Diversity has taken on a whole new meaning outside America’s
borders. Where once it meant embracing different cultures it now
means protecting one’s culture from outside influences and ideas.
Sound like the opposite of diversity? Sound like cultural
homogeneity? No argument here.
So who is responsible for redefining diversity? Why, our old
friends at the United Nations, of course. The United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is
presently meeting at its headquarters in Paris to work on a final
draft of something euphemistically called the Convention for the
Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic
Expression. The alleged aim of the convention — besides throwing
up absinthe and visiting the Paris peep shows — is to protect
homegrown arts and culture. But its real purpose is to shield weak
film, television and media industries from free-trade rules and
outside competition, particularly from countries whose industries
do these things well, like the U.S., Japan and Brazil.
Sometimes the language of the convention’s supporters sounds
curiously like love letters exchanged between Osama bin Laden and a
young ga-ga WTO protester: Globalization favors rich and powerful
countries. We must therefore stop the U.S. in order to protect our
cultural diversity. One online Turkish newspaper reports that
UNESCO is simply trying to arrest “U.S. cultural imperialism.” The
paper’s hardly objective reporter goes on to complain that the
English language has taken over the Internet. So what language does
the Turkish reporter’s story appear in? I’ll give you a hint. It
wasn’t Turkish.
The U.N. has long been at odds with the U.S., which many of its
member states see as a rich bully that prefers to go it alone.
Similarly, recent Republican administrations have maintained
strained relationships with the U.N., which they have regarded as
antagonistic to American interests such as a missile defense
system, the death penalty, the Second Amendment, global warming
strategies, and the U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance’s insistence on
equating Zionism with racism. Likewise, the U.S. has had a
Who’s-Afraid-of-Virginia-Woolf relationship with the U.N.’s side
project UNESCO. In fact, the U.S. quit UNESCO in 1984, frustrated
at its years of mismanagement. The U.S. returned in 2003, only to
face accusations of cultural imperialism.
BEHIND THIS TALK ABOUT protecting cultural diversity is UNESCO’s
veiled attempt to undermine the free market and free trade via
protectionism and quotas. For instance, if France succeeds in
getting UNESCO to declare that films are something other than what
they are, i.e., commodities, they can be excluded from WTO
agreements that ban protectionism and tariffs. Without
protectionism, it is rightly believed, no one will watch snoozy
French films. That may very well be true, but shouldn’t this serve
as an incentive for the French to make more viable films, maybe
hire a few American directors to show them how it’s done?
Films, television, and pop music are, in the end, what this row
is all about. France and its comrades at UNESCO do not get all
worked up when some new T.C. Boyle novel shows up in translation in
Left Bank bookstores. No one in Italy whines when Angels in
America is produced at the Teatro di Roma. Films, television
shows, and pop music however are big business. Yet UNESCO pretends
that it is only the U.S. that treats cultural products as
commodities to be exported like sportswear and Dog and Suds
rootbeer.
The elephant in UNESCO’s boardroom is that the world’s
population craves American popular culture. It’s not just that
American films are better scripted, better filmed, and better
produced, they are also generally more entertaining. More, they
give an international audience a snapshot of life in a free,
democratic America, a life many dream of having for themselves and
their families. For many, exposure to American films becomes a
factor in their decisions to immigrate here. True, some may get a
skewed view of America based on certain films. Back in the early
'90s, many of my friends in Eastern Europe believed that America
was similar to its depiction on the ghastly but popular television
series Dynasty. I quickly disabused them of that notion,
steering them toward films that more accurately depict middle and
working class America.
CONTRARY TO WHAT SOME Euro-snobs believe, America has a lot to
offer the world, and not just in its example of liberal democracy,
its monetary aid, and its peace-keeping capabilities. America still
boasts the world’s most vibrant culture. In recent times it has
given the world George Gershwin and Charlie Parker, Robert Johnson
and Hank Williams, Francis Ford Coppola and Frank Lloyd Wright,
William Faulkner and Eugene O’Neil. America has been the haven
where foreign artists from Jean Renoir to Czeslaw Milosz have come
to seek refuge and freely express themselves and their artistic
vision. Would other nations really be more diverse and better off
if the U.S. kept these artists and their influences to itself?
There is no way around it. Some countries will excel in specific
industries. Japan controls the animated film market because that’s
what it does best. We may miss Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd, but that
is no reason to punish the Japanese for being successful. I find it
interesting that WTO protesters, so used to knocking things down,
support raising new trade barriers that will only serve to separate
cultures. Interesting, but not really surprising.
And speaking of Porky Pig, that’s all folks.
