>>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>>
>>Actually I spent a good deal of my life denouncing U.S. cultural
>>imperialism, and attributing it purely to economic power. It's only
>>over the last year or so that I started thinking that things were
>>more complicated than that.
>
>Intriguing, Doug. Would you please expand on this?
I think it really started when I was in Essen in February. The signs of American pop culture - movie ads, snippets of overheard music - amidst the dreariness of the streetscape made me think for the first time that there was some positive ideal in its appeal that the standard stories of economic might didn't capture. Then, in Australia in July, I was stunned to hear the aborigine in Adelaide singing Merle Haggard. Clearly there was something to the artifact that the singer could work with. Yeah, I know this is a cliche of cult stud (not that this should bother me, since I am a cliche) - that people have a lot more freedom in interpreting the entertainments that the culture industry thrusts upon them than your gloomy Frankfurter would allow. I used to think that was nonsense, but there's something to it. (People make their culture, but not with tools of their own choosing?)
Why was Titanic a massive underground hit in Iran? Why did the Afghan slip a video of Titanic into his freshly unearthed VCR? Maybe other Afghans slipped copies of Triumph of the Will into theirs while whistling the Horst Wessel Lied and the NYT didn't see fit to cover it. Maybe not.
Why do the French have to subsidize their film industry? Why don't French audiences fill the theaters so that the movies pay for themselves? It's not like they cost EUR100m to make. I don't know the answer really. But I'd like to.
Note to the literal-minded: this is not an excuse for death squads, carpet bombing, or structural adjustment.
Doug