Jihad vs. McWorld - Benjamin R. Barber [187]
2. Geraldine Fabrikant, “Bell Atlantic’s Acquisition,” The New York Times, October 14, 1993, p. C 7.
3. I will not try here to rehearse the thoughtful critique of television that has been offered by social critics such as Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, or Todd Gitlin. But, as an encapsulation of our themes here, John Berger’s comment that “publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy” is worth citing. Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972), p. 149.
4. Steven Daly, “London Is Dead: Invasion of U.S. Pop Culture,” The New Republic, June 14, 1993, p. 12. Daly cites Morrisey’s lyric “We look to Los Angeles for the language we use/London is dead/London is dead.”
5. Miklos Vamos, “U.S. Cultural Invasion: Hungary for American Pop,” The Nation, March 25, 1991, pp. 11–12. This was more than three years ago: things have hardly improved.
6. Other fare includes a Steppes version of The Dating Game called Love at First Sight and two hundred episodes of the Mexican American-soap-rip-off The Rich Also Cry. Nadeshda Azhginkhina, “High Culture Meets Trash TV,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 1993, p. 42.
7. The Poles comprise the seventh largest number of cable viewers in Europe with 400,000 more than the French. Jane Perlez, “Poland Exercises the Right to Channel Surf,” The New York Times, November 14, 1993, p. E 18. These numbers have presumably grown considerably in the last several years. Poland’s first legally approved commercial channel Polsat initiated its “indigenous” programming in 1993 by broadcasting Hollywood director Michael Cimino’s Oscar-winning film The Deer Hunter (it has Central European ethnic pretensions) along with hard-core soap opera classics like General Hospital and Dallas.
8. Patrick E. Tyler, “CNN and MTV, Hangin’ by a Heavenly Thread,” The New York Times, November 22, 1993, p. A 4.
9. Philip Shenon, “Star TV extends Murdoch’s Reach,” The New York Times, August 23, 1993, p. C 1.
10. Seabrook continues, “The promotions department is often said to be the core of MTV. Everything on MTV is a promotion for something, and the promo department’s mission, in a sense, is to promote that.” Says one of MTV’s employees, “You’re selling a feeling about what it means to be … God I don’t know.” John Seabrook, “Rocking in Shangri-La,” The New Yorker, October 10, 1994, pp. 64-78.
11. In Prague high schools today, official reading materials for the high school graduation exam include the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” John Lennon’s “Woman,” Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” and Pink Floyd’s “Happiest Days of Our Lives.” Harper’s, June 1994, p. 22. But then Eric Segal’s Love Story was once on France’s vaunted university examination!
12. When MTV started, the average age of management was twenty-five; today, it is closer to twenty-nine. Redstone thinks guerrillas are kids: “By the way,” he adds, “this is also why freedom fighters all over the world associate themselves with MTV”! Cited by Seabrook, “Rocking,” p. 76.
13. Steve Clarke, “Rock Conquers Continent,” Variety, November 16, 1992, p. 35.
14. Helmut Fest, “MTV Europe Ignores Local Acts,” Billboard, March 7, 1992, p. 8.
15. Uma de Cunha, “India,” in Variety International Film Guide (Hollywood: Samuel French Trade, 1993), pp. 205-210.
16. In his Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), Peter Manuel thus describes how portable cassette players created cultural shock waves in Northern India, with traumatic effects on Indian popular culture. With cassette players, there was at least some listener choice: with satellites, the monopolies control taste, even while affecting to respond to local markets.
17. Cited by Peter Waldman, “Iran Fights New Foe: Western Television,