21
The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity: Cultural Policy and International Trade in Cultural Products
Introduction
This chapter deals with the global conflict over the right of countries to maintain space and choice for their own films and other cultural products, in the face of a massive trade imbalance in favor of the Hollywood-based multinational companies. It is a story involving dramatic confrontations, emotional arguments, and pitched battles in a number of glamorous international cities. Of course, Hollywood blockbuster films are known around the world for action-filled confrontations, special effects wizardry, and a plot involving global combatants. But it is unlikely that the story recounted in this chapter will ever be told in a blockbuster film, at least not one financed by Hollywood. Part of the reason is that the story is more complex than the kind of story that Hollywood films like to tell. But part of the reason is also that the story reveals an appalling and embarrassing disconnect between the position espoused by Hollywood and the position of virtually every country outside the United States (US).
This is not an objective account, since it is told from the point of view of one of the combatants. The story culminates in the overwhelming approval in 2005 of a new international convention on cultural diversity by countries around the world, despite frantic efforts by the US to oppose it. I can say that I had a small hand in the creation of this ...
