George Will has another brilliant column today, this one on the contrast between the belief of some in free trade for goods and services … except for “cultural” goods and services. The column is too cogent and cohesive for me to summarize and too short to need summarizing; just read it.
In the United States liberals have traditionally favored government regulation of property and the economy but opposed government regulation of speech and ideas. This, of course, changed with their support for speech codes, etc., but Will points to a growing international reversal led by progressives. Summarizing some of the windy rhetoric (“interculturality,” etc.) surrounding UNESCO’s proposed Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, Will translates:
Nations can “protect” their “cultural expressions” against diversity arising from cultural imports that can be stigmatized as threats to social cohesion, and can use means that would be forbidden were the movement of cultural goods and services covered by the World Trade Organization’s rules governing the movement of other goods and services. Meaning: Nations such as France and Canada can interfere with imports of U.S. films, television programming, music and publications.
But nothing here should be surprising. It’s been clear for a long time that “diversity” has turned traditional liberalism upside down.
“Nations can “protect” their “cultural expressions” against diversity”
is it a protection against diversity or against homogenization?
actus – if protection agains being exposed to diverse cultures is o.k. with you because it guards against homogenization, then I’m sure you also opposed the courts ordering VMI to admit women, since the presence of women obviously homogenized the previously all male school and reduced its distinctiveness considerably.
Who is being protected from exposure to different world cultures? A french person who wants to see a hollywood movie can. I did when I was in france.
There is an argument that the market is distorted and French culture that might be overriden by Hollywood is preserved. But I think that is the whole point — diversity.
“since the presence of women obviously homogenized the previously all male school and reduced its distinctiveness considerably.”
The fact that your reading leads to upside down conclusion should lead you to the conclusion that your reading is absurd.
No, actus, John’s comparison is apt. It’s flawed only by the Constitutional issue. There seems a pretty general consensus that single-sex public schools are out-of-bounds even when Lefties want them. (Cf. the periodic proposals for specialized academies for African-American boys, girls interested in science and math, &c. — there may be something to be said for some of these ideas, but no one seriously thinks they’d survive the inevitable legal challenge.)
But otherwise John’s analogy is sound. The all-male VMI was a unique environment. Uniquely bad, if you like, but anyway unlike anything else on offer in this country. Making it coed obviously means making it more like other schools. This is, of course, an argument repeatedly made wrt private womens’ colleges when there are proposals to admit men, and I confess to some sympathy with the idea; it doesn’t seem implausible that a single-sex learning environment would have a different “feel” than a coed one, and might be more congenial to some students. But in any case, it’s obvious that a world in which single-sex schools — private as well as public — were abolished would be more “homogenized,” have fewer “micro-cultures” if you will, than the one we have now.
As to Will’s point — well, anyone who’s read much of Will knows that he’s hardly a fan of the American cultural exports that travel well (blockbuster Hollywood movies and pop music, for two).
But the idea that governments should be able to regulate the content of cultural imports, in the interests of “social cohesion” and “diversity of cultures”? It would make a lovely farce if it weren’t happening. Just imagine what a merry time some of our less-open fellow nations could have with this. Or rather, just imagine what you yourself would say about the periodic calls by this or that hick town to restrict the available Internet content in the area to “local standards” in the matter of obscenity, and then translate it, not to rural Tennessee, but to someplace where anyone who doesn’t like the government is taken into a quiet corner and shot. Comforted yet?
Of course, the up-side is that most such governments are already doing all the censorship they can manage, and anyway wouldn’t care whether UNESCO had, in its polite way, asked them not to. But the whole idea is vile.
“Making it coed obviously means making it more like other schools.”
I don’t see the comparison to movies and culture. Nobody argues for hte “diversity” that was slavery and jim crow, or the “diversity” that is the lawlessness of gender discrimination.
Anytime a peculiar evil is eliminated we have less “diversity.” I really don’t think anyone in the pro-diversity camp argues for that.
But we do argue for the diversity of having a french movie industry that is different than the hollywood movie industry.
“Just imagine what a merry time some of our less-open fellow nations could have with this.”
Anything they want, if they don’t want to be open
“Or rather, just imagine what you yourself would say about the periodic calls by this or that hick town to restrict the available Internet content in the area to “local standards” in the matter of obscenity,”
I don’t see how this promotes diversity.
” and then translate it, not to rural Tennessee, but to someplace where anyone who doesn’t like the government is taken into a quiet corner and shot. Comforted yet?”
I have no idea what this has to do with french efforts to protect its movie industry, or promote diversity. Maybe this confusion is aided by the fact that George Will didn’t really identify a specific evil, but instead left us to imagine all the evils that may exist, no matter how silly, in his bashing of diversity.
actus,
I don’t see the comparison to movies and culture. Nobody argues for the “diversity” that was slavery and jim crow, or the “diversity” that is the lawlessness of gender discrimination.
Anytime a peculiar evil is eliminated we have less “diversity.” I really don’t think anyone in the pro-diversity camp argues for that.
You mean there really isn’t anyone arguing that it’s good for there to be all-female colleges? That something is lost if, say, Wellesley or Smith or Bryn Mawr or Mills (the case I know most about, because it’s here in the Bay Area and the same battle has been fought several times) admits men?
I suppose I must ask for clarification. Is the “peculiar evil” of VMI’s old policy “evil” because it excluded women rather than men, or because it is a public school? Or, put another way, is the problem that “gender discrimination” is inherently “lawless,” or that this particular gender discrimination was (“lawlessly”) unconstitutional given that the school was a public institution?
But we do argue for the diversity of having a french movie industry that is different than the hollywood movie industry.
Well, why the bejeezus can’t they just have one? Who’s stopping them? The awful answer to that question, of course, is “the French public.” Which is why this proposal is just like every other proposal of that kind: the stupid awful people must be kept, so far as possible, from liking the wrong things, lest the money dry up for the people who like and produce the right things. Ideally, the people ought not to see the wrong things at all, but if you can’t manage that, the next best thing is to slap massive tariffs on them, limit their distribution, curtail their advertising — anything that would keep them as far away as possible from the vulgar public. Once let them see or hear or read some of this stuff, and they might actually like it, and then where would we be?
(Besides, Hollywood isn’t exactly new, so why is this suddenly an urgent problem? Bollywood is a pretty recent phenomenon, and it’s huge; so’s Hong Kong. If the French government wants to boost its film industry, it has plenty of models to choose from. But there are obviously people who find it simpler to keep American films out rather than plugging the local product.)
Re my rural-Tennessee example, isn’t the connection I’m trying to make obvious? Well, no, or you wouldn’t be perplexed. I’ll try again.
The common thread is the desire to make it possible for places to be different from one another. If rural Tennessee (I am probably slandering Tennessee here, but there have been suggestions from Southern jurisdictions that “obscenity” be judged by the local standards of the localities in which material was downloaded, rather than where it is published) — where was I? — oh, yes, if rural Tennessee wants to remain rural Tennessee, and interdict any material that would offend local mores, then rural Tennessee is thereby less like downtown San Francisco, a more different place. Less homogenized, to use your preferred word.
I don’t see a bit of difference between protecting the French movie industry from the preferences of the French public and protecting the morals of Tennesseans from the the preferences of the Tennesseean public (because it’s actually rather hard to find online porn by accident, at least unless you habitually click on attachments in email from people you’ve never heard of). In both cases the announced aim is to preserve a particular culture from the Great American Sprawl. The main difference is that the people objecting to the Sprawl in France are cultured and articulate, while the the people in Tennessee, while they might easily be equally cultured and articulate, speak in the wrong accent. Besides, we’ve had it drilled into us for centuries that French culture is one of the great glories of mankind, while the arbiters of culture might concede Tennesseean culture as one of the glories of Tennessee. (If anyone from Tennessee is actually reading this, especially a certain violinist in the Knoxville Symphony, that isn’t my own opinion.)
Now, you understand, I want places to be different from one another. I think places should be as different from one another as reason and human rights allow. That’s why I’m of two minds about this article. No one in the world is less suited to decide what content should and should not be allowed into any country than that country’s government, so naturally that’s the solution UNESCO instantly went for, and naturally a lot of governments will be eager to, um, “help.” (George Will again, maybe twenty years ago, paraphrased from memory: “There are certain jobs for which being eager to do them should be an absolute disqualification, like ‘sex educator’ and ‘Ambassador to the United Nations.'” He’s sort of reprised that one here.)
Me, I’d advise the democratic countries concerned about American “product” to support their own artists better, or find better artists, if the current lot are losing out to their American competitors who most of the time don’t have (unlike the Europeans) anything in the way of Gov’t. support in the first place. I would further advise them that it wasn’t all that long ago that they were the world cultural leaders, and that even now they are in many areas, and that if they insist on defining Hollywood and pop music as “culture,” I can’t stop them, but I think they’re silly.
Oh, and I’d remind them that in the last twenty years we in the US have seen an unimaginable expansion in the availability of music and video and literature from all over the globe. I can hear music from almost everywhere, see films from almost everywhere; I’ve never had more access to the rest of the world’s cultures. No one in human history has had the access that Americans now do.
Has that “homogenized” America? I think not.
Michelle – At the risk of sounding churlish or picky for arguing with a minor point of yours in what is otherwise a a major tour de force, I hope you will excuse me for disagreeing with your point that my comparison of France to VMI is “flawed” by the Constitutional issue.
I don’t see the flaw, since I was comparing the inconsistency of actus’s defense of French cultural provincialism (actually, that gives provincialism a bad name) with his predictable moralistic objections to VMI’s male provincialism. In fact since I endorse the “forced integration” of VMI I don’t see the flaw in my comparison; I think both the frogs and the male cadets should accept the “diversity” forced on them and move on. I don’t think public institutions can justify gender exclusion, even though (like you, apparently) I do think something or arguable value was lost.
“You mean there really isn’t anyone arguing that it’s good for there to be all-female colleges? ”
I don’t think thats an evil.
“Or, put another way, is the problem that “gender discrimination” is inherently “lawless,” or that this particular gender discrimination was (“lawlessly”) unconstitutional given that the school was a public institution?”
Haven’t you read the opinion? That ought to tell you how its lawless.
‘The awful answer to that question, of course, is “the French public.” ‘
The same french public that elects the government that has the protection policy.
“Once let them see or hear or read some of this stuff, and they might actually like it, and then where would we be?”
But they can see and read the stuff. Why do you have to make up things like this? Because you don’t have an honest argument?
“I don’t see a bit of difference between protecting the French movie industry from the preferences of the French public and protecting the morals of Tennesseans from the the preferences of the Tennesseean public”
I do. Because the morals are in peoples minds. Whereas an industry is less amorphous. I can have whatever morality I want, no matter what is on my internet. I can’t have whatever movie I want, because the industry depends on other things.
Also, tenessee wants to ban things, to make them illegal in private homes. That’s not how the french movie industry is protected. That’s another problem with your analogy. Its very apples to oranges.
“I don’t see the flaw, since I was comparing the inconsistency of actus’s defense of French cultural provincialism (actually, that gives provincialism a bad name) with his predictable moralistic objections to VMI’s male provincialism.”
The difference is that the VMI policy excluded people from a particular experience on a basis we find unacceptable (and illegal). The French policy in fact preserves an experience for us all — people aren’t excluded from hollywood or french movies. And this preservation isn’t really done with any unacceptable methods. At least none have been mentioned, but many have been imagined.
You really don’t see the difference? Arent’ you a student of ‘discriminations’? Get your money back.
Michelle,
Point taken, but there’s no ‘probably’ about it. This or that hick town?
actus,
[me:] “I don’t see a bit of difference between protecting the French movie industry from the preferences of the French public and protecting the morals of Tennesseans from the the preferences of the Tennesseean public”
[you:] I do. Because the morals are in peoples minds. Whereas an industry is less amorphous. I can have whatever morality I want, no matter what is on my internet. I can’t have whatever movie I want, because the industry depends on other things.
That’s so? I suppose then it’d be equally expedient, industry-wise, to make it harder to access major newspapers online. If your choices are the local ThisPaperSux and the Washington Post, the latter free online, which are you gonna pick? I want to see flourishing local journalism as much as anyone — in fact, that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing with my life for the last five years — and I absolutely don’t think the answer to sucky local print journalism is cutting readers off from everything but the local product, so that they have no other recourse.
What France has actually done, or proposes to do, is unclear, but if it does anything to help the French film industry at all, it can only be doing it by reducing the number of French viewers of American films, yes?
I do. Because the morals are in peoples minds. Whereas an industry is less amorphous. I can have whatever morality I want, no matter what is on my internet. I can’t have whatever movie I want, because the industry depends on other things.
I see. So we are to drop all this pretense of preserving a “culture,” which is something “in people’s minds,” and get back to the real deal, which is an “industry” whose business is attracting people and which apparently isn’t doing a great job of it, even in France, never mind here. Nice to know what the really important issues are, is it not?
“What France has actually done, or proposes to do, is unclear, but if it does anything to help the French film industry at all, it can only be doing it by reducing the number of French viewers of American films, yes?”
It could do it by outright subsidies to french films or protectionist measures. How this is cutting people off from things I don’t know.
“So we are to drop all this pretense of preserving a “culture,” which is something “in people’s minds,” and get back to the real deal, which is an “industry””
I experience a certain film culture when I watchthe movies it makes. Don’t be naive. Its not really pretense when we are protecting the industry that creates cultural products. If Tenessee feels like its moral industry is failing, then we have more of a comparison. How is church attendance doing there?
Rob,
Point taken, but there’s no ‘probably’ about it. This or that hick town?
I knew I ought not to have pitched it like that, dagnabbit.
What I was trying to say is that folks like actus, who see nothing peculiar about protecting, say, France from the Unstoppable American Onslaught, find it very odd that there are also Americans who would like not to be in the path of the Unstoppable American Onslaught either. As the former are “cultural sophisticates” (they are Europeans, so a certain sort of person will take their “cultural sophistication” for granted) and the latter are, at a guess by the same sort of person, “hicks” (for which read “less educated than the writer”), there’s an interesting species of double standard operating here.
Please, give Tennessee my apologies, if you will, and let it know that I was rather defending than attacking it.
actus,
[me:] “What France has actually done, or proposes to do, is unclear, but if it does anything to help the French film industry at all, it can only be doing it by reducing the number of French viewers of American films, yes?”
[you:] It could do it by outright subsidies to french films or protectionist measures. How this is cutting people off from things I don’t know.
Subsidizing the French film industry would not cut anyone off from anything. But whatever you are calling “protectionist measures” would. At least, if they did not result in fewer French watching American movies, I can’t imagine what the point would be. Perhaps what you’re saying is that the French could still see American movies, only they’d have to wait longer for them, or pay more for them, or drive further for them. I can just imagine your reaction if the US imposed any such restrictions on French film “product.”
I experience a certain film culture when I watch the movies it makes. Don’t be naive.
Perish the thought!
It’s not really pretense when we are protecting the industry that creates cultural products. If Ten[n]essee feels like its moral industry is failing, then we have more of a comparison. How is church attendance doing there?
I really don’t know, actus; I have never set foot in Tennessee. But I suspect that there are very few people there capable (I don’t mean in the “I don’t get this” sense, but in the “good God, what an amazing load of piffle, and how wonderfully easy it is to talk it” sense) of talking about “creat[ing] cultural products.” And I mean “incapable” in the further sense that I’d be surprised to see Southerners mouthing that particular piffle however well they were paid to do it. Not impossible, actus, but deuced unlikely.
I gather every concert I play and every review I write is a “cultural product” in your rather revolting phrase. (I’ve worked for record stores, where CDs were routinely “product,” but I didn’t think to hear the same language from you.)
You want the French (or anyone, come to that) to have governmental control over book and magazine distribution too? Internet access? Or is it just film?
“I can just imagine your reaction if the US imposed any such restrictions on French film “product.””
I would see it as a reduction of diversity, not an increase, as it helps to lower the availability of different products. Is that the effect of the French effort? And what is the French effort which you find so problematic?
Do you get a kerfufle over rules over foreign ownership of TV or radio stations in the US?
“And I mean “incapable” in the further sense that I’d be surprised to see Southerners mouthing that particular piffle however well they were paid to do it.”
Its really not a piffle. Mass Media is a big business which requires a lot of money. Its not a piffle to spend millions on a film. Its certainly not a piffle to talk about the industry engaged in the production of mass culture when that is the issue.
“You want the French (or anyone, come to that) to have governmental control over book and magazine distribution too? Internet access? Or is it just film?”
I don’t really read french books, so I don’t worry too much about their divesity. Although I do sense that book authors are under less economic pressure than the film industry, the translation that occurs makes a book have to be locally tailored, as well as reduce the market, to offset that many worries.
I really don’t see that much of a threat from the internet. It seems, unlike movies or TV, to be able to exist without crowding out other outlets. I don’t worry too much about this, because the French won’t be able to control the internet that much. They’re also a democracy, and grown ups that can decide for themselves whether to shut down websites that sell Nazi memorabilia or not.
Frankly I’m more worried about the real authoritarians like China. And they really don’t need excuses. And if they do, “diversity” is the last thing they want.
actus, I don’t know what the French are doing; I gather you know more than I. You allude to “protectionist measures,” though, and as I said, if that’s their purpose they’ll either fail to do what they’re meant to do (in which case they’d be a large waste of time and money) or achieve it (in which case fewer French see American movies).
Your comments make it increasingly obvious that the problem for you isn’t “diversity of culture” but the viability of a particular industry in a particular country. If UNESCO were serious about the Hollywood behemoth as menace, it would not be trying to tear it down, but rather trying to balance it with funding for film work in other countries, which needn’t necessarily be France, nor even in the EU, nor even countries that have hitherto had such a thing as a film industry. Whereas you appear to be bummed on behalf of French auteurs whose work the French people (asses!) is forsaking for that high-tech American swill. I repeat that I don’t see a problem here. If the French government (the French people having voted the wrong way with their feet already) wants to finance a specifically French cinema, more power to it.
[The Internet] seems, unlike movies or TV, to be able to exist without crowding out other outlets.
Movies do “crowd” one another on first release, but movies on DVD do not. And TV channels “crowd” one another far, far less now than they did even ten years ago, let alone twenty, because so large a fraction of the public that has TV at all also has cable access.
There is a certain consistency in the prodiversity bias, in that it is always antidominant. Something that grows and spreads relative to some diversity, would be the dominant. That which tends to lose out to the dominant, defines the diversity. A group that is believed to need quotas to avoid losing places to the dominant is the diversity. A national socialist small business preference could be called prodiversity. Now we have a liberal outlook which would allow for censorship of ideas, or even corruptly crusade for it, on the basis that ideas which are losing out to some dominant must have protection. We mustn’t be antidiversity, and the circle of protected diversity has no principled limits, by its own terms. What is left out of account is the use of aggression to protect some diversity, as if there were no evil in increasing the volume of aggression in a polity.
Free Trade … Except In Ideas
Free Trade … Except In Ideas
“You allude to “protectionist measures,” though, and as I said, if that’s their purpose they’ll either fail to do what they’re meant to do (in which case they’d be a large waste of time and money) or achieve it (in which case fewer French see American movies).”
I don’t know how much time and money they use, so I don’t know how much would be wasted. I don’t think its that much of a crime that the french elect governments that cause them to see less american films. You do. I don’t htink its that much of a crime that we elect governments that don’t allow r rated material on prime time TV. The French do.
“Your comments make it increasingly obvious that the problem for you isn’t “diversity of culture” but the viability of a particular industry in a particular country.”
The industry is part of their culture. Hollywood is part of our culture. So is Madison Avenue. Big industries. Hell, even family farms are part of our culture — in tenessee and france.
“Movies do “crowd” one another on first release, but movies on DVD do not. And TV channels “crowd” one another far, far less now than they did even ten years ago, let alone twenty, because so large a fraction of the public that has TV at all also has cable access”
And so their protectionism will work less and less. Whats the worry?
I wonder if Actus will still support “cultural protectionism” after a country decides it does not want Hip-Hop music, clothings, or hair styles in its country.
My guess is that Actus will then decide that “cultural protectionism” is really a racist plot to keep blacks from benefiting from international trade.
actus,
I don’t think its that much of a crime that the french elect governments that cause them to see less american films. You do. I don’t htink its that much of a crime that we elect governments that don’t allow r rated material on prime time TV. The French do.
We don’t allow R-rated material on prime-time TV? I think you mean that the major networks have agreed not to present R-rated material between 6 and 9, but given the chunk of the country that has cable access, it’s not much of a restriction, is it?
The French, obviously, can elect anyone they like, and should. I just think it amusing that one of the things their duly-elected government wants to do is prevent them from watching so many Hollywood movies. “Stop us before we watch again!” Somehow I find the idea of a populace deliberately voting in a government for the purpose of thwarting its own taste in entertainment, on the grounds that it knows it’s bad, but it just . . . can’t . . . help itself, is a little implausible. YMMV.
The industry is part of their culture. Hollywood is part of our culture. So is Madison Avenue. Big industries. Hell, even family farms are part of our culture — in ten[n]essee and france.
But, see, we are not worried enough about being overrun by French films (or even Bollywood ones) that we’re trying to make them less available to our public. Why not?
Hollywood, mysteriously, doesn’t need protecting from France. Hollywood doesn’t even need protecting from India, which IIRC has a bigger film industry than we do. Hollywood doesn’t need protecting from Hong Kong. Why then does France need protecting from us?
And, not to belabor the point, what we are really talking about here is the French elite bemoaning the lamentable taste of the French public, which persists in going to all the wrong movies. Well, you want a thriving French cinema? Go ahead! Subsidize the bejeezus out of it. Why not?
actus, one of Will’s points was that the UNESCO draft specifically set “cultural” production aside from everything else, and hinted that it ought not to be dealt with on a purely economic level. You seem to be dealing with it precisely on an economic level. At least, you’re expanding “cultural” to the point that it might cover anything. If family farms merit protection as a “cultural heritage” or whatever, then I would hesitate to say what a free-trade agreement between two dissimilar nations would look like. It would certainly be complicated, and it probably would leave very little in the way of free trade once the negotiators had had done with it.
“We don’t allow R-rated material on prime-time TV?”
not on the air no. Don’t you remember the fines paid for Janet’s tit?
“just think it amusing that one of the things their duly-elected government wants to do is prevent them from watching so many Hollywood movies.”
I’m not so surprised that the result of an election, which counts votes, is the different than the result of a market, which counts dollars — or euros.
“Hollywood doesn’t need protecting from Hong Kong. ”
Oh yes it does. Hong Kong has quite an active Piracy industry which hollywood wants protection from.
“You seem to be dealing with it precisely on an economic level.”
Uh, no. you are. I’m saying that we should use things other than the market to decide cultural issues. You want just the market to decide that.
“It would certainly be complicated, and it probably would leave very little in the way of free trade once the negotiators had had done with it.”
On the contrary. True free trade with, say, Brazil would involve cuts to US agribusiness subsidies. Which would help family farms here in the US and in Brazil.
I certainly cant understand a definition of culture that leaves out how our families live.