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December 22, 2005

Tim Cavanaugh rants about UN-backed cultural protectionism here (from the January issue of Reason's print edition).

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Comments

Warren|12.22.05 @ 2:29PM|#

Good job Tim,
I love that feeling of national pride that goes along with the smirk on my face, every time I hear some foreigner whining about how much he despises himself for how much he's become like me.

|12.22.05 @ 2:34PM|#

Wait, I'm confused. I thought it was the religious right that hated our movies and TV.

Does this mean that our homegrown, American puritans and the powers that be at the UN are working towards the same goal? My, that's a scary thought.

|12.22.05 @ 2:38PM|#

Hey, Germans love David Hasselhoff. What can you do?

I think individuals are smart enough to weed out the crap without international agencies encouraging them to. Something tells me Cheaper By The Dozen 2 isn't going to supplant anything being produced out of Bollywood. And that's a good thing.

|12.22.05 @ 2:39PM|#

Be afraid, be very afraid.

|12.22.05 @ 2:41PM|#

Damn, the pope looks all evil and shit in that picture Eddy showed us.

Maybe he is the anti-Christ?

|12.22.05 @ 2:42PM|#

Holy crap, Pope Zinger looks like pure concentrated evil. Thanks for the scare, Eddy.

|12.22.05 @ 2:44PM|#

It comes from multicultural cross breeding of santas and grinches. I guess we know the Pope's favorite movie.

|12.22.05 @ 2:45PM|#

Welcome to the land of the lotus eaters. Here, have a tasty flower. Addictive, aren't they? Sure, I can give you another one.

We're not the bad guys here, because we're as addicted to our culture as the poor victims outside the U.S. Besides, Tim's right--it's not really as much "Americanization" as our cultural opposition (or should that be "customers"?) makes it out to be.

We're not exactly free of outside influence in the U.S., either. Look at all the balsamic vinegar we consume. Didn't used to, now we do. Insidious Italian plot? Or just a new product that comes with increased wealth? One of the reasons Western culture is so great and so popular is that it is so adaptable. The Japanese are very "Western" in many regards, but they also feel free to discard the parts they don't like. And they somehow have managed to retain a unique culture of their own.

As for the Europeans, if they can't handle some New World upstart influence, they must really be in some sort of decadent decline after all :)

|12.22.05 @ 2:49PM|#

I thought most of American culture involved a blending of a multitude of immigrant cultures that contributed to the final product. You know, "melting pot" and all that?

If so, doesn't that mean other countries are seeking to reject that which they themselves helped to create indirectly? Or is this merely an "anti-pizazz" measure?

|12.22.05 @ 2:58PM|#

I don't understand the reasoning of anyone who thinks it's a good idea to dip their culture in amber and preserve it unchanged forever. No matter how wonderful things are now, there is ALWAYS a way to make them better.

What is the difference between a cultural protectionist, and someone who says "The books and CDs I have in my personal library this minute will suffice for the rest of my life, so there's no need for me to ever look for something new to read or listen to"? Nothing.

The song that will be my favorite when I am forty probably hasn't even been written yet.

|12.22.05 @ 2:59PM|#

SPD:

You used "Melting Pot" and "Pizazz" in the same post. You wouldn't happen to be from Northern Virginia, would you...?

|12.22.05 @ 3:02PM|#

From the State Department website about the UNESCO Convention:

The United States is a culturally diverse country and a vigorous proponent of cultural diversity, which is based on individuals? freedom to choose how to express themselves and how to interact with others. Governments deciding what citizens can read, hear, or see denies individuals the opportunity to make independent choices about what they value.

...gah...brainfreeze!

|12.22.05 @ 3:06PM|#

"I don't understand the reasoning of anyone who thinks it's a good idea to dip their culture in amber and preserve it unchanged forever. No matter how wonderful things are now, there is ALWAYS a way to make them better."

That is true, but I don't know why you "don't understand the reasoning", Jen. Look at it this way: one mans "cultural improvement" is another man's "cultural downfall". For example, when slavery ended and civil rights eventually took center stage, it was a cultural improvement for blacks. But at the same time, it was a cultural "downfall", relatively speaking, for the white folks who held all the power.

In other words, there is rarely a cultural shift that is universally beneficial to all members of said culture. So, given that (unless they were able to remove their personal situation and comfort and preferences from the equation, which is damn near impossible), you would expect people to selectively support or oppose various cultural shifts...depending on how it affects their particular situation.

There are, of course, others who simply grow up in a certain cultural norm, and develop a myopic, nostalgic view of that particular snapshot in time, and therefore oppose any change, whether it benefits them or it hurts them.

That you "don't understand their reasoning" just means, to me, that you can't empathize...

I certainly embrace change. Most of the time. But I can certainly put myself in someone else's shoes, and see how they would oppose it.

|12.22.05 @ 3:14PM|#

"The United States is a culturally diverse country and a vigorous proponent of cultural diversity"

Ah, yes, the ol' "diversity for the sake of diversity" argument. I saw a plaque up on the wall at Lowe's Home Improvement last night, next to the employee break room. It said something to the effect of "we value diversity, because it makes us stronger, and ....blah, blah, blah". Obviously it was referring to racial and gender "diversity". Anyway, it occurred to me that our obsession with "diversity" is based in this ephemeral dreamworld, where a forced mixing of races is beneficial for its own sake. However, none of this is based in any sort of RELEVANT frame of reference. Diversity is good, as long as it's based on some sort of pragmatic goal. For example, on a football team, diversity is good---meaning, you have a diverse range of athletes, fast ones, big ones, quick ones, strong ones, etc. But racial and gender-based diversity at a hardware store has no relevant pragmatic basis. Racial/cultural diversity doesn't make anyone stronger, unless there's a real reason behind it.

The living world, community of life, is diverse---which means that various life forms can take on various obstacles. The eggs aren't all in one basket, so to speak. This is diversity with a purpose. This is the kind of diversity we should strive for, not meaningless (in most instances) factors like race or culture.

|12.22.05 @ 3:22PM|#

The wife and I gave out 12 reason subscriptions this year to family and friends.

Thanks for the suggestion.

|12.22.05 @ 3:24PM|#

For example, when slavery ended and civil rights eventually took center stage, it was a cultural improvement for blacks. But at the same time, it was a cultural "downfall", relatively speaking, for the white folks who held all the power. In other words, there is rarely a cultural shift that is universally beneficial to all members of said culture.

I don't know, Evan, I think here you might be saying "culture" when you should be saying "politics" or "law." I think the analogy might work better with, for example, talking about how "black" music like gospel or jazz infiltrated and changed the culture of white American music. But who was hurt by that?

I remember once Hit and Run had a post about some study supposedly showing a correlation between conservatism and insanity, or something. While I think that is a load of crap, I think there MIGHT be a connection between insanity and people who have a near-pathological resistance to change. Especially in light of the fact that you could make agood argument that change is the one constant, in human history.

|12.22.05 @ 3:29PM|#

I'd say we need more change, not less.

|12.22.05 @ 3:42PM|#

I think I spelled "pizazz" wrong. Can I get a ruling, please?

Larry A|12.22.05 @ 3:43PM|#

The dark cloud in this controversy is, what Hollywood puts out is "the good stuff."

|12.22.05 @ 3:45PM|#

Pizzazz.

|12.22.05 @ 3:45PM|#

Well, I'm not sure it's necessarily "the good stuff," although that's a matter of personal preference.

From my recent trips to see FX-laden spectacles, I can say with certainty it's "the loud stuff"!

|12.22.05 @ 3:48PM|#

Jennifer,

Thank you kindly, ma'am. 4 "z"'s, eh? Hmmm....

(Or is it "hmm?" Ah, screw it.)

|12.22.05 @ 3:55PM|#

I think there MIGHT be a connection between insanity and people who have a near-pathological resistance to change.

I don't know about near-pathological, but I would say most people are naturally averse to change, at least personally. Part of human nature is to try and preserve the past, from primitive folk stories to keeping our 6th grade notebooks. I suppose it make sense to hold on to what we know when the world keeps moving without and in spite of us. This is also why we tend to romanticize the past.

Politically speaking, this is a big problem with many social conservatives, and to a large degree libertarians, as they tend to wish for a world that perhaps never was. On the other side of the coin, even liberals and progressives don't so much embrace change as they do an idealized vision that they wish to create and then enshrine.

If a true utopia were actually possible, can any of us say that we wouldn't want to lock the doors and turn off the lights when change came knocking?

|12.22.05 @ 4:05PM|#

I don't know about near-pathological, but I would say most people are naturally averse to change, at least personally. Part of human nature is to try and preserve the past, from primitive folk stories to keeping our 6th grade notebooks.

But there's a huge difference between preserving old folk stories versus refusing to allow new ones. And most people who keep their sixth-grade notebooks don't feel they should retain their sixth-grade mindsets.

It's the difference between preserving the past, versus trying to live in it.

Even people who say they hate change are not consistent; chances are there are still plenty of things these people want but do not have. And that means change; if I want new clothes then I want to make changes to my wardrobe. If I want a raise then I want changes to my finances.

|12.22.05 @ 4:15PM|#

So if an Italian marries a Frenchman^H^H^H person are they required to make two sets of home movies? Will there be subtitles during the night vision portion of the video?

Ed|12.22.05 @ 4:17PM|#

Time to rename the French fries again.

VM|12.22.05 @ 4:17PM|#

Eddy:

not to worry:

Si Si Si
Oui Oui Oui

and just throw in an "arriba. undelae yee haaa" for the "miew miew miew" parts in french, and yer good.

and even better: a menage a trois stays the same!!!

Timothy|12.22.05 @ 4:20PM|#

I have a pathological resistance to rearranging my apartment, but I'm fine with cultural and political shifts.

VM|12.22.05 @ 4:21PM|#

Timothy:

just keep some homoskedasticity in your life with some autocorrelation. perhaps some spurious regression.

but may your Durbin Watson always be around 2.

|12.22.05 @ 4:26PM|#

It's the difference between preserving the past, versus trying to live in it.

Even people who say they hate change are not consistent; chances are there are still plenty of things these people want but do not have. And that means change; if I want new clothes then I want to make changes to my wardrobe. If I want a raise then I want changes to my finances.

I don't disagree, but as I see it the major aversion to change is not getting something new, but getting rid of something old. I never look at my 6th grade notebooks, and I certainly don't share my 6th grade outlook, but if you told me you threw them away I'd be a little upset. Likewise, someone may buy new clothes but the hard part is throwing away something you've had forever even if you don't wear it anymore. See the series "How Do I Look" for details, which as a straight guy I never, ever watch (I swear).

You're defining change in the broadest possible terms, which is fine, but even the most change-averse can be convinced to move forward...as long as they can bring all their crap with them.

Of course, this can be very difficult when you crap includes semi-archaic attitudes about others.

Timothy|12.22.05 @ 4:28PM|#

VM: HAH!

I'm more the heteroskedasticity type, but damn that autocorrelation! Trying to teach myself, vaguely, some time series statistics...slow going. Hopefully starting business school next fall will help with that.

Been a long time since I did a Durbin-Watson, though. Dang.

Timothy|12.22.05 @ 4:30PM|#

Also, VM, my all of your estimators be robust, may your distributions always be known, and may your p-values always be significant.

Timothy|12.22.05 @ 4:32PM|#

And, yes, my furniture arrangement has exacly a zero variance for all t meaning it's definitely homoskedastic, but I personally am very likely to deviate greatly from mean behavior for all t.

|12.22.05 @ 4:34PM|#

Really, this all stems from the "Please don't make us think about choosing an option, pleeeeeeaseeee!" mentality. No one is forcing American or any other kind of culture on anyone. Feel free not to speak English, not to wear Air Jordans, and not to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's okay, we won't get mad. Go ahead and watch your bad movies and eat your superior bread.

|12.22.05 @ 4:36PM|#

I don't disagree, but as I see it the major aversion to change is not getting something new, but getting rid of something old

Not in the case of cultural protectionists. The French are big on CP, for instance, but who is trying to tell the French that they have to stop reading Voltaire? Or replace all pictures of Brigitte Bardot with Britney Spears?

|12.22.05 @ 4:54PM|#

Not in the case of cultural protectionists. The French are big on CP, for instance, but who is trying to tell the French that they have to stop reading Voltaire? Or replace all pictures of Brigitte Bardot with Britney Spears?

I'm not saying it's rational, but in the same way the certain people feel gay marriage is an actual threat to "traditional" marriage, the French generally view anything non-French as an actual threat to their culture. I beleive that it is not so much the simple addition of American media to the French landscape that causes them grief, but that to them it's addition by subtraction; the French culture is debased and lessened by the addition of American media.

Maybe that's true. We don't normally get to take all our crap with us. Often the new does erase the old, but I think it is not so much fear of the future as it is fear of losing the past. Perhaps it's quibbling, but I've found that keeping such a distinction in mind can be helpful.

|12.22.05 @ 4:54PM|#

Jennifer, I agree. The French used to be a huge exporter of culture and could do so again. I'm a big fan of 19th Century French literature, for instance. And Voltaire, Montesquieu, de Tocqueville, and Montaigne don't exactly suck, either. Actually, the French seem to be at their best during periods when they like the U.S. :)

|12.22.05 @ 5:19PM|#

Stretch: the French generally view anything non-French as an actual threat to their culture.

Tim Cavanaugh's article doesn't seem to support this.

even if this were true about the french, are we americans really all that different? how many people do you hear pissing and moaning about the prevalance of spanish being spoken in the u.s.?

|12.22.05 @ 5:19PM|#

in the same way the certain people feel gay marriage is an actual threat to "traditional" marriage, the French generally view anything non-French as an actual threat to their culture. I beleive that it is not so much the simple addition of American media to the French landscape that causes them grief, but that to them it's addition by subtraction; the French culture is debased and lessened by the addition of American media.

The gay-marriage "preserve traditional marriage" opponents are bigots. And maybe the cultural protectionists are, too.

Or another, more likely, possibility: the CPs have a serious inferiority complex. Back to the French, for example: if their stuff is better than ours, then they don't NEED to forcibly keep ours out; people will watch our stuff and then say "Sacre bleu! Quelle pile of steaming merde!" and then go back to watching their homegrown movie stars stare moodily through cigarette smoke, or whatever they do nowadays.

It's kind of like the guy who's unhappy about how his life is going, so he avoids the company of his more successful friends. Only in this case, he's trying to use legal force to make everyone else around him avoid his more successful friends, too.

Timothy|12.22.05 @ 5:23PM|#

It's kind of like the guy who's unhappy about how his life is going, so he avoids the company of his more successful friends.

Exactly, and it's just as stupid. He should be out trying to get his more successful friends to buy drinks!

|12.22.05 @ 5:46PM|#

I just want to take this opportunity to recomend Virginia Postrel's "The Future and its Enemies", which discusses cultural protectionism in the context of her larger points about political mindset.

Lazlo|12.22.05 @ 5:46PM|#

I beleive that it is not so much the simple addition of American media to the French landscape that causes them grief, but that to them it's addition by subtraction; the French culture is debased and lessened by the addition of American media.

Cultural consumption is a zero-sum game. There are only so many minutes in the day, and every additional minute that the French spend reading/watching/playing non-French things is a minute that they're not spending reading/watching/playing French things. That shrinks the market for French things, which makes them less likely to be produced, which arguably lessens (the size of, at least) French culture. So the argument isn't a complete mystery. But it's also an admission that you think your culture isn't interesting enough to your own people to convince them to participate in it. If someone isn't interested in their native culture, they're not going to suddenly become more interested simply because you cut off the alternatives. (On preview, what Jennifer said.)

When we moved from New Mexico to Oakland, it became essentially impossible to get fresh (or even quality frozen) green chile. But given a choice between buying the canned stuff and going without, thanks but we'll go without.

|12.22.05 @ 6:07PM|#

Why in the world would countries want to follow France�s view on cultural segregation? Wasn't cultural segregation one cause of the French riots this year?

|12.22.05 @ 6:12PM|#

One of my statistics projects was a cluster analysis of the World Values Survey data. The data had too many holes for a Bayesian clustering analysis, but I could still use several frequentist algorithms. I clustered the respondents based on their values and compared their cluster memberships to their nation memberships. All the test showed the same pattern. Every country had at least 2 major cultures and most countries had more. Every culture crossed national boundaries.

|12.22.05 @ 6:15PM|#

"Why in the world would countries want to follow France?s view on cultural segregation?"

I think it's probably a combination of the worldwide elite hard-on for le France and the worldwide elite disdain for us "pushy cowboys," you know, since we force them at gunpoint to buy Coca-Cola and eat McDonald's.

|12.22.05 @ 6:19PM|#

widely interpreted to mean protection from U.S. movies and television.

this is the part of the article that i don't understand. has u.s. movies & television been explicitly mentioned as a reason for supporting such an action by everyone?

when i see a vote go 140ish to 2, i wonder if there is something more to the action than being just about us. aren't there other concerns about cultural preservation with these 140 nations that don't involve u.s. entertainment exports?

|12.22.05 @ 6:21PM|#

and i seriously doubt that the elite of the uk can be considered to have a hard on for all things france.

|12.22.05 @ 6:24PM|#

"Every country had at least 2 major cultures and most countries had more."

What are ours? Some off the top of my head: Puritan, redneck, black upper class, nigger, white upper class, wigger, Hispanic upper class, wetbacks, boricuas, Mormons, Jews, Indians (encompassing both casino and convenience store-as well as all the ethnic variations in the two larger groups), Cajuns, cubanos, Arabs, Chinese... c'mon help me out!

(my apologies to the PC police in advance, I just think to say "nigger" is more succinct than saying "African-American Lower Class")

|12.22.05 @ 6:26PM|#

Hopefully, we won't import English media.

|12.22.05 @ 6:27PM|#

downstater,

Well, the UK may be a minor exception, but be sure that, at least the more "liberal" elements there, share the pan-European obsession that the elites in all Western-Eurasian-Landmass countries have. This is the same attitude most perpetuated by the elites in Paris, Brussels, and Berlin.

|12.22.05 @ 6:27PM|#

Check out Lieber�s and Weisberg�s paper, �Globalization, Culture, and Identity in Crisis� from the International Journal of Politics Vol 16(2) pp. 273 � 297 . I shows how much meme flow between nations there has been starting in the 1800�s. Sorry, I couldn�t find it on line. I think an academic library might have it on clay tablets.

|12.22.05 @ 6:34PM|#

Cheers.

|12.22.05 @ 6:36PM|#

andy,

that is fine if it is true, but this wasn't an action of the eu but of the un. not all 148 countries which voted for this share european sensibilities.

what i'm getting at is that there is probably more going on in such a vote than just european protectionism vs american cultural imperialism.

|12.22.05 @ 6:42PM|#

The program I used lumped similar respondents. It didn�t give them ethnic labels. So I can't say which cultures were in which countries.

|12.22.05 @ 7:45PM|#

I'll subscribe if you can promise me that John Stossel's mustache will appear on the cover of at least one issue a year.

|12.22.05 @ 7:57PM|#

"we value diversity, because it makes us stronger, and ....blah, blah, blah".

= "We're not racist/sexist, really we're not."

VM|12.23.05 @ 11:46AM|#

Hold your nose while reading this... it's an annoying read, however. (and as someone who knows her, i can assure you that all of the wonderful language of concensus and equality she spouts, she really wants a world order where SHE and HER types are on top.)

from the article:

"In Linguistic Genocide in Education, education is very often mentioned as a mere ideologic vehicle of the dominant groups, the winners of the free market economy"

"No doubt, therefore there should be developed first impartial rules of the geopolitical game, which evidently will contrast with the present-day US-UK dominated policy that applies double standards."

"She also distrusts the innovative approaches in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes because of the danger of being an agent of 'Mcdonaldisation'"

"Skutnabb-Kangas is indebted to the French critical tradition. She makes use of their structures of discourse, symbolic capital, doxa and regimes of truth sharing with them a deep mistrust towards the power elites and their liberal economic and political 'dogmas'"

dhex|12.23.05 @ 2:51PM|#

hey moose, how do you know that chick?

also, isn't the use of "linguistic genocide" kinda offensive when there are cases of actual languages being snuffed out - say by missionary types working with/against amerindian groups - along with whole ways of life?