Ready for Export: BRIC Pop and the Rest of Us
Is the world ready for BRIC Pop? Ready or not, it's already happening. China and India are the two hottest contemporary art auction markets in the world. The Russians are moving in on film post-production, graphic and web design. Brazilians are shifting from domestic music genres to indie darlings and superstar DJs. Just take a look at all the top supermodels and where they're coming from. It isn't Minneapolis. Here's a short overview of the BRIC Pop effect.
Dumb, But Dumber: the US and Europe — It's a bit of a race to the bottom. We Yanquis will continue to wear the culturally clueless crown, but we're a quick study when there's money to be made. Faster that you can say, 'domo arigato Mr Roboto', we seem to find a way to embrace the strange but lucrative culture of our newfound friends. The main cultural preoccupations in Europe are closer to home: immigration and national-versus-European identity. If they bother to think about the BRICs, it's typically with disdain for the idea that there could be a cultural competitor in any category, even from those who have global familiarity with design, art, film or music. Neither mindset looks promising as a long-term cultural strategy.
A Nice Coincidence: the Middle East and Africa — they've been well-acquainted with BRIC Pop for some time. Brazil’s just over the water from Africa, kept all the religious traditions and music, and rare for both sides, speaks a common language. The music and television are already making the trip. The Russians have always hung around in one way (doing business) or another (propping up Soviet satellites), and the common businesses of resources and defense mean that everyone’s familiar with each other. India? Well, this is the best thing that ever happened to them. For all of those places in Africa and the Middle East where two young people of differing social classes must dance around obstacles (and trees) before their parents let them marry, Bollywood is Cinema Verité. Then there’s the Chinese. I originally planned a Chinese in Africa chapter, but it's a more political and economic story than cultural at this point. Lots of money, lots of Chinese people, not a lot of Super Girls, Jia Zhangke, or Yue Minjun on the construction sites in Luanda or Darfur, obviously. I think there could be a creative exchange on maybe the second or third wave.
The Mixed Bag: the rest of Asia — First of all, this is where three of the four BRICs border each other, but let’s look about the rest of the continent and the neighbors. The good news for the CIS is that a resurgent Russia lifts them from being a Borat joke to having similar cultural heft; Kazakhstan got an Oscar nomination last year (albeit with a Russian director). There will be some more China-to-Korea exchange to go with the hallyu from the east. Japan and China are still a bit erratic politically, which holds up a lot of the pop cultural exchange. India pops up across the Indian Rim, from the Arabian Peninsula into Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia (with an emphasis on Tamil culture, which even is even starting to surf its way over to Japan). And there’s even a distinctly Brazilian phenomenon in Asia to watch: Japan. Brazil has the world’s largest population of Japanese immigrants, who are starting to come back. While still a small enclave (less than 300,000), you may see more young nipo-brasileiros coming in, along with their completely Brazilian culture, to pick up the slack in the workforce. For the nearby Aussies, Mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd is bound to start shifting emphasis from Tokyo to Beijing, and Sydney and Melbourne have been slowly replacing London and Switzerland and the favorite sophisticated foreign locales in Bollywood.
The Three (or Four or Five) Amigos: the Americas — Just as Canadians and Latinos took pains to remind you that America is the geographic name of two separate continents with 35 countries and an additional 16 colonies, departments, and dependencies, along comes two American economic forces, the gringoes in the north and a new one, Brazil, in the South. This could change the dynamic from Anglo/North - Latino/South to the two big anchor countries , the Hispanophone bloc (further divided between Central and remaining South America and the Spanish-speaking parts of the Caribbean), and Canada. China, Russia, and India are quite busy down south, but this is more economic than cultural so far. Canada is a little more RIC-connected, not just the polar border with Russia, which is about to warm up in more ways than one, but also the proportionally much larger populations of Indians and Chinese immigrants. We’ve seen the Edison Chen connection between Vancouver and Hong Kong, and AbhiAsh’s film Guru had its world premiere in Toronto. In this case, the Canadians seem to be neither ignorant nor biased, and could be very well positioned with everyone.
We in the West have creative competition to go with the economic, and it doesn't look good. Other parts of the world are going to love BRIC Pop. Meanwhile, we're still debating and denying whether the rise is real or not. There's another way to look at it.