Canadian rocker chick/pop princess Avril Lavigne recorded her single “Girlfriend”, which was released sometime early in March this year, in 8 different languages – that is, including English – in an apparent attempt to deafen nearly half of the world’s population with lousy teenybopper music set to bad lyrics now – shock and horror! – comprehendible.

That’s right. One of the many languages Avril Lavigne butchered is Mandarin, the native language of nearly one sixth of the world population at 1.1 billion native speakers (most of them in China, understandably). Of course, singing in one foreign language, not to say seven, can be considered to be quite a feat for Lavigne, who, even though born to parents with French origins, does not speak one word of any foreign language.

I shan’t keep you waiting, so here is the Mandarin version of “Girlfriend”. The Mandarin portions of the song are, rather naturally, limited only to the very short and very mindless utterances of the chorus.

(If you are trying to limit the amount of cranial hemorrhage you’d suffer from after subjecting your ears to the viciously girly melodies, you could stop the video when it reaches the 03:13 mark – that’s the end of the chorus, and pretty much all the Mandarin Lavigne would say.)

NOTE: LISTENER’S DISCRETION ADVISED

If you are finished with snickering, let’s continue.

In case you were wondering what other languages “Girlfriend” was sung in, here’s the list:

1. Mandarin
2. English
3. Spanish
4. French
5. Portuguese
6. Japanese
7. German
8. Italian

And if you think this list looks a tad familiar, take a look at this list (courtesy of http://www2.ignatius.edu):

1. Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
2. English (480 million)
3. Spanish (320 million)
4. Russian (285 million)
5. French (265 million)
6. Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
7. Arabic (221 million)
8. Portuguese (188 million)
9. Bengali (185 million)
10. Japanese (133 million)
11. German (109 million)

And what is the name of this list, you wonder? This is, in fact, the list of the top 11 most spoken languages in the world (both native and secondary speakers). And if you notice the bolded languages, yes, those are the very languages Lavigne sung her single in.

Good god. Lavigne is looking forward to WORLD DOMINATION (cover you ears and run!). And if you were wondering why Russian and Hindi was left out of the list, apparently the words just couldn’t fit in: according to one of the members of her entourage, "We tried Hindi twice but the diction and the meter of how you sing Hindi versus the western rhythms just didn't match and we just couldn't pull it off," (quoted from http://www.cbc.ca).

So it is. This is a rather clever little marketing ploy cooked up by Lavigne’s entourage, to say the truth: this makes her songs even more accessible to almost 2.6 billion or so people on the globe, a far deal more than what she would conventionally been able to reach – the half a billion or so English-speaking population, which is really, if you think about it, peanuts in comparison. And so Avril Lavigne rides the wave of globalization into the consciousness of millions of people many millions of miles away from her home country of Canada.

Like it or not, Avril Lavigne is contributing to the somewhat nascent global culture which more or less permeates every single human being on earth. Her ubiquity around the globe is a testament to that: even if you attempt to escape from all the madness in, say, a little town by the Alps, there are substantial chances that, if a radio is on, one of her songs would come on. Her song “Girlfriend” alone topped billboard charts all around the world: it hit the number one spot in U.S., Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Australia, Austria, New Zealand, Japan, and of course, Canada; number two in U.K. and Brazil; and number three in France and Germany.

What does this spell out for us? Well, it probably points towards a certain homogenization of the world’s cultures, meaning that the cultural differences between any two people on earth is effectively diminished, since now the so-called global culture has provided common elements in which both could identify with. The world grows less fragmented as the tendrils of the global culture pervade the globe, and everyone on earth, in return, pulses to the same beat (hopefully not teenybopper music). Could this be a panacea to all the world’s troubles, a way to achieve world peace?

It’s a long shot, surely. Instead, we can be sure that the ramifications of Lavigne’s little ploy are:

1. Avril Lavigne would get richer, and therefore, somewhere out there…
2. Someone is getting poorer, and
3. Of course, someone’s ears must be bleeding too.

More seriously, however, is that the global culture threatens the older, more exclusive, elusive, esoteric cultures of the world. For example, as this generation’s Balinese kids fuss over their iPods and Creative Zens, Avril Lavignes and Hillary Duffs, their Gamelan sets at home rusts and collects dust etcetera. You can gasp in horror if you want, but this phenomenon has occurred, is occurring, and would definitely occur.

I’ll get my ear plugs ready, if I were you.

By Ee Lyn,
Culture Expert

Labels: Globalisation and Culture