> >As the Old Man said somewhere, when an ideology grips the mind of the
> >masses, it becomes a material force.
>
> Sure, and I'd rather people concentrated more on where that ideology comes
> from, who's behind it, and why than just the ideology's "face" by itself.
>
> I'm trying to see that this is Something Really Important I'm being told,
> but I'm afraid I just don't get it. Finding out why animated cartooning
> bound for North America, say, gets done in Asia instead of in North America
> or why those cartoons never seem to say certain things, seems more important
> to me than why Lisa Simpson wears pearls and what that's trying to convey
> (or the meaning of an actress/singer's navel).
Where the ideology comes from and who is behind it are not easily detached or even always clearly separable from what you call the face of ideology here. Who is responsible for locating animation factories in the Phillipines is not the source of the spectrum of ideologies in which the animation they produce participates. Without considering the cultural fields which make animation desirable and profitable in Nth America you would have a very naive understanding of even the factories themselves, let alone of why something like The Simpsons is produced in the States while something like Totally Spies is not.
Why Lisa wears pearls matters in a different way than why The Simpsons won't be drawn in the Phillipines, but they both matter. The pearls are part of how The Simpsons works, and what sets it apart, as a social text, from generic US animation, and part of what integrates it within massively popular US programming.
Catherine
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