Under the Sign of Mickey Mouse & Co.

Gitlin makes the argument that the majority of the worlds media and entertainment can be loosely defined as "American". I think this is a valid point overall. American culture has become something of a standard around the world. This was no more evident to me than when I went on tour with the Indianapolis Children's Choir to China and we stopped in to a McDonald's one day (I refrained from partaking, I found the idea of visiting a foreign country and stopping in to an American chain as rather distasteful). Stores and products like McDonald's enjoy exposure the world over, which supports Gitlin's claim. One point he brought up, and something I had never really considered before, was the fact that the United States serves as something of a giant market survey when it comes to new products. The cultural make-up of America is so highly varied, that if a product is able to succeed in the United States, and if it resonates with various ethnic groups, that tends to be a strong indicator of how the product will do worldwide. Virtually nowhere else in the world does such a culture of variance exist in one nation, and this provides entrepreneurs with the ultimate test in terms of whether or not a product could succeed outside America. Another interesting point Gitlin brought up was the fact that so many people emulate American entertainment and American products is due to the fact that they sell. Stephen Spielberg's directing techniques bear fruit - he is able to convince droves of people to see a movie he has directed simply by having directed it. McDonald's will be able to sell food almost anywhere it goes, it has a versatility in its offerings that appeals to a cross section of people. Given the fact that entrepreneurs are presented with comparable American products which succeed and are popular, why would one chose not to emulate them in an attempt to recreate their success? The world of business is a cut-throat one; starting a business for many is hard enough in its own right. When people are presented with a model that works and is profitable, they would be fiscally remiss to not incorporate at least some portion of the American equivalent in their own model. The problem is that this deters people from being truly innovative, and breeds something akin to complacency when it comes to thinking of new products and ideas. One point of contention I will raise with the article was with Gitlin's description of English as "grammatically simple". English is anything but grammatically simple. It has a far higher number of irregular verbs than most of it's Latinate and Germanic counterparts, to name just one criteria it fails in terms of being "grammatically simple". Perhaps Gitlin meant that English was grammatically simple in comparison to languages like Chinese, which feature their own pictographic symbols for individuals words, resulting in hundreds of thousands of different symbols that must be learned. In these terms, I suppose English is much less complex. However, Gitlin does not elaborate on this point whatsoever, expecting us to take it at face value. Other than this, I thought many of the points that he made were interesting, and worth further thought.