CULTURAL IMPERIALISM IS A VERY OLD PHENOMENON MEDIA ESSAY      pt1   1700w

During the past five hundred years, European countries colonized southern countries in the name of spreading Christian civilization to the primitive people in other parts of the world, as well as securing resources and workers for economic production. As cultural imperialism occurs, it is said to be for the own good of the other, conquered civilization, to spread universal values, rights and standards of development. The United States are currently not the only cultural imperialists, but the spread of American values in the entire world is at the leading edge of a wave of spread of Western goods and consumerist culture. Today, the phenomenon might take a different form, as it is a lot more subtle and less brutal than the European colonization: it is being done in the name of freedom of the market and freedom of expression.

There are two sides and two major views on the ongoing process. Some consider the propagation of the American culture as unavoidable and beneficial to the world, for some American cultural imperialism is a threat to other cultures.

I will try to review both of them to make a better and more reasonable assumption.

People who do not see the hegemony of American culture as a threat, state that through the media, the United States is spreading some universal values and human rights. To some authoritarian countries, it spreads ideas of freedom of expression, democracy, equality, and rights – concepts that