched to America to learn about democracy and culture.In the course of the movie, Kazakhstan was represented as a medieval society rife with incest, prostitution and vicious anti-Semitism.Worse still, the scenes of‘Borat’s’hometown were actually filmed in Romania(Village humiliated by Borat Satire,2008).There could hardly be a clearer indication of western tendencies to view the rest of the world as a general quagmire of culture-less deviance where the only identities that exist are ones that would be happily shed.

Whether or not it was Cohen’s intent to slur Kazakhstan,or whether his work was received as such, Borat certainly inflamed anxieties in a country where national identity is both a pressing issue and, to some observers, a near impossibility set against extensive ethnic and linguistic diversity.Danette Ifort Johnson(2006)explored the role that indigenously produced music videos could play in assuaging concerns over what identity could be for the fledgling state.Gaining independence only in 1991, it has been hard to make Kazakhstan‘imaginable’in the context of a country where only 40％ of the population are ethnic Kazakhs, and only 39％ of ethnic Kazakhs speak the national language.In contrast to the Finnish case, then, national identity appears even more contingent in the absence of any historically durable, consensual narrative of belonging.

Yet if Borat proved that this cultural vulnerability was easily exploited, music video- another youth oriented staple of global media- has offered a remedy.The absence of a common linguistic heritage makes the visual appeal of the format perfect for the depiction of Kazakh heritage, creating a national border by transcending internal ethnic boundaries.Examining a sample of nationally made pieces,Johnson concluded that 66％ deployed images shaping a common identity premised on a nomadic,Islamic Steppe existence.As in the Finnish example,Kazakh music videos integrate culture, belonging and physical environment.This naturalization is overtly political：

The visual images of traditionally dressed Kazakhs on horseback,traveling with families across great expanses, link to an historical past that was squelched during the Soviet era by policies that restricted the Kazakh language and attempted to agriculturalize the steppe.This view of nomadic life builds on a common historical past and shared cultural identity...and thus facilitates development of national identity(Johnson, 2006：12).

Supporting Ang’s argument,then,it is the instability of national identity,so visible in a nation that is less than two decades old, and is so easily appropriated and abused by international media, that make the idea so important in Kazakhstan.Once again these highly politicised tensions become acutely visible in youth media.

Corey Delaney and the New Australia

And so we arrive at the Delaney case.Beneath the banalities of the event—essentially the story of a run-of-the-mill teen party gone wrong—lies an example of the political importance of popular culture in a context where what being Australian means is constantly re-written.Delaney hails from Narre Warren, which is a suburb of Melbourne.John So, the city’s incumbent Mayor, hails originally from Hong Kong.In 2008-9,it is estimated that a record 190,000 new immigrants will come to Australia(Gordon, 2008).The identity politics implied by the changing face of Australia ’s population have not always been smoothly managed.In 2005, violence erupted between young Australians of European and Middle-Eastern heritage at Sydney’s Cronulla Beach during the national ‘Australia Day’holiday.It is significant that the violence happened at the central geographic signifier of‘Australian-ness’(Johns, 2008) during a vacation that has been criticised for naturalising the European conquest(Australia Day celebrating Capt James Cooks 18th century ‘discovery’of land that was already occupied by indigenous peoples).Happening as Melbourne geared up for 2008’s Australia Day, the Delaney story was imbricated into the question of what Australia means.It did so through rather than in spite of global media.

The bones of the story run as follows.In January 2008, the then 16 year old teen was left in charge of the family residence as his parents left to enjoy a vacation on the Gold Coast.Like any self-respecting teenager, Delaney immediately planned a party.Predictably, the event was advertised through SMSand MySpace.Less predictably, when a series of events led 500 teens to descend on the Delaney household, the chaos that followed summoned an army of police, dogs and helicopters that cost Victorian taxpayers$ 20,000.International media were alerted.Delaney appeared on CNN and BBC World, and was featured in the pages of newspapers in the UK, India, Canada and the USA.

When the Australian media tracked Delaney down in the days after the party, they found a young man who was far from repentant.Delaney was proud of having thrown‘the best party ever’.But more to the point, he was alert to the prospect of cashing in on his newfound notoriety, trading a career as an apprentice carpenter for the thrall of international celebrity.Within days, Delaney had claimed a trademark look, come under the tutelage of an experienced show business agent, planned an international career as a DJ and party promoter, and seen his story retold throughout the English-speaking world.How is it that such a banal event could attract such attention?

One reason was its banality：Delaney was paradoxically remarkable because he was unremarkable；this was an event that could have happened anywhere, alerting us to aspects of the tale having little respect for national borders.And indeed media were central to its transnational allure.The story hailed international audiences because it spoke to global anxieties about youth that are driven my media mobility and convergence.This could be seen in reports of‘copycat’events in the UK, where teenagers apparently tried to follow Delaney’s career path by promoting equally riotous events and used the Internet and mobile phones(Pendlebury, 2008).To adult eyes, Delaney was far from unique：His trademark look was a simple and unimaginative reworking of a hip hop style that has become a lingua franca in youth culture, thanks largely to MTV (Bennett,1999).More fundamentally,his actions and attitudes were read as indicative of general tendencies among‘Generation Y’, which in turn reflected the global effects of neo-liberal economic and social policies which have encouraged‘entrepreneuriaI’youth(Kelly, 2003).

In short, one could argue that Delaney caught the international imagination in living the idea that eternal, universal fears about youth deviance were being universally amplified by global social shifts, seasoned with the allure of new media technologies and, crucially, transnational media genres.From 16th century Netherlands(Roberts,& Groenendijk, 2005) through 19th century England(Yeo, 2004)to North Carolina in the 1920s(Cahn, 1998)and Cape Town in the early 21st century,(Samara, 2005), scholars can find media reports detailing how deviant youth portend the end of the world.According to some accounts, the extent to which this story has little respect for national borders is magnified by international youth media genres.As we have seen, Big Brother in particular has been identified as indicative of threats to nation based media and cultural interests(Frau-Meigs, 2006).It therefore appears significant that as his story evolved, Delaney sought to extend his shelf life as what Graeme Turner(2004) calls an‘accidentaI’celebrity with a stint on the Australian version of the show.

However, it is important to remember that‘celebrity’reflects the idea that international media content works best when it can be‘repurposed’to fit the tastes and needs of different media needs and audience tastes(Turner, 2004).Ambiguity is a positive media trait, meaning that if the Delaney story was, on a certain level, about a‘placeless’youth deviance driven by media technologies and genres, this does not mean that this was all the story could be about.In this regard, it is notable that international coverage of his story drew on Australian iconography that would be familiar to non-Australian audiences.Using the marketing slogan of the Australian beer Castlemaine XXX, one regional English newspaper reported：

Strewth, most Australian’s wouldn’t give a XXXX for Britain’s beaches but Down Under’s most notorious teenage export is heading their way.Weston could be bracing itself for a visit from a spotty 16-year-old who has hogged the Aussie media limelight ever since a notorious party earlier this month.(And you thought he’d been grounded, 2008：3)

Here, Delaney is Both Recognisably‘Teen’and Recognisably‘Australian’

This trend was continued within Australia.Delaney’s image and story was integrated into reports about Australia Day.In recent years, Australia Day has been the site of pointed anxieties about what sorts of‘Australian identities’can be expressed in inclusive, non-threatening ways in the face of notable shifts in ethnic composition.2008’s events were marked by a heightened sensitivity to‘impurities’and‘contingencies’in the national.The impending Federal apology to Indigenous Australians effectively returned the exnominated histories surrounding‘Australia Day’to centre stage.Uncoincidentally, reports of 2008 celebrations reflected diverse perspectives seeking some sort of unity in the idea that‘Australian’had always and would always mean different things to different people.Intentionally or not, Delaney’s global notoriety meant that he became an element in national introspection, valuable since he existed as a symbolic externalisation of national identity.In fact, far from an index of things wrong with youth in general, discourse on Australia Day embraced Delaney as part of the eclectic cultural mix that was Australia, where the only defining principle was a wish to have fun in the sun.As The Sunday Telegraph reported：

Giving new meaning to the term“pleasure”craft was the Great Aussie Barbie Boat, with snag-scented smoke rising from the top deck, Angels on the stereo and the bow—bedecked in Australian-flag bikinis—and a bunch of blokes up the back, dressed as fried eggs, tomatoes and barbecue-sauce bottles.The skies were busy with a fly-past by RAAF F/A-18 jets and Seahawk helicopters, but they also bore a reminder of the original Australians who greeted the First Fleet.An anonymous citizen paid skywriters to write the word“Sorry”across the sky.“Australia Day is the time to celebrate the rich diversity of this extraordinary country.On Australia Day when I’m not doing charity work, I like to organise a wild Corey Delaney style street party.Just not in my street”PAUL McDERMOTT Host of Ten’s Good News Week!(Corby, 2008：14)

In the context of a national holiday which had, in recent years, become the focus of bitter disputes over belonging, Delaney fuelled an alternative,more positive movement which sought to celebrate the instability of‘Aussie identity’through popular culture.As Peter Murphy reported in Melbourne’s Sunday Age, 14,000 new immigrants who chose the day to become citizens joined 2008’s celebrations in the Victorian capital.The presence of the city’s Chinese community was noted, and so in making reference to‘ragers(who) wore large sunglasses and little else, in tribute to Corey Delaney, Narre Warren’s infamous party host’, Murphy identified the‘deviant teen’as one among many symbols representing the diversity of 21st century Melbourne.

Australian comedian Matthew Hardy lent a more politicised edge to this trend by staging a series of stage shows on the day, all of which drew humour from a series of news events that centred, in various ways, on questions of national identity and belonging.Delaney formed part of the show：

“They tried to ban the Mexican wave at the cricket, and then, of course, there was the (Federal)election coming up and now we’ve got a new Prime Minister who looks like a character out of South Park, and then Kylie Minogue got ditched by another boyfriend, and Warnie retired, and then Dr Haneef got detained.So there was no shortage of material.It was sort of writing itself.And now I think I’m going to have to come up with something about this party kid(Corey Delaney).He’s the real Ferris Bueller.”(Donkin, 2008：2).

Hardy’s show, titled“I’m so Australian”, was in fact a reflexive acknowledgement of the contingency of national identity, sparked by a conversation with a Vietnamese neighbour about Australian racism and a concern about the parochialism of Australian journalism.To the comedian, Delaney stood as another representation that what was Australian about Australia was that anything could be‘so Australian’.

Conclusion：Youth Media and China

So, we reach a point where conclusions can be reached where general themes of youth, media and the creation and longevity of national identities in changing times certainly pertain to China.The fact that interest in‘nationaI’appears across such a variety of contexts proves the need to consider the role that‘universality’plays in media studies.And so, what do findings from research on Australian media say to Chinese media studies?

First, the idea that global media reawaken interest in building the national through media is supported with evidence from a wide range of places.It is particularly supported in data from nations which we might expect to be least able to resist global media, since they lack internal markets and diasporic possibilities to project and protect their own image.Second, Youth are often the vanguard of changes and continuities in media cultures.Third, these questions have a particular relevance to China, especially as scholars agree the basic enormity of the Chinese audience makes it a rich seam for media research(Lau, 1991).

When considering how questions of national identity play in Chinese youth media cultures, we are again presented with the idea that general conditions must be understood as operating under geographically and historically specific conditions.For example, Louis Leung has studied the use of mobile telephones among Hong Kong teens as a form of addictive behavior(2008).His research is prompted by the concern that, like global celebrity and reality media,‘improper’use of mobile phones(e.g.taking photographs of people without their knowledge or consent) is particularly associated with young people lacking in self-esteem.This frames research on Chinese youth media in familiar global panics.Changzheng Yang, however, offers a more balanced view.Although he notes that Chinese youth have become enthralled with celebrity culture, and enamoured with foreign influences such as the‘South Korean Trend’,“at the same time youth and children are also creating and accumulating their own culture and have, to some degree, been affecting mainstream social culture and popular culture”(Yang, 2006：171).Yang’s conclusions compliment the findings of James Lull(1989), who conducted one of the first ethnographic studies on Chinese television audiences.At that time, Chinese youth in particular represented his thesis that while much concern was devoted to the question of how foreign media content could dilute Chinese identities, any‘effect’that the medium had was filtered through the question of what it meant to be Chinese in the late 20th century.As in other parts of the world, encounters with global media forces do not destroy the national,but rather highlight the work that goes in to making any form of identity coherent.This general proposition can be seen at play, both among Chinese youth coming to terms with the everyday effects of China’s emergence as a world economic power(Weber, 2008), and for young Australians making sense of social and cultural shifts that their parents could only imagine.This establishes a clear, empirical research agenda.The question is not if national identities are more or less relevant than they were in the past.Instead,media scholars must study how the idea of the national is used as a basis for cultural practice,used by those deemed to be at the receiving end of global media processes.

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〔Andy RUDDOCK,Lecturer, School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, Monash University, Australia〕