Entry #73
- Listening to:
- Chopin, 24 Preludes, op. 28.
Two examples of American cultural imperialism in the news recently.
Yesterday came the story of a US wine company which is about to set up
in fairly large scale fashion in Languedoc, actually buying vineyards.
There's some background to this
here.
The whole thing seemed to be being exaggerated on the radio; they got
some French locals to decry this "invasion", but there doesn't really
seem to be anything in it to me. If the Americans (and Australians as
well) want to come to France to invest in the country to take
advantage of French expertise and conditions, then it seems to me that
this is a compliment being paid to the French.
The other story was this morning, about the film The Patriot. It gets quite a glowing
review at Salon, but there are rather different reactions here in
Britain. For example, the Guardian
calls it a "yawn", and "genuinely rotten" at the core. In The
Independent's review
it is "tiresome and unbecoming", featuring lines like "It's a free
country - or at least it will be", a line "so poor one can hardly
summon the energy to groan at it".
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