The Last Place

angela morgenstern writes "Buddhist Bhutan was the last place on earth to legalize television. Trading traditional practices for daytime soaps and WWF, many fear that western influence will trample the culture." A whole set of articles about the effect of American television on one of the most remote places on earth - it's official, there is no escape from American "culture".

Comments

No escape?

[warmcat]

Sure there is, turn off your TV, prise your kids out of the kid-shaped depression in the sofa and do other things that don't require you to be passive and watch ads to give you a value system.

Europe got culture?

[marlowe]

Oh, boy. I am such a redneck. I need to put on a Kraftwerk CD and read some gibberish by Derrida. And then maybe go out and pogrom a few Jews. Then I'll be suave and sophisticated.

And now is the time on Sprockets where we go on about how much more culture we have than the Americans.

Okay, I'll grant Europe had a fine culture, once. Operas and architecture and symphonies and everything. But that was a gosh-darn long time ago. Let's just face it. Europe has been in decline, culturally and politically, for about a century now.

I can get Beethoven, Mozart and Sibelius on CD. I can get the Dutch masters in high quality reproduction. I can even get the worthless crap the French are passing off as philosophy these days, though there's not much point. Who needs Europe anymore? It's all used up.

Nowadays, someone mentions European culture, and what comes to mind is the topless aerobics in that Chevy Chase movie. Just think, honey. They've been doing this for eons!