Cultural Identity
'Cultural identity', according to Stuart Hall can be viewed through two different ways. The first position views 'cultural identity' in terms of one shared culture, reflecting typical historical experiences and shared cultural codes. Further, these cultural codes and common historical experiences 'provide us, as 'one people', with stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meaning'(Hall, p.393). The second view relies heavily on the individual's experience of their culture. Through this view, culture is always changing, it is not static as claimed by the first definition. 'Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous 'play' of history, culture and power' (Hall, p.394).
His conclusion is that the purpose of the modern black cinema is to allow us to recognise and explore the different parts that go into constructing our 'cultural identities'. For example, the black experience of a Jamaican and an African living in Britain will be different even though they are both black. For example, the language use of the upper - class in Malta. During the British occupation of Malta, the Maltese adopted many of the British customs but modified them to fit their own cultural norms, therefore creating a hybridity of the two. The 'black experience' which Hall refers to as a commonly shared history and ideology, pendant on colour, is in reality something which relies heavily on individual experience, and each experience in this case is context positioned. rticular place and time, from a history and a culture that is specific to us, in other words from a 'position of enunciation'. 'This is the vocation of modern black cinemas: by allowing us to see and recognise the different parts and histories of ourselves, to construct those points of identification, those positionalities we call in retrospect our 'cultural identities''(Hall, p. People can't return to the mystical origins of an idealised time in history and ignore the influences of the colonial invasion. It is English, but it has been altered enough, through the accent, to make it distinct and recognisable as a Maltese dialect of the English language. Through the media, culture is constructed and by analysing these cultural identities we attempt to explain ourselves and our past, therefore continuing our existence. This shows the synthesis of the two cultures, combining to create a new form specific to the Maltese culture after British rule. Hall talks about the synthesis of cultures, of having an original culture that is dominated by a colonising culture and the result being an integration of the two into something completely new.
Common topics in this essay:
Stuart Hall,
Jamaica People,
Jamaican African,
Malta English,
Malta Maltese,
,
modern black,
'cultural identity',
synthesis cultures,
cultural codes,
relies heavily,
history culture,
historical experiences,
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Acceptance Essays
