America's Multicultural Imperialism
Rocca, Francis X.
eptember promises to bring a verdict in the trial of lose Bove, who last August led farmers in wrecking a half-built McDonald's in the French town of Millau. The luxuriantly mustached...
...While predictability is essential to any chain's appeal, its downside is monotony...
...Among McDonald's many alleged sins, the one with the most resonance outside of activist circles is that of the imposition of dreary sameness on the social and physical landscape...
...Watson writes of Korean youngsters joyfully surprised to find, when visiting the States, that Americans have McDonald's, too...
...In his book The McDonaldization of Society, the U.S...
...What kind of a U.S...
...and not even the prosecutor wants Bove to serve prison time...
...American dominance will become more proportionate as foreign countries catch up in levels of online access...
...The customization of McDonald's goes beyond the food...
...For connoisseurs, these wines are not the real thing unless they come from the parts of Europe for which they are named...
...J~.]~"~T~}"~ and a poem by a Scottish school teacher actually . ' r T ~ l ) ~ named Ronald McDonald, mocking the corporation's claim to exclusive commercial use of the "Me" prefix...
...It has taught Chinese to stand in line, and their children to order for themselves rather than let parents choose for them...
...So why haven't we seen some bookseller equivalent of Jose Bove lead a group of fellow merchants against the Seat-de-based behemoth7 One reason is that there is no bricks-and-mortar Amazon outlet to trash, though e-terrorism would be possible...
...With management's cooperation, customers have made the McDonald's experience a Chinese experience...
...Despite its origins, few think of it as exclusively American...
...It has taught Japanese to eat with their hands and on their feet...
...In Beijing they serve spicy chicken wings, in New Delhi vegetable McNuggets, in Tokyo teriyaki burgers...
...Benneton sells its bright< . . . . . . i ly colored togs with ads eelei brating the international brotherhood of attractive young people...
...Ritzer's critique betrays an academic's disdain for mass-market kitsch...
...This might sound like more rabblerousing against the "Great Satan," but no less a U.S...
...Exotic destinations are harder than ever to find...
...In attacking McDonald's, Bove has said, he was symbolically attacking America--not only because it had placed a prohibitive tariff on Roquefort (a cheese made Globalization is turning the whole world into the United States, cultural nationalists complain...
...the reverse can happen...
...McDonald's makes an attractive case study for anthropologists because, despite its size, it is a relatively simple business, selling a small range of products in a traditional, face-to-face way...
...The social and economic impact of any retail chain is trivial compared to the changes that information tech~;ii!,~Zi:}:Ji ~!i...
...His tips for resisting McDonaldization include reading the New York Times instead of USA Today, and watching PBS instead of commercial networks, as if higher-brow media organs didn't present their own prefabricated visions of the world...
...The most popular commodities on the global market might as well be from anywhere...
...The authoritative newspaper Le Monde has declared that "McDonald's red and yellow ensign is the new version of America's star-spangled banner, whose commercial hegemony threatens agriculture and whose cultural hegemony insidiously _9 ruins alimentary behavior--sacred reflections of French identity...
...Since any Website with international aspirations features an English version, anyone with some command of the language can virtually roam the world...
...Frenchmen, Indians, and Filipinos can use the Internet equally well to promote and sell the products of their cultures...
...The novelty of clean restrooms at McDonald's has raised general standards of cleanliness in Chinese restaurants...
...Well, yes and no...
...Even Americans may feel misgivings about their country's so- ~ ' ? ~ l ' ~ _ / _ . ~ called "cultural imperialism...
...As a lingua franca, English is increasingly used among non-native speakers...
...It is also an engine of American ecOnomic power...
...The Internet, originally developed for the Pentagon as a distributed communications network that could survive a nuclear attack, by definition has no center...
...It might be comforting to find CNN and MTV in one's Singapore hotel room, but it can be disappointing, too...
...Big Macs are halal in Kuala Lumpur, and kosher (i.e...
...Although the U.S...
...Because of its immu- : nity to censorship, it encourages individual liberty...
...Ye chikky burgers...
...In its humble way, this amounts to communicating a set of values...
...Such anxiety is not limited to France...
...However, as Watson et al...
...American movies, music, and journalism have no lock on the Internet as a communications medium...
...The number ofnon-U.S, e-businesses should rise accordingly...
...Branding and globalization don't mean that American junk food must drive out other countries' specialties...
...McDonald's, for all its glocalization and native-born managers of national divisions, has a headquarters--in Oak Brook, Illinois...
...The site ~ E : ! ~ t : t . ~ also features an interview with a former "Ronald I rlLN2i :]It.Lt[ McDonald" clown who has come out as a vegetarian...
...Now baseball is just one choice among many, and newcomers bring their sports with them...
...Thus the prominence of brands in the global economy...
...Here McDonald's provides a good model, even in a culture with highly developed culinary tastes...
...Another sign of defensive nationalism is last March's government dictate that civil servants eschew the terms "e-mail" and "start-up" in favor of un message electmnique and une jeune Dousse...
...Expanding choice gives advertising and brand loyalty greater roles--and regional customs a consequently smaller one--in determining taste...
...Like McDonald's, the Internet is made in the USA...
...ally than Israel [[7] ~ ~ , ~ _ recently considered limiting the non-Hebrew (i.e., English-lan- ~ L ~ ~ [ ~ guage) tunes that radio stations may play...
...nology has already begun to ',::, : ~-::~,~:~--~c...
...Immigrants from India, Pakistan, and other former British colonies in the West Indies have founded 17o cricket dubs in New York alone, reports Inigo Thomas in Slate...
...Travolta's account, which includes the detail that the Dutch put mayonnaise on their French fries, understates the variety of the restaurants' international menus...
...wreak on the world...
...The number of pop music genres on sale in a contemporary CD store would have bewildered a teenager of two decades ago...
...point out, going to McDonald's has also changed the customers...
...The evils attributed to the golden arches are wide-ranging...
...some 9 o percent of commercial Websites are based in the States...
...Non-American enterprises thrive globally by mastery of branding...
...My local McDonald's, on a street originally laid down by the Romans, displays its golden arches diserectly--they are no larger than the coats of arms over the doors of medieval and Renaissance palaces nearby...
...The causes of this fragmentation are complex, but an indisputable one is the ever growing movement of goods and information around the globe...
...edition features Americanized spelling and vocabulary, the forthcoming (Hollywood) movie will not change the hero's nationality--Englishness has been deemed essential to the property's appeal...
...Consumers seek not just diversity and novelty, but familiarity and reliability...
...Starbucks has made espresso as American as pizza, and taught millions worldwide the virtues of Guatemala Antigua and Arabian Mocha Sanani...
...The American Spectator - $ ep t e m b e r 2 o o o 37 "*v Nevertheless, to say that the ~ , Intemet is indifferent to the cul- [ . r ' ~ tural origin of the content passing through it is not to say that the Interact is culturally neutral...
...Although the business is global, it is also localFRANCIS X. ROCCA, former managing editor of TAS, is a writer in Vicenza, Italy...
...FRANCIS X. ROCCA from Bove's sheep's milk), but because the United States is the home of economic globalization and mass-produced food...
...A $3omillion cricket stadium is now planned for Brooklyn...
...The last stanza reads: Tae foreign foe we've niwer knelt, For Scotland's name oor bluid's been skelt, See you, Big Mac, an aa yir ilk, Gang hame, an yodel up yir kilt...
...franchises...
...Watson reports that there are more than zS,ooo outlets in 119 countries, and a new restaurant opens every 17 hours...
...The latest Harry Potter book, written and set in England, had the largest initial printing in U.S...
...Native cultures feel threatened by the Americanization of their cultures," complained Iranian President Mohammed Khatami last May...
...publishing history: 3.8 million copies, most of which were sold within a day of publication...
...These same characteristics also make McDonald's an unsatisfactory model of glob~ a l mass culture, which is transmitted in faster, less increasingly concrete, and vastly more complex ways...
...A study by . . . . the research firm IDC shows that recent European sales by Amazon.com are several times higher than that of its nearest European competitor...
...Or that Nokia is a Finnish company...
...35 ized or, to use a marketing term, "glocal...
...The world seems more and more the same--and more like the United States...
...Imagine how much more inviting India or Egypt becomes to a Pole or Brazilian once he learns English...
...In a collection of ethnological studies entitled Golden Arches East, Watson and other anthropologists show how McDonald's serves different social functions in Hong Kong than in Houston...
...So the world is becoming more like America, but that does not mean homogeneity--rather, the opposite...
...Rernember the scene in Pulp Fiction in which John Travolta tells Samuel L. Jackson about going to McDonald's overseas...
...Once upon a time, for instance, immigrants and their children embraced baseball as a way to assimilate...
...Of course, if going to McDonald's were really so dull, it wouldn't be so common...
...Some of them, such as Joe DiMaggio, mastered the game and won the admiration of all ethnic groups...
...Its cookie-cutter restaurants line the highways, but when one appears in a historic setting, it fits in...
...Americans have never had more cultural choices...
...Last Aprii a young woman in France was killed after Breton separatists bombed one of the chain's franchises...
...At many public schools the instruction is in Spanish...
...The ubiquity of Disney, Nike, Coca-Cola, and the like is Arch Villains McDonald's is a target not just for Jose Bove but for a host of environmentalists, animal rights activists, vegetarians, trade unionists, and enemies of capitalism...
...McSpotlight.org, a London-based Website, shows photos of John Major and Tony Blair inside McDonald's, and Margaret Thatcher eating a Big Mac, to illustrate the claim that politicians are owned by the "super wealthy...
...A Chilean can do preparatory research for his vacation in Greece...
...A Korean can go to an Icelandic rock group's site and download music...
...The offerings at a typical supermarket deli counter range from quesadillas to Thai chicken salad...
...More often, though, the national origins of brands are vague or unknown to their consumers...
...And they're rightbut not in the way they think...
...From outside you can see the exposedbeam ceiling of the upstairs dining room...
...The medium has a culture of its own, ':,_-'~ I more in harmony with some {!:.':i...
...market for Jose Bove's Roquefort was there twenty years ago...
...Cable television commonly offers more than loo channels, everything from soft-core pom to C-Span...
...While these goods are not possessed or prized exclusively by any one nation, in combination they are a recognizably American set of values...
...It is the way that Americans have been buying and selling for at least a generation, a system that befits a society of high geographic and economic mobility...
...But the Internet does not generally incite economic or cultural nationalists...
...40,000 showed up to cheer him at the start of the trial...
...Yet even a Big Mac aficionado like myself can't dismiss such objections outright...
...The Internet is an open system, and small countries, not to mention small merchants, are flee to compete on it...
...Global tourism should particularly benefit from this trend...
...A sense of worldwide access, which middle-class Americans have taken for granted for decades, is spreading to their counterparts in every other country...
...Hamburgers and French flies are not apt to replace rice and noodles in the Chinese diet, but McDonald's has shaped the way that Chinese merchants and consumers do business...
...The content of global mass culture is multinational in origin and universal in character, but the structure of its distribution and consumption is distinctively American...
...It has taught Russian employees to smile, and Russian customers not to take offense when smiled at...
...Worshippers disappointed with Christianity or Judaism have easy access to eastern religions, Islam, and the various forms of pagan spirituality known as New Age...
...Now that's cultural imperialism...
...France's support for Bove bespeaks a pervasive anxiety there that American influence is destroying the native culture, argues Sophie Meuer in a recent Foreign Affairs...
...There is surely much more gourmet cheese being sold to upwardly mobile diners everywhere owing to the integration of the world's economy...
...Denominations of controlled origin" such as champagne, sherry, and port function as brands in having international reputations...
...sociologist George Ritzer argues that the hamburger chain epitomizes modern capitalism's tendency to force a pre-programmed structure onto life, killing creativity and independent thinking...
...Having robbed American popular dining of regional flavor, it might seem, McDonald's is now busy doing likewise for the world's...
...The president, prime minister, and many other politicians have voiced sympathy for his cause...
...You can order champagne in Rio, and beer in most of Europe...
...Pokdmonrelated merchandise of every kind is coveted by the whole world's children, few of whom _9 ',: " ' | can realize that it originates in Japan...
...36 S ep t e m b e r 2 o o o _9 The American Spectator Native Brands An inexhaustible range of choices, while exhilarating, can be mind-boggling...
...When a Roman sightseeing in Milan seeks a cheap and relatively clean place for a quick lunch, the golden arches can be a welcome sight amid the dubious bars and pizzerias in the crowded tourist zones...
...The low cost barriers to setting up a site promote equality...
...They became icons of Americanness...
...The luxuriantly mustached shepherd and union organizer has become a national hero in France...
...Globalization has expanded the potential for profit in "highbrow 'micromarkets,'" as John Mieklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge point out in A Future Perfect...
...During the past five years, McDonald's restaurants have been the targets of violent protests-- including bombings--in over 50 countries, in cities including Rome, Macao, Rio de Janeiro, Prague, London, and Jakarta," writes the Harvard anthropologist James L. Watson in Foreign Affairs...
...Forrester Research, Inc...
...Owing largely to the Interact, they will increasingly be the world's...
...How many know or care that the garment maker is headquartered in Treviso, Italy...
...There are fewer and fewer normative American tastes, making it harder to define American identity, and harder to adopt it...
...For instance, in the former city and elsewhere in China, teenagers and the elderly linger at McDonald's for hours, something forbidden in U.S...
...ways of life than with others, i~ As anyone knows who has ~{~ ever rushed through a pile-up of e-mails, or marveled at the array of sites instantly called up by a i i l i i ~ single search, or cursed a download lasting more than a few see- ~ -- "-~._ ' - ' " " onds, the Intemet accustoms one to speed, efficiency, and sheer ~ ~ - ~ - quantity...
...predicts that by 2004 Western Europe and Asia-Pacific will have $3.1 trillion of the global e-commerce market, approaching North America's $3-5 trillion share...
...cheeseless) in Jerusalem...
...True, the Internet will reinforce English's status as the global language, but the most important consequence of that will not be the extension of American pop culture (most of which either needs no translation, or already has one...
...Yet the style of this consumerism betrays its national roots...
...The charm of eating in a restaurant just like thousands of others, with the same menu and scripted exchanges between customer and clerk, soon wears off...
...Or that the white-on-red cross in the Swatch logo is the flag of Switzerland...
Vol. 33 • September 2000 • No. 7
