"Do you ever think about things that you do think about?" (Inherit the Wind)
I was reading Anthony Fung’s piece on Viacom’s strategy in China, and I started thinking: What does Chinese content mean for Viacom? The political barriers are not insurmountable, and it is abundantly clear why global media corporations want to enter…
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In 1971, Ariel Dorfmann and Armand Mattelart published a short book called How to Read Donald Duck. Their analysis of Disney comics worked wonders to popularize the idea of cultural imperialism. Disney, according to the authors, actively disseminated hegemonic ideology….
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He is a wealthy, but spoiled dilettante; she is a poor, hard-working and demure virgin. They meet when she becomes a maid in his mansion, and fall in love, but class differences will keep them apart. However, she is not…
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When it comes to Venezuela, it’s impossible to understand today’s media landscape without thinking about Hugo Chavez. The controversial Venezuelan president is one of the most media savvy politicians in the Americas. Alo Presidente, Chavez weekly radio/television show, is an…
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If history is right, Porfirio Diaz, one of Mexico’s most infamous dictators, once decried his nation was too close to the United States and too far away from God. Canada, though not as dramatically, might feel the same about the…
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Even before I ever began researching, writing, and comparing media systems around the world, I was familiar with the name Silvio Berlusconi. I knew him as Italy’s prime minister, and also as the billionaire media mogul. I did not know,…
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In 1922, the British government granted six radio manufacturing companies a license to start radio broadcasting. That was the beginning of the British Broadcasting Company, which would become the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1927. About 70 years later, Mike Myers…
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Globalization must be among the most contested terms in contemporary society. It is, at once, the blessing that will unite the world in a common Kumbaya, or the curse that ravishes local economies, fosters inequality, and, at the end of…
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In the early nineties, when I was an undergraduate in college, my mother sent me a tape recording of a very popular Salsa band. Their name was Orquesta de la Luz, and they were Japanese. Now, salsa music is not…
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In the 1990s, many of my peers were using the word postmodern to describe just about anything. I didn’t understand why they did that. Maybe it was a fad, a kind of intellectual posing, which might actually be a very…
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