I hear that they run "Is Paris Burning?" backward to make it look like they drove the Germans out. Filmmaking at it's best!!!
The convention is here:
http://whc.unesco.org/world_he.htm
There is this particular piece of rubbish in it that I find pretty objectionable:
So the charming cultural practice of infibulation should be protected? Goodness gracious. I wonder if their openmindedness extends to the american firearms culture. I think not.
http://whc.unesco.org/world_he.htm
There is this particular piece of rubbish in it that I find pretty objectionable:
So the charming cultural practice of infibulation should be protected? Goodness gracious. I wonder if their openmindedness extends to the american firearms culture. I think not.
Flo
Illuminator
Tss, tsss, tss ... I've seen you do a much better French bashing than that. If only you could have heard (and seen) Douste-Blasy this morning on EU's agricultural policy ...
Sorry, Flo. Knee jerk.
Noticed something... you say "tss" we would say "tsk" with a hard "k". Is the actual pronunciation different? How curious.
Actually, I am just being contrarian. The people that I really, really don't like are polititions from whatever country. Do you know that all of them abuse barnyard animals? It is true. Ours convert them to Born Again Christianity and pour rye whiskey into them before the actual act. That is to appease the Religious Right. I suspect in France they dispence with the conversion and use wine rather than rye. This raises the question of what Moslem polititions do. I will have to think on that one.
Anyhoo, I ever tell you how I pillaged Notre Dame de Paris? Positively medieval and consistant with European Cultural Heritage. My wife was aghast but the Europeans I have told this episode to have said "quite right", then again they were mostly Brits.
Flo
Illuminator
We only pronounce the hard k to someone we really don't like
No abusing barnyard animals that I know of over here, mostly because it would tend to make the meat unpalatable. And they would use schnaps on their victims.
I remember you telling us about it, but I forgot the details. Nothing serious, for sure, I don't remember the press running titles like "Ugly American Barbarian Defaces our Best Cathedral!" within the last 30 years. I used to go roller-skating there when I was a kid ...
Flo
Illuminator
They don't have the time, they're too busy forcing us into McDonalds and Starbucks.
By the way, maybe you would like to know that the entire world followed the French position on this "Cultural Exception" thing. Canada supported the French. The US was completely isolated (it was only supported by... Israel). Even Britain backed the French-Canadian position.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1595445,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1595445,00.html
You really are dishonest, aren't you? When I used the Guardian as a reference you dismissed it. Shame.
Mmm... Emotional, aren't we? Well, you know, if you ask people around the world if they wish that culture be exempt from free market economic arrangements, you'll find that the overwhelming majority will say yes.
When it comes to "cultural products", there is a clear oligopolistic tendency as a few globalized firms have come to control up to 85% of the dissemination of works, in both the film and record industries. Anything that contributes to more diversity is, from my point of view, good. I'm a fan of a lot of US culture, but that doesn't mean that that's all I wish to see.
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Not at all. It's great with garlic and rosemary.
And the polititions like it on a spit, turning. Bastards.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
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If you ask people if they want to be able to control what their neighbors watch, you might get a majority who say yes. If you ask people if they want their governments to determine what they watch, the number will likely be much lower. That's a rather natural contradiction, but you seem not to care that it exists.
When it comes to "cultural products", there is a clear tendency for consumers to choose up to 85% of their consumption from a few globalized firms.
Last time I checked, I controlled my consumption of cultural products, not any giant company. You're pretending to take power away from giant companies on behalf of consumers, but what you're really advocating doesn't transfer that power to consumers at all. It doesn' increase their choices, it RESTRICTS them. It takes power away from BOTH consumers AND corporations and gives it to government beaurocracies.
Translation: I don't trust the choices of my fellow citizens in a free market, and want to restrict their choices in order to favor my personal preferences.
If people don't like McDonalds they do not have to eat there. If people don't like Starwars, they do not have to watch. If people don't like Google, they don't have to use it. If people don't like Madonna, they do not have to listen to her.
It is irrellevant whether the majority say they like the free market culture, a large percentage of people everywhere vote with their money for American culture.
To put it nicely, it is arrogant, snobbery that leftists and chauvinists prevent other people from buying what they want. If some Canadians want to watch Terrance and Phillip, that's great. If some Canadians want to watch South Park, that's great. If some Canadians want to watch Brazilian soap operas, that's OK too. If they are denied the opportunity to watch South Park or Brazilian soap operas, that is despicable.
CBL
Nobody is preventing no one from seeing, or eating what they want. Nobody is arguing that US cultural production should be banned or anything of the sort. See, the problem is not what people want to watch or eat, but how culture is distributed and marketed. For instance, I don't expect a small Canadian movie production to have the access to the same numbers of view screens as star wars. I also don't expect them to spend as much in marketing as a big US studio production does. They don't have the money nor the means. But see, I want to be able to watch the small canuck film when I feel like it, and I have no objections to my government making up a few rules to make sure that the small canadian production gets on TV or on a few view screens.
There's space for everyone, and these "cultural exception" rulings just make sure that a few oversized mammoths don't trample everything in their path in the name of "free market economics" and their quest for profits.
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Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
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- 61,585
No, I'm afraid you're simply wrong. If the art-house flicks you were interested in were popular, then people would fork over their own money for them in large numbers, and there would be no marketing and distribution issue. They AREN"T well-distributed and marketed because not many people DO want to go see them.
Both of those things flow directly from the fact that people CHOOSE to go see star wars movies rather than small Canadian movies. If this were not so, then star wars would be small and Canadian movies woud be large. But star wars is big BECAUSE people want to see it, and small Canadian movies are small BECAUSE not many people are interested in it, not the other way around. When a small movie comes along that large numbers of people DO want to see (such as Blair Witch), then marketing will expand accordingly.
In other words, you want to tax your neighbors in order to spend their money to broadcast something that they don't want to watch. Maybe it's a direct tax (ala BBC), maybe it's indirect (broadcast requirements to play programming which can't be advertiser-supported raises operating costs, and those costs ALWAYS get passed on to consumers one way or another), but it's there. Who makes the choice of what to broadcast if commercial viability is no longer an objective? The government. You seem to like their choices, but I for one think they have no business getting involved.
What makes a company "oversized"? Is there some natural size for companies, beyond which they somehow turn evil? Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. Entertainment companies derive their power ONLY throw consumers choosing their products. It is, in the end, the consumers who have the power in a free market economy. Companies can't trample anything unless consumers want the product they're selling. But not so with governments. If the government is choosing what to subsidize, where's the consumer power? There's no requirement that government-subsidized cultural products actually satisfy consumers, so consumers essentially become powerless. Their tax dollars are spent how the government decides, and they have little to no say in the matter.
Once you have empowered government to do this, how do you keep said government from abusing that power? How do you make sure government doesn't press it's own cultural agenda? How do you make sure that they're really just encouraging diversity, and not trying to stiffle change?
You can't. You assume that such powers will naturally be used benevolently. But that's an assumption I do not care to make, and it's not an assumption I'd be willing to fork over my tax dollars to test.