|
Additional Reading:
Our
Cultural Autonomy archives
ALSO:
GLOBAL
CROSSING, Part I: Countries around the world struggle
to shore up their local cultures in the face of pervasive
and seductive American popular culture. Are Americans the
bad guys?
04/27/01
|
IN-COUNTRY
The
Battle for National Cultures
GLOBAL
CROSSING, PART II
By
Jack Miles & Douglas McLennan
From
the outside looking in, Canadians’ commitment to Canadian
art must look impressive. Radio stations play Canadian music,
orchestras perform works by Canadian composers, theatres perform
Canadian plays. Then there are all those movies that used
to be shot in the US but are now being produced in Canada
- to the increasing
upset of Hollywood [LA Times].
Yet
while Canadians support Canadian culture in principle, their
support for it in practice is an artificial construct, an
illusion held together with mirrors and twine and lots of
government subsidy. In a country whose citizens make a great
show of wanting to be different from the Americans, it is
clear that given the free choice, they’ll consume American
culture rather than their own. Without the subsidy, most of
that impressive public support melts away.
Next
door to the largest pop cultural industrial complex on the
planet, questions
of support for national culture [National
Post] are more than just academic. With a common language
and easy access to American radio, TV, movies, books, magazines
and music, American culture is about as familiar to Canadians
as their own. A recent poll even found that French-speaking
Quebecers prefer American pop culture to imports from France.
Believing
that encouraging a homegrown cultural identity is important,
generations of Canadian governments have passed Canadian content
laws, subsidizing Canadian-produced music, movies, books and
magazines, and dictating that broadcasters and presenters
carry a minimum requirement of Canadian content.
Classical
musicians who want government funding have to perform at least
some Canadian music to be eligible. Canadian orchestras and
theatre companies, radio and TV stations and magazines, all
know that if they want to do business in Canada, a portion
of their seasons or airtime or publication must be given over
to work with an approved “Made in Canada” label.
While
the goals of such a system might be desirable, cultivating
the home-grown in this way is problematic. Such a system supports
many second- and third-rate artists whose work wouldn’t survive
open competition and critics worry about propping up a culture
of mediocrity. Paradoxically, those artists whose work is
good enough to compete often have difficulty getting recognition
at home because consumers have learned to be wary of the “Made
In Canada” label. Canada’s artists generally have to leave
the country and make it south of the border before they’re
appreciated at home.
But
if protection has its downside, so does the open market. In
Canada last year, despite considerable government support
for the Canadian film industry, only
two percent of movies playing in theatres were Canadian
[National Post]. Decades ago when
American magazines were allowed free access to Canadian newsstands,
Canadian newsmagazines perished, and didn’t reappear again
until they were again given economic protections by the government.
And
Canada is just a particularly acute case of free trade becoming
American cultural domination. Countries around the world
worry
about the loss of their cultural identity [NYTimes].
In China, residents of remote villages grow up with Dallas
reruns on their TV’s. In Turkey, Baywatch is a ratings
phenomenon. In India, Who Wants to be A Millionaire
is the
biggest thing on TV [Times of India].
American music dominates radio airwaves in many countries,
and there is a lucrative trade in pirate tapes of American
movies and music from Kathmandu to Hong Kong.
The
concerns aren’t just economic. At home, Americans worry about
the effect the entertainment industry has on their own culture,
but no imaginable triumph of the entertainment culture will
make America other than America. Other countries see their
struggle against the value system behind American entertainment
as a
matter of cultural life and death [Times
of India]. They fear that American values as portrayed
on screen or CD will not just affect but subvert and ultimately
supplant their own cultures.
Fearing
this, numerous countries have their own versions of the Canadian
content laws “The Dutch decided two years ago that their orchestras
must devote at least seven per cent of performing time to
the work of Dutch composers, while France has responded to
the decline of the French language with a host of projects
designed
to emphasize Frenchness.” [Telegraph]
The
French are among the most aggressive about protecting their
cultural identity, deeply subsidizing culture in all forms,
and this French resistance is far more frequently noticed
in the American press than its counterpart in other countries.
Still, as the battles to keep American slang from encroaching
on French language show (le hot dog, anyone?) culture resists
regulation. French films, which used to have a wide following
both inside and out of France, have lost market share in recent
decades. Last year, though 120 French movies were produced,
fewer
than a third of the movies shown [Telegraph]
in French theatres were French; American movies dominate.
In
the past year there have been two international summits –
with the US pointedly not invited – to discuss what should
be done to protect national cultures from the Americans.
Last
September in Greece, cultural representatives from 70 nations
formed a new body called the International Network for Cultural
Diversity to protect national cultures. "We want this
to be a legal and enforceable agreement that will give countries
the ability to support culture and diversity and to stand
up to trade measures that are infringing
on their cultural sovereignty." [CBC]
At
another international conference last December, this time
with delegates from 60 countries in Ottawa, the majority of
attendees reaffirmed their desire to take a protectionist
stance in cultural matters: "you can't stop the transmission
of U.S. culture, so
it needs to be regulated [Ottawa
Citizen]."
That
means national content quotas and a limit on the amount of
American cultural products allowed in, as well as how and
where these products can be sold and distributed. But cultural
products are now America’s biggest export [Globe
& Mail], and the Americans are not about to stand
by and see their markets killed by regulation. In free trade
negotiations, the Americans have put cultural trade front
and center.
Some
countries, notably France, have refused to include cultural
trade clauses in trade agreements, fearing that “such clauses
turn culture into a commodity” and therefore put national
cultures at the mercy of well-financed American business interests.
“For that reason, France derailed the Multilateral Agreement
on Investment talks four years ago, and refuses
to allow culture to be included [Globe
& Mail]in World Trade Organization agreements.”
Besides,
the Americans aren’t above suggesting a little government
intrusion on the free market of their own when it suits their
purpose. Hollywood’s film industry has been crying
for government subsidies [Variety]
for American movies because so many movie productions have
been lured away to film in Canada. The Canadian government
does subsidize
shooting movies in Canada [Ottawa
Citizen]. Labor is cheaper as well. But when the vast
majority of movies shown in your country are American, when
American movies profit handsomely from the Canadian box office,
it doesn’t seem unfair to try to grab some production dollars
in return.
In
countries like China, where CD piracy takes place on a massive
scale and where Americans insist on government enforcement
of international copyright,
the government is ambivalent [NYTimes]
about shutting down the copiers. Average Chinese cannot afford
Western CD prices, and while there is a huge appetite for
American music, little of the money used to purchase it legally
stays in the country. In effect, the Chinese have chosen to
steal the foreign product rather than compete with it by subsidizing
a domestic product.
For
those nations that do choose to compete, usually by subsidizing
their own cultural production, the payoff may not come in
dollars alone. By subsidizing movie production Canadians
hope to create a production
infrastructure [CBC] that
will support better Canadian movies. By spreading money around
to Canadian composers and coercing musicians and orchestras
to perform their work, it is hoped the quality of composition
improves. The goal, in other words, is not higher profits
but better movies and better music.
At
that level, self-reliance is a strategy that has clearly fostered
success as well as protecting failure. Though the Canadian
book industry is currently in shambles, Canadian writers have
flourished in recent years, and have recently
seemed to win every major international literary prize in
sight [Globe & Mail].
Those smaller cultures that, like Canada, find themselves
outmatched by seductive, slick American challenges need to
remember that America did not always seem so omnipresent and
irresistible.
When
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “The American Scholar” in 1837,
he worried that his country might never be more than a pale
cultural imitation of Europe. The remedy for that condition,
Emerson said, was cultural self-reliance. If Emerson was
right that self-reliance is the defining American virtue,
then nothing in the end is more American than cultural resistance
to America.
Letters,
opinions, reactions, suggestions?
Send your e-mail to mclennan@artsjournal.com
|
Note:
Some links to stories may no longer be valid as publications
move stories to archives.
Letters,
opinions, reactions, suggestions?
Send your e-mail to mclennan@artsjournal.com
|
