“¡que nos la meten doblada, compañeros!”
There is a moral in this tale of two critics: the curse of soft power. In the affairs of nations, too much hard power ends up breeding not submission but resistance. Likewise, great soft power does not bend hearts; it twists minds in resentment and rage. And the target of Europe’s cultural guardians is not just America, the Great Seductress. It is also all those “little people,” a million in all, many of whom showed up in the wee hours to snag an admissions ticket to MoMA’s Berlin exhibit. By yielding to America-the-beguiling, they committed cultural treason — and worse: they ignored the stern verdict of their own priesthood. So America’s soft power is not only seductive but also subversive.
Hard power can by defanged by coalitions and alliances. But how do you balance against soft power? No confederation of European universities can dethrone Harvard and Stanford. Neither can all the subsidies fielded by European governments crack the hegemony of Hollywood. To breach the bastions of American soft power, the Europeans will first have to imitate, then improve on, the American model. Imitation and leapfrogging is the oldest game in the history of nations.
But competition has barely begun to drive the cultural contest. Europe, mourning the loss of its centuries-old supremacy, either resorts to insulation (by quotas and “cultural exception” clauses) or seeks solace in the disparagement of American culture as vulgar, inauthentic or stolen. If we could consult Dr. Freud, he would take a deep drag on his cigar and pontificate about inferiority feelings being compensated by hauteur and denigration.
Sobre las limitaciones del Soft Power, visto el resentimiento ante la preeminencia de la cultura estadounidense en el mundo. Yo, que estudio en Harvard, y que tengo a Pynchon y Faulkner en los altares, y que estoy genuina y profesionalmente interesado en algo con una presencia tan mínima en el imaginario europeo como lo latinoamericano, yo, ¿qué voy a decir?
jedix
June 19, 2006 @ 4:41 pm
Hello people!
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