To: Neocon who wrote (1777 ) 11/17/1999 3:02:00 PM From: jbe Read Replies (2) | Respond to
A free market is not necessarily a fair market. Pop culture -- especially the low-brow made-for-export varieties of pop culture -- is commercialized in a sense that high culture has not been and cannot be.so bad, you will probably never see anything like it on U.S. TV, except, perhaps at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. In this country, only insomniacs in genuine search of sleep would watch movies so badly acted, so badly scripted, so badly shot, so badly produced.... Mostly what the Russian call "boyeviki" -- movies about fighting (with or without guns). Why do the Russians show them? Because, quite simply, these Z-films are cheaper and more numerous than Russian films (or good American ones). The market has been flooded with them. especially, oddly enough, in non-Russian Muslim areas -- are especially fond of soap operas like "Santa Barbara." (There was also an immensely popular Mexican soap opera.) They are not shown during the day, but at prime time, in the evening, competing with the news shows (and winning). Nothing is odder than coming into a room, hoping to get a gander at the latest news, and finding it full of buttoned-up and scarved women and stern-looking anybody lives the kind of life depicted on "Santa Barbara"!) is being imposed, even when it is willingly accepted. When there is nothing else available -- not even better American stuff -- how can there be a free & fair market?
