Jihad vs. McWorld - Benjamin R. Barber [190]
10. Nadeshda Azhginkhina, “High Culture Meets Trash TV,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 1993, p. 42.
11. German Information Service, The Week in Germany, November 26, 1993.
12. Bagdikian tracks media monopoly but also follows an equally alarming development, “the subtle but profound impact of mass advertising on the form and content of the advertising-subsidized media.” Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, fourth edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), p. xxx.
13. Ibid., p. 4.
14. Ibid., pp. 21-22. The German firm Bertelsmann launched a $100 million joint venture with America Online in 1995.
15. Cited by Bernard Weinraub, “A Hollywood Recipe: Vision, Wealth, Ego,” The New York Times, October 16, 1994, p. A 1.
16. Cited in M. Meyer and N. Hass, “Simon Says, ‘Out!’, Viacom Ousts Simon & Schuster’s CEO,” Newsweek, June 27, 1994, pp. 42-44.
17. Sarah Lyall, “The Media Business: Paramount Publishing to Cut Jobs and Books,” The New York Times, January 24, 1994, p. D 8.
18. Bagdikian, Media Monopoly, p. 19.
19. Ibid.
20. Paramount did so well selling Dancing with Wolves through McDonald’s that it did the same with The Addams Family and the Wayne’s World series as well as Ghost and Charlotte’s Web. McDonald’s as a film outlet is a natural expression of its status as theme park. It’s a two-way relationship: Amblin Entertainment sold commercial rights for Jurassic Park products to over one hundred licensees including McDonald’s. Bernard Weinraub, “Selling Jurassic Park,” The New York Times, June 14, 1993, pp. C 11, 16. Movie critic Stuart Klawans notes the irony of the film itself, which features its own theme park and theme park store with Jurassic Park tie-in items identical to those being sold in the real world. Which world then is real? See Stuart Klawans, “Films,” The Nation, July 19, 1993, p. 115–116.
21. 1992 Report to Shareholders, McDonald’s Corporation, Oak Brook, Illinois. McDonald’s 1992 U.S. sales were $13.2 billion; outside the United States it earned another $8.6 billion for a total of nearly $22 billion.
22. Its stock has more than doubled since 1991 and it projects earnings of nearly $9 billion in 1995, up from $7.1 million in 1992. USA Today, June 2, 1994, p. 3B.
23. Andrew E. Serwer, “McDonald’s Conquers the World,” Fortune, October 17, 1994, p. 104.
24. From the McDonald’s Annual Report, 1992; ellipses in original.
25. The soft drink industry understands this as well as anyone: “Coke Light is trying to extend the American cultural model in its international markets,” says Tom Pirko, a New York management consultant. “They’re saying refreshment is a lifestyle thing and there may be kind of a reverse chic in this approach.” Daniel Tilles, “Coke Light Gears Up for a Hard Sell,” The International Herald Tribune, May 18, 1994. Randal W. Donaldson, an Atlanta Coca-Cola spokesman supporting the nationwide move to bring fast foods and soft beverages into schools, states bluntly: “Our strategy is ubiquity. We want to put soft drinks within arm’s reach of desire.” Robert Pear, “Senator, Promoting Student Nutrition, Battles Coca-Cola,” The New York Times, April 26, 1994, p. A 20.
26. Prince Consort Albert, May I, 1851, inaugural address, cited by Michael Sorkin, Variations on a Theme Park (New York: Noonday Press, 1992), p. 209.
27. Margaret Crawford, “The World in a Shopping Mall,” in Sorkin, Variations, p. 4.
28. Ibid., p. 14.
29. As malls find their way to Eastern Europe and elsewhere, local investors insist with a mixture of self-interest and naïveté that what they are investing in is “American conditions without the American mentality.” The Week in Germany, German Information Service, October 8, 1993, p. 5. The problem is, the conditions are the mentality. These developments have led a group of politicians, writers, artists, clergymen, and professors to form a “Committee for Fairness” that, according to its founding statement, opposes “the destruction of our industry and agriculture, mass unemployment, unbearable rent increases, unfairly low wages,