What is the most wretched day of the month? Answer: the day before payday. Fiscal comfort is so close I can smell it but when I go to the cash machine there is nothing but a tumbleweed blowing through the post apocalyptic wasteland of my bank account. Faced with such a grim reality I did the only thing I could, I went out for dinner. I dined on beef, cheese and an assortment of vegetables and grains. Or to put it another way I went to McDonalds.
Cultural imperialism rocks! I frequently see posters and various other poor mans internet sites decrying the pervasive nature of American cultural dominance. I, myself, have a t-shirt which says "Global domination goes better with Coke". Indeed it does, I choose to wear the t-shirt non ironically.
When people complain about somebody else's cultural dominance all they're really doing is having a sulk because the other people are better and more successful than they are. Let's face it, if your culture was so great the Americans would be copying it. Instead these sad and savage cultural warriors are reduced to snivelling about their own impotence and demanding that their government provide funds to sustain them. There can be no greater proof of a culture's essential irrelevance than the need for taxpayer dollars to keep it alive. If people wanted it they would pay for it themselves.
Some might argue that without government funding a good deal of cultural variety would vanish from the world and perhaps they're right but I wonder how many people would notice. I was aware of the existence of the Sydney Opera House for thirty years before I really knew what they did inside it. It took me another ten years before I actually went there. Even so I didn't see an opera (Bell Shakespeare's production of King Lear, excellent). Do we need funding for things most people wouldn't miss and why are things like opera and ballet considered more important culturally than the Wiggles or Walker Texas Ranger?
Much of our cultural heritage wasn't considered so when it was genuinely popular. It was just the latest show to go and see. If it's still popular people will still pay to see it. Ballet flourished in Britain because members of the aristocracy were banging the dancers. Shakespeare wrote unashamedly for the money and to hell with class, historical accuracy and believable scripts. While we're at it why don't we have funding for such lost cultural exploits as bear baiting and public executions? Artists up until quite recently acquired themselves a patron and created to order. If they didn't they tended to starve. Nobody sets out to create a culture. At some point in time a group of people look back at the various methods we've created to amuse ourselves and start writing arts theses about them,that's all.
In Australia we subsidise our film industry as part of an attempt to keep our culture alive. I don't think I'm the only one who suspects it might be kinder to let it die. In Spain culture is inextricably bound up with sticking sharp things into cattle without turning them in McHappy Meals. Both cruel and pointless. When you hear a country praised for its rich cultural traditions you can generally be pretty sure that a large proportion of its population would swap the lot for a cleaning job in America or Australia. Australians and Americans don't need to think too much about their culture or their glorious past because we have a future. At least Australia does, I'm getting a little unsure about America.
Of course it could be pointed out that I have selected a few isolated and dubious "facts", patched them together with a bit of invective and presented them as an argument. To which I would simply reply; this is a blog. It was designed solely to make the half baked theories, stupid ideas and degenerate rantings of obsessed and none too clever people available to a wide audience. In short it is a perfect expression of our culture. And it cost you absolutely nothing.
I'll have fries with that.
ReplyDeleteI think this argument could loosly be termed 'The Colliseum Conundrum' - ie offer the public the lowest and nastiest form of entertainment for free - people killing each other and wild beasts in public - and see how many millions turn up to watch without turning on the chap in charge and throwing him into the pit as well. The Americans have simply made the most of modern technology and improved on the spectacle and reduced the risk that the public might be savaged by one of the said beasts - and as David says, added chips to that and to everything else in sight. And to stop us seeing the leering face of Caligula behind every crunchy, health-giving snack bar, they've invented modern marketing which provides an inexhaustible stock of cute cuddly things with which to dress up their polluted, processed, putrifying goop and make us believe that it bears some resemblance to what granny once made.
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