Forbes Magazine
http://www.forbes.com/magazines/global/2003/0428/038.html
Fifth
Anniversary
Modern Mix
04.28.03
True, wealth and
globalization open the door to mass commercial junk. They also invite a rich
cultural diversity as never before. A different take on "creative
destruction."
Critics
charge that we are headed towards a homogeneous global culture of the
"least common denominator"--a McDonaldization or, in the performance
arts, arguably a Madonnization. Perhaps no issue today, not even the wage competition
that leads to export of manufacturing and support jobs, drives greater
hostility to markets, globalization and free international trade.
The French won a trade exemption for cultural products in 1994, and now they
are campaigning to have culture removed from free trade agreements altogether.
A February meeting in the Louvre assembled representatives from 35 nations in
support of this cause. Indeed. Cultural protectionism is common around the
world. Spain and Brazil place binding domestic content requirements on their
cinemas; France, Spain and Canada do the same for television. Until recently
India did not allow the import of Coca-Cola--a manufactured product, yes, but
no less an emblem of commercial culture. The French spend approximately $3 billion
a year on cultural matters, and employ 12,000 bureaucrats, trying to nourish
their vision of a uniquely French culture.
In reality, culture and trade are allies, not enemies. Trade makes our lives
rich and diverse, most of all in the cultural realm. Virtually all cultural
products are synthetic in nature and based in cross-cultural exchange.
A young professional may drink Australian wine from Austrian stemware, listen
to Beethoven on a Japanese audio system, use the internet to buy Persian
textiles from a dealer in London, watch Hollywood movies funded by foreign
capital and filmed by European directors, and vacation in a French-owned resort
in Bali. Mass-commercial junk of modern society is a symptom of the riches we
enjoy. More junk and more quality are both the result of more diversity. Paris
and Hong Kong, both centers of haute cuisine, have the world's two busiest
Pizza Hut outlets. The same processes that bring us more mass-market chain
food--higher incomes, more meals outside the home, and competitive
pressures--also bring us the wonders of ethnic dining. The large cities of the
world now offer dozens of cuisines, instead of just a few. Even midsize towns
in the affluent West will have a growing range of international dining, often
excellent. And good coffee!
But we should not look just to ethnic food, narrowly defined, to see the
diversity of trade. All food is fusion cuisine, and all dining is ethnic
dining. Swiss chocolate is in reality Mexican in origin. Where would German
food be without the potato, Italian food without the tomato, or Thai food
without chilies, all originally products of the New World?
The richer Western countries have a reputation for being cultural imperialists,
and surely no one can defend all of the violent depredations and conquests of
the last 500 years. That being said, it is frequently overlooked how trading
with wealthy countries has helped the cultures of poorer countries around the
world. Globalization is a cultural hero rather than a villain. Many non-Western
literatures were stagnant before Western fiction, the modern printing press and
the bookstore made significant inroads. Salman Rushdie of India, Naguib Mahfouz
of Egypt, Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Colombia and Pramoedya Toer of Indonesia,
among others, have established reputations as world-class writers, comparable
to the best of Europe and the U.S.
The book itself is the product of multicultural trade. Paper comes from the
Chinese, the Western alphabet comes from the Phoenicians, the page numbers come
from the Arabs and ultimately the Indians, and printing has a heritage through
Gutenberg, a German, as well as through the Chinese and Koreans. The core
manuscripts of antiquity were preserved by Islamic civilization, and to a
lesser extent, by Irish monks.
The musical centers of the Third World--such as Cairo, Bombay, Lagos, Rio de
Janeiro, and pre-Castro Havana--have been heterogeneous and cosmopolitan cities
that welcomed new ideas and new technologies from outside. The styles behind
the recent Cuban music boom date from the 1950s, when American tourists
financed a culture of nightclubs and entertainment. African cities have blended
differing tribal cultures and the technology of the electric guitar to produce
some of the most vital world musics, as represented by Youssou N'Dour from
Senegal or Salif Keita from Mali. Cesaria Evoria from Cape Verde combines the
European song tradition with Portuguese, Brazilian and African influences.
Some so-called folk musics are in fact quite recent products. Israeli folk
music, as we know it, developed only in the 20th century and did not hit full
stride until after the Second World War. Jewish immigration brought together
influences from Arab music, Jewish religious music, traditional Jewish folk
melodies, and the musics of the Eastern European ghettos.
Modernity has spurred or revitalized many of the so-called traditional musics.
The Indonesian gamelan orchestra uses gongs, xylophones and percussion to
produce a rhythmic pulsing with the melodic beauty of bells and chimes. The
gamelan gongs, however, came from China, which in turn were brought from
further west. For centuries gamelan composers and performers have modified the
forms, rhythms, scales and instruments of their music, often with great
ingenuity.
Against the wishes of many cultural conservatives, Balinese gamelan music has
begun to give a more prominent role to vocals, especially to the female voice.
The more personal vocal element reaches out to a greater number of fans,
especially women, and has resulted in a more eclectic sound. In Java, the new
vocal parts sometimes draw their inspiration from Catholic liturgical music or
from the show tunes of Cole Porter.
Balinese dance also fails to qualify as a
pristine, untouched native art. Perhaps the most famous Balinese dance is the
Kecak, where dozens of Balinese sing the rhythmic vocal of the "monkey
chant" while waving their upper body and arms. Walter Spies, a German
artist, choreographed the original Kecak in 1932 for a German film called The
Island of Demons.
Cultural influences typically run both ways, and the
history of Indonesian music illustrates this. Debussy and others tried to mimic
the sound of the gamelan orchestra in their classical compositions. African
music received one of its central instruments, the xylophone, from Indonesia,
following a migration about 1,500 years ago. Over the centuries various forms
of the xylophone spread throughout the African continent, revolutionizing most
of the musics they touched. Later the xylophone found its way into the New
World music of the slaves, the music of the Central and South American Indians,
and the European symphony orchestra.
Cross-cultural trade has proved a boon for the visual
arts as well. The metal knife enabled many Third World sculpting and carving
traditions, including the totem poles of the Pacific Northwest. Acrylic and oil
paints spread with Western contact. South African Ndebele art uses beads as an
essential material for the adornment of aprons, clothing and textiles. These
beads are not indigenous to Africa, but rather were imported from
Czechoslovakia in the early 19th century. Mirrors, coral, cotton cloth and
paper--all central materials for "traditional" African arts--came
from contact with Europeans. The 20th-century flowering of Third World
"folk arts" has been driven largely by Western demands, materials and
technologies of production.
The success of 19th-century Persian carpets required
wealthy Western customers. Persian carpets were an old tradition, but had
largely died out by the 18th century. Persian society had lost its political
stability, causing trade routes to dry up and wealth to decline. The textile
arts recovered in the second half of the 19th century, however, when Western
buyers developed a love for the art. By the end of the 19th century
hand-knotted rugs were Persia's largest export to the West and a source of
Persian cultural pride.
Mahatma Gandhi had charged that machine-made products
drove most handweavers out of business; the Western movie Gandhi, itself a globalized product, has spread this myth. In
reality modern technologies have boosted Indian handweaving. Today India has
over three million handlooms and six million weavers, more than ever before.
Western technologies provided critical support for this
growth. The railroad, introduced by the British, made it possible for
handweavers to sell to larger regional and national markets, rather than just
locally. Handweavers received access to new and extensive networks of
middlemen, and moved toward new and efficient means of larger-scale
organization. The railway also brought cheap and high-quality foreign yarns to
handweavers, which increased the quantity and quality of their output. The
yarns no longer need to be made by hand, which makes it easier to concentrate
on the design and the quality of the weave.
Consider something as obscure as Tuvan throat singing
from Mongolia, where two notes are sounded at once. Recording and radio have
provided it critical support in recent times. A group from the Smithsonian went
into Tuvan territory and made a number of highly regarded and profitable
recordings. Since then younger Tuvans have shown greater interest in learning
throat singing. By expanding the size of the market, recording has stimulated
Tuvan musical innovation as well as preservation of older styles. A recent
American movie, Genghis Blues, may expand
the popularity of the genre further.
Even the more isolated Asian musics have benefited from
trade with other cultures. Japanese music first took off with exposure to
Korean, Chinese and Indian styles over 1,000 years ago. New instruments and
forms developed over the centuries, partly because of Japan's ongoing contact
with her Asian neighbors. Later the Portuguese transmitted European Renaissance
church music in the 16th century before Japan was closed to most Westerners.
Western music swept the country and fed into both Japanese folk and high
culture styles. Today Japan has produced numerous first-rate classical
performers, such as Mitsuko Uchida. The country also produces punk rock, girl
groups and rap, each with its own sound. Meantime, a wave of Chinese influence
on U.S. orchestras is the talk of cultural circles.
No mention of contemporary music can fail to note its
most essential import, the celebrated "British invasion" of the
1960s, first to America and soon to the world beyond. Rhythm and blues, of
course, was an earlier U.S. export to England, but rather than crushing the
British sound, it inspired, most famously, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
It cannot be said that cross-cultural
trade brings only gain, as the growth of some cultural ideas means the passing
of others. Globalized culture illustrates Joseph Schumpeter's metaphor of
capitalist production as a gale of "creative destruction." While some
cultural sectors expand with extreme rapidity, others shrink and wither away.
The silent movie, the Viennese symphony and the epic poem all had their heydays
in the past. It is easy to see why many defenders of diversity decry the
passing of previous cultures, favoring stasis over innovation.
Yet trade tends to increase diversity over time by
accelerating the pace of change and bringing new cultural goods with each era
or generation. The 19th century, by virtually all accounts, was a fantastically
creative and fertile epoch. The exchange of cultural ideas across Europe and
the Americas promoted diversity and quality, rather than turning everything
into homogenized pap.
The great Renaissance artists found their customers all
over Europe. American buyers supported Monet before the French caught on to his
genius. The Na•ve art tradition of Haiti has relied primarily on markets in
North America and Europe.
Conversely, the most prominent period of cultural
decline in Western history coincides with a radical shrinking of trade
frontiers. The so-called Dark Ages, which date roughly from the collapse of the
Roman Empire in 422 A.D. to early medieval times, saw a massive contraction of
interregional trade and investment. After the fall of the Roman Empire, trade
dried up, cities declined and feudalism arose as nobles retreated to heavily
armed country estates. During this same period, architecture, writing, reading
and the visual arts all declined. The magnificent buildings of antiquity fell
into disrepair, or were pillaged for their contents. Bronze statues were melted
down for their metal, and many notable writings perished. A society that does
not globalize is a society that fails to preserve the best of its past.
The rise of medieval society and the Renaissance was, in
large part, a process of reglobalization, as the West increased its contacts
with the Chinese and Islamic worlds. At the same time, trade fairs expanded,
shipping lanes became more active, and overland trade paths, many dormant since
the time of the Romans, were reestablished.
The critics of globalization often confuse differing
kinds of diversity. It is correct that trade often decreases diversity across
societies. That is, different places become more alike. But societies become
more alike by offering more choice across the board. Today it is possible to
buy classic sushi in both Germany and France. Does this diminish the famous
Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo?
The market does best at encouraging operative diversity,
or how effectively we can enjoy the world's offerings. In some ways the world
was very diverse in 1450, but not in a way that most individuals could benefit
from. Markets have subsequently disseminated the diverse products of the world
very effectively, as illustrated by walking through a book or music superstore.
Call that Virgin Megafication.
Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason
University in Fairfax, Virginia, and is also the author of In Praise of
Commercial Culture (Harvard University Press,
1998) and What Price Fame? (Harvard,
2000). Website: tcowen@gmu.edu.Modern
Small World: a Cross-Cultural
Potpourri
04.28.03
Back to Modern Mix
Atlantic Crossing
04.28.03
Upon American actor Kevin Spacey's appointment this
winter as artistic director of London's famed Old Vic theatrical company,
newspaper comment focused on the troupe's dire financial straits. Seems its
current productions don't create the excitement that they did in the halcyon
days when Laurence Olivier managed a tour-de-force double bill, playing a fop
in Sheridan's The Rivals only to return a half an hour later to do the lead in
Oedipus Rex.
The thinking seemed to be that Spacey, as a commercially
inclined Yank who's nonetheless appeared in an Old Vic offering, will try to
mount productions that bring in revenue. British counterparts have frequently
put on works of limited appeal.
Surprising acceptance, perhaps, given endless twittering
about the replacement of British cultural values, particularly among the young,
by coarse American cultural values--Rambo for Henry V, Warhol rather than
Turner, Eminem in place of Elgar or Ralph Vaughan Williams. Presumably Elton
John, the Old Vic's chairman, bridges these troubled waters.
The Brit stage crowd must sense that, forgetting the Old
Vic shuffle, transatlantic roles are reversed at the moment. There's not much
new from America playing in London, while Broadway continues to seek box office
gold in transplanted British productions. Recent openings include A Day in the
Life of Joe Egg, The Play What I Wrote and Vincent in Brixton (about Van Gogh's
love affair with his London landlady).
Anyhow, Spacey's predecessor, Lord Olivier, knew you had
to sell the show to the unwashed mob to survive. And weren't the stall seats at
the Vic once hard by the stables?
Worldly Workouts
04.28.03
Exercise venues may vary from the cramped parks of Hong
Kong to the school yards in India to the multistory glass-encased
"gyms" of metropolitan America, but increasingly the routines
performed are blending together. Exercise fads these days are an intercultural
petri dish.
The world's able and fit congregate to breathe, stretch
and awaken with low-impact tai chi, yoga and Chinese movement-and-breathing
therapy, qi gong. Hispanic populations practice the Brazilian dance-fight game
Capoeira. Yoga soothed India first, then reached Europe by 1880. Now about 14
million Americans partake daily. Migrating in reverse, Joseph Pilates'
eponymous strengthening exercises for dancers started in New York in the 1930s.
Mat classes, with no apparatus, now dot Stockholm and Tokyo.
The latest undercurrent? Hula and belly dance.
Distributor Natural Journeys, based in Thousand Oaks, California, has sold
nearly $7 million worth of hula, belly dance and tai chi exercise videos in the
past year. Its Bellydance: Fitness for Weight Loss, Hip Drop Hip Hop--30
minutes of traditional hip- and rib-wriggling motions set to a modern, upbeat
tempo--burns calories and fat, while supposedly aiding digestion. One Hawaiian
hula video offers a high-spirited three-minute routine, targeting troubled
thighs, legs and abs as well as potential mates.
Rania Bossonis, Bellydance's Greek aerobics instructor,
contends that ethnic exercise is more of a social elixir than the fads
kickboxing and aerobics. After all, she says, "Step class is not very much
of a conversation piece afterward."
Dance Diaspora
04.28.03
From the dance studios of Nagoya, Japan, to the New
Jersey Nets' basketball court, Chio Yamada has strutted her stuff with a style
that is part Janet Jackson and part Alvin Ailey. At age 28 she embodies today's
dance diaspora. She started sampling jazz and hip-hop at 18 in her native Japan
and moved to the U.S. five years ago for more technical training in modern
dance and ballet. Now, as she puts her own students through their paces at New
York's Broadway Dance Center, her style bears both the city's traditional and
contemporary influences.
Hip-hop's loud, baggy fashions have been popular among
young Japanese for several years. At the BDC, where there are many African
American and Asian dancers, the sounds of the genre's Missy Elliott and Busta
Rhymes reverberate. Fifty foreign students are justifying their visas with 18
hours of dance a week. Classic ballet is required by the BDC. But intensive
hip-hop training is a big draw.
Then there is Bhangra, similarly linking East and West.
With jabs worthy of Muhammad Ali and foot stomps like a terrible 2-year-old's,
Sarina Jain, also 28, has created the Masala Bhangra Workout. Born to Indian
parents and raised in Los Angeles, she moved to even more culturally diverse
New York to share her dance workout, she says.
A popular male folk dance that originally celebrated
wheat harvests in the villages of the Indian province of Punjab, Bhangra is
both a dance and a type of music. A drum, called a dhol, produces the heavy
beats. Characterized by repetitive spinning, bouncing and shoulder shrugging,
Bhangra somewhat resembles hip-hop. Today men and women of all shapes and
colors flock to George Washington University's annual Bhangra Blowout
competition near the U.S. State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., as
well as to New York, London and urban gym classes. Synthesizers and other
elements of mainstream reggae, techno and rap infuse the music.
At the New York Sports Club, Jain teaches a
low-to-the-ground forward sashay, or what she artfully terms "the Bhangra
slide," to a class of young professionals, few of them South Asians. To
lure curious gawkers into the fun, the ethnic Jane Fonda yells, "Pretend
you're at my wedding." She likes to marry contrasting cultures. When the
live music breaks, a mix by Asian rapper Panjabi MC revs up heart rates for the
rest of the 55-minute workout.
Food Feuds
04.28.03
Globalized chicken wings, pizza and sodas have food
fundamentalists fretting over cultural domination and protesting franchised
fare. But judging from the actions of the EU, it's not about being dominated so
much as being able to dominate.
A current French ad campaign seeks to teach
appellation-challenged Americans that Champagne comes only from Champagne.
Italy wants to begin certifying American restaurants as "authentically
Italian," for using traditional methods and, more important, buying most
ingredients from Italy. Other efforts would have Serrano ham come only from the
eponymous Spanish town; Irish sausages solely from Ireland; and cheddar cheese
only from the hamlet of that name in England. A problem: There's no cheddar
made in Cheddar anymore, notes ma”tre fromager Max McCalman, author of The
Cheese Course.
Food jealousies have led to that most organically
European product of all: bickering. A proposal in late 2001 to situate the
European Food Authority in Helsinki had Italian Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi proclaiming Helsinki unfit for the agency: "The Finns do not
even know what prosciutto is," he charged, demanding Parma be awarded the
prize. The Finns trusted a slick promotional campaign to win hearts, while
Italy offered perks like a Brussels-Parma airline shuttle and copious samples of
food to reporters. Berlusconi and his counterpart Paavo Lipponen ultimately
decided to split the plate, as it were, opting in March to put a branch of the
agency in both places. The EU's most commonly held belief is never to put its
governments on a diet.
Pot Luck
04.28.03
If any place can claim to show the benefits of
globalization in food, it is Singapore. The city has long been a crossroads of
Asia, with communities of Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Filipinos, Indians,
Malaysians, Indonesians, Thais and even Burmese bringing their tastes to meld
with those of Western expatriates. Singapore also boasts its own homegrown
Peranakan cuisine, a mixture of Chinese and Malaysian styles.
Singapore is trying to capitalize on this and the enhanced
appetite for Asian food and Asian-inspired food worldwide. One example: The
Raffles hotel chain has created two restaurant brands, Doc Cheng's and Jaan's,
based on the Singapore-based originals and their fusion of Western and Asian
cuisine. Doc Cheng's units are in Raffles hotels in Bangkok and Hamburg, while
Jaan's have opened in Raffles in London, Beverly Hills and Montreux,
Switzerland.
Another effort is food entrepreneur Kwan Liu's
At-Sunrice school. Her goal is a Singapore spot in the mode of France's Le
Cordon Bleu or America's Culinary Institute. Aspiring chefs--Asians or
Westerners--are to get professional training in the finer points of Asian
cuisine. "There's a real need for this," says Liu, who previously
started and sold a successful Asian spice-mix business. She has just launched a
two-year professional program combining classroom lessons with apprenticeships
in the kitchens in branches of the Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons and other
five-star hotels.
"Singapore is a melting pot, which helps to create
great cuisine, like in New York and London," says Violet Oon, who runs a
Singapore food consultancy and is the author of two cookbooks. "Such
cross-cultural hybridization can create very exciting food."