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From: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: 'Free' Trade? -- culture
Message-ID: <834@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 13-Feb-87 12:55:49 EST
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.834
Posted: Fri Feb 13 12:55:49 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Feb-87 02:01:10 EST
References: <12419@watnot.UUCP> <1469@hcrvx1.UUCP> <827@ubc-cs.UUCP> <1471@hcrvx1.UUCP>
Reply-To: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews)
Distribution: can
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 63


     Let me give you an analogy.  (oh nooo)

     If the cereal companies didn't put thiamine, niacinimide, etc.
in their breakfast cereals, parents would go ahead blithely buying
their kids Alpha-Bits (tm), Froot Loops (sic, tm), Wayne Gretzky's
Sugar-Coated Chocolate Hockey Pucks Cereal (tm, possibly) and other
crap, because a lot of them -- not all of them, but a lot of them --
don't know the difference and couldn't be bothered to find out.

     This would be bad for the kids.  Now I'm not sure what it is
that makes them put that thiamine etc. in the cereals.  If it's the
government or the cereal industry itself, we have a perfect analogy.
Exclusively American TV would be bad for Canadians' self-image and
identity as a separate nation, because it wouldn't have enough stuff
about Canada in it; and this should be regulated by the government
or, at least, the (entire) North American TV industry.

     If we had unlimited American TV, a lot of people -- not all of
them, but a lot of them -- couldn't be bothered to watch anything
except the glittery, high-powered-production shows that come out of
the American TV industry.  They would lose a sense of Canada's
nationhood, and think of themselves as poor cousins to the Americans
for not being right in the thick of American culture.  This happens
to a certain extent already.

     Now if the individual cereal manufacturers individually started
to put thiamine etc. in their cereals, because the competition in
the marketplace demanded it, well then my analogy breaks down.
Because there's no WAY that ANY American TV network would voluntarily
put stuff about Canada in its programming and risk losing a large
number of American viewers ("Canada?  CANADA?  Who the hell wants
to hear about Canada?  We might as well hear about Belgium or Uruguay
or Sierra Leone.  Let's switch back to Wheel of Fortune").

--

In article <1471@hcrvx1.UUCP> chrisr@hcrvx1.UUCP (Chris Retterath) writes:
>Well, Canada may be a great place to live, but Americans don't have
>to be interested in it. By the same token, we are usually not interested
>in American politics at the state level....

     Do you really believe that Canada is no more important than an
American state?  I pity you.

>                                     ... It just doesn't concern us most
>of the time, and, like Americans, we don't watch things we don't care
>about. The media merely reflects these preferences.

     No, the North American media reflect the Americans'
DISPROPORTIONATE sense of their own importance in the world.  As
I say, if 10% of the shows in North American TV were about Canada,
to reflect the 10% of the Anglophone population of the continent
which is Canadian, I would be happy, however that came about.

>None of this, of course, has anything to do with free trade.

     Wrong.  This discussion started because of the Americans'
view that culture should be "on the table" in free trade talks.

--Jamie.
...!ubc-vision!Ubc-cs!andrews
"He shouts across the ocean to the shore"