More on Cultural Diversity

What is most striking about the whole attempt to regulate the globalization of media flows, from 1976 to 2005, is how it became more and more narrowly focused on audiovisual products, in particular those coming out of the United States.

Back in 1980, the 312-page report of UNESCO's International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems contains about seven pages on film and television; the rest deals with a myriad of issues, from journalism to technology to censorship.  (Point of minor interest: the lead writer of that report, Sean MacBride, was the son of Maude Gonne, the legendary Irish activist and muse to William Butler Yeats.)

The recent Cultural Diversity Convention, by contrast, is full of incredibly repetitive and (to my mind) vague references to "diverse art practices" and "diverse cultural identities," but as Canada's Globe and Mail put it, all that clotted language was really just "code for 'let's all get together and protect our national cultures against Hollywood."