Fwd: Re: Zizek

[Doug Henwood]

[sent to me rather than list]

From: "Finlayson A." <A.Finlayson at swansea.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Zizek
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 11:15:15 -0000

Dennis wrote:

On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Finlayson A. wrote:
>  It srikes me now that the US is the LEAST 'globalised' country in the
world.

Nonsense. It's got a Third World electoral system and a Second World
economy, but its culture, mass media, and selected service industries are
global through and through. Read the mass culture carefully, and you find
all sorts of resistance and subversion.

>  Even when people from the US
>  visit other places they seem not to actually leave it but bring the US
with
>  them and seek out aspects of the US in places they go to.
Which people -- the biz elites, or the tourists, travelers, and artists
like T.S. Eliot or writers like Edgar Snow?
- -- Dennis


Dennis - can you explain what the first bit means? Does having a crap
electoral system make the US globalised? And what do you mean by reading the
mass culture carefully to find subversion? You mean, if I look closer i will
see that actually it contains a very aware and sensitive portrayal of non-US
culture, values and history? Do you mean that if I really bend over
backwards and squint at 'Friends' or 'Frasier' or 'Pearl Harbour' then I
will see the subtle representation of working class British life and of
conditions on French housing estates ?  I can recognise the landscapes of
large parts of the US and many cities as they appear in films and television
shows and on newspapers. Can the average US moviegoer tell me anything about
Nottingham? Or Basle?

And on the second question:

writers from forty odd years ago are odd evidence of the openess of US
culture to that of Europe. And I'm not sure one could really call either of
them avatars of 'hybridity'.


But please educate in the subtle subversion of US mass culture. I missed
have missed the covert advocacy of state welfarism and on Jeopardy last time
I visited.

ALan