> I find it quite disturbing when McDonalds restaurants pop
> up in every place on the planet, and I feel the same about music genres
> first promoted by US or (to lesser extent) British labels.
The really disturbing fact about McDonalds is that large numbers of people actually like to eat its food; how else did it become such a massive operation? People aren't being forced into its restaurants at gunpoint. (And by the way, Mickie D varies its menu from country to country to fit into various national preferences in food, and it does not completely destroy the native cuisines. Taking Japan as an example because I know it better than most other countries, Western foods started to invade the country after its "opening to the outside world" in the late 19th century, and have become steadily more popular, but by no means have Japanese people stopped eating Japanese cuisine!)
Similarly, lots of people around the world seem for some strange unaccountable reasons to like US and British music; their fingernails aren't being pulled out if they listen to something else. Similarly for Hollywood movies, etc. And again, Western "art" (using the word in a very tentative way) becomes only another choice, not the only choice.
And, on Feb 2, 2005, at 4:31 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> It is not the presence of the American mass-produced crap from
> McDonalds to Hooters to MTV in many foreign countries alone - but that
> it is
> a signifier of American triumphalism blasted by the mouthpieces of the
> empire. For many peoples of the world, it is like, say, erecting a
> Hitler's
> monument in Jerusalem. One can easily avoid seeing the damn thing and
> even
> comment on the aesthetic qualities of the sculpture, but that is not
> the
> point. It is an insult, a spit in the face.
That's really what riles you and other First-World critics of "cultural imperialism," I think: the popularity around the world of many of the same things that are popular in the U.S. and Europe wounds your critical sensibilities. How dare people in countries with their own delicious cuisines and beautiful traditional arts like the trash we hate? We have been betrayed by the valiant Third-World peoples Fanon assured us would destroy the system we want to be free from! How dare they spit in our face this way?
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)