As this issue of the Weekly hits the streets, the United States will likely have found itself once again on the losing and unpopular end of an international agreement. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was expected, on October 20, to approve a new convention on "cultural diversity" with the U.S. casting the only nay vote among the 191 member countries.
Oddly enough, it might have been to atone for its unilateral abrogation of the Kyoto environmental treaty that the Bush administration decided two years ago to rejoin UNESCO. Our two-decade snub was prompted by the Reagan administration's perception—not entirely skewed—of an anti-American tone to some activities supported by the world's cultural commissariat. Conservatives no doubt will hear echoes in this agreement, which would exempt some forms of cultural production from global free-trade accords. The U.S. fears cultural protectionism, aimed squarely at our film and music industries.
That the measure was sponsored by France and Canada, which support their cultural industries in order to counter the appeal of American movies and music, can only reinforce this view. In The Washington Post, George Will grumbles that the UNESCO document grinds outs predictable jargon in presuming that unique cultural activities are threatened by globalism: "The convention on diversity is an attempt to legitimize cultural protectionism," huffs Will, "and to cloak it in Orwellian rhetoric praising what the convention actually imperils—the autonomy of culture left free to flower and evolve without the supervision of governments."
If you've spent any time clicking through channels in a foreign hotel room, you've no doubt become aware of just how pervasive American culture has become. Tucked among soccer matches, low-budget soaps and CNN, you're likely to find any number of dubbed American sitcoms and action dramas. In Weimar, home of Goethe and birthplace of the Bauhaus, I once puzzled my way through 10 minutes of Third Rock from the Sun. My top cultural-dislocation moment, though, has to be hearing an Andean pan-flute band playing "My Way" in the Old Town Square of Prague.
The international penetration of Friends, Levi's and Coke, even into quarters bristling with hatred for the land of their origin, happens with such relentless regularity that it is hardly worth noting anymore. And this makes official efforts over the years to promote American culture abroad appear all the more pitiful. Louis Menand, in the current New Yorker, surveys several books on these efforts, most of which sought to promote the idea that you could be at once avant-garde and anti-communist.
The State Department and the CIA supported publications and touring art exhibitions with this propaganda point in mind, often with laughable results. An exhibition of art by American modernists, including Romare Bearden and John Marin, was withdrawn by the Truman State Department after homeland yahoos condemned the art as communist-inspired. As Menand observes: "Advancing American Art was a boomerang, reconfirming the very prejudices about American philistinism that it was intended to demolish."
Culture develops and spreads organically, and it should be allowed to do so. Just as species meet extinction naturally, so do cultural practices. We should ensure that we do not hasten extinction in either event, but controlling environmental pollution is not the same thing as stanching cultural exports. The idea that we can sustain pre-industrial tribal practices in a post-industrial world is absurd, whether the topic is totem-carving or sustenance farming, not least because the practitioners want their iPods and hamburgers, too.
So UNESCO's efforts to legislate cultural protectionism seem as quaintly ridiculous as the attempts a century ago to outlaw war. Governments might do what they wish to preserve traditional crafts, but traditional craftsmen will find their own ways to adapt, often by absorbing outside influences— Sinatra by pan-flute, for instance. And, it should be noted, cultural globalism is not entirely one-way, as Bollywood movies and Japanese anime prove.
At the same time, it is worth wondering why we keep finding ourselves alone on the great issues of the time. Will is right to condemn any effort to restrict American cultural exports, or to label other nations' material exports, such as coffee or wine, "cultural expressions" that deserve trade protection. But he also scorns UNESCO's earlier declaration about cultural diversity, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. True, a phrase such as "intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of peace" is a bromide, and, as Will warns, "All bromides are banal, but not all banalities are harmless."
Yes, but almost any truth risks sounding like a truism. If culture is not exactly "the best guarantee of peace," shared culture certainly paves one path. The idea of trying to understand "why they hate us" became anathema almost immediately after the 2001 horrors, and certainly nothing excuses the animus of our enemies. But this nation has settled into a solipsistic funk, pursuing policies in spite of the world and bitterly enduring its gibes. When the Nobel Prize becomes a taunt, it's time to ask if a little "intercultural dialogue," or something phrased more felicitously, is all that bad.
Chuck Twardy has written for newspapers and magazines for more than 20 years. His website,
www.members.cox.net/theanteroom, has a forum.