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Blockbusters and Trade Wars: Popular Culture in a Globalized World by Peter S.
Grant and Chris Wood. 2004. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre. 454pp.
This book belongs in every university library and in the possession of anyone who counts
him or herself as a person interested in: policy, broadcasting, cultural industries,
globalization, international trade in cultural products, copyright and international trade,
and Canada’s place in the world.
It is marred a little by its form. I reads as if communications lawyer Peter Grant was
persuaded by the publishers to share his knowledge and wisdom with the world but that
journalist Chris Wood was brought in to liven up the manuscript because what Grant
produced was considered too dry for a market of any size. Wood appears to have added
some interesting anecdotes and a few comparisons introduced to carry the reader along.
As well, an assiduous editor, perhaps with the help of the authors, has combed the
manuscript to ensure that the reader knows that the authors know that they are repeating
themselves. Presumably a rigorous re-write was not in the cards. And so, in the end, the
book has three voices rather than one—Grant’s (the knowledge and insight); Wood’s (to
add interest and anecdote); and the editor’s (organization and writing). Once the reader
allows for this three-voiced narrative he or she can get on with gaining from the many
benefits this book has to offer.
The importance of Blockbusters and Trade Wars derives in part from the lack of
overviews written from a Canadian perspective of Canadian broadcasting and cultural
industries policy in an international context. My comparative analysis of mass
communication and cultural production was written in 1991 and published by Manchester
University Press in 1994. In 1996 Michael Dorland edited a collection that examined
Canada's Cultural Industries: Problems, Prospects, and Issues but not in an
international context. So this book has been a long time coming. That said, Grant and
Wood do a much better job than I was able to do and the integrated policy framework
brought to the subject by Grant (in addition its recentness) recommends Blockbusters and
Trade Wars.
The book is also important because it is free from the baggage of social scientific
theorizing. This freedom from theory allows the authors to describe the actions of
countries and corporations rather than exalt or condemn them through a choice of
theoretical frameworks. By so positioning the narrative, the authors are best able to argue
their thesis. That thesis is, that while we are living in a globalizing age, and while the
actions of US-based global corporations (owned by whomever) and their legislators are
captives of either imperial ideology or by the near $100 billion trade surplus generated by
the US entertainment industries; there are a set of policy measures that can be and are
being used to secure a place for domestic cultural expression with global entertainment
production. Most importantly, almost as a coda, the authors extend their thesis to claim
that this policy framework that has been developed in Canada, has every chance of being
adopted more widely. What the book does not touch on, because it happened after the
book was written, is the irony of the decade-long champion of these policies, former
Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, being dumped by her own political party. In these days
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of massive spending by the political right on injecting their ideology, their people, and
their policies into the parliamentary agendas and laws of the world, to think that the
Honourable Minister was sidelined because of a personality conflict or because she was
too closely associated with the outgoing leader, is to misinterpret the determination of
these bastions of financial power and champions of individualism and the market.
“Part One: Cultural Economics” sets forth the framework that Grant sees as accounting
for the excessive dominance of the US in the production and distribution of television,
movies, books and sound recordings. Nodding at Michael Porter’s cluster theory to
explain the concentration of production in certain geographical areas such as Hollywood,
and reminding us of the unpredictability of success of cultural production in the
marketplace, Chapter 3 delves into why classical capitalist economic thought fails when
applied to cultural expression. In the production of culture there is distinctiveness not
comparative advantage. Society is an organic whole a self-determining entity and
intrinsic to self-determination is the opportunity to produce one’s own images and make
those images available with one’s own community. This discussion alone is worth the
price of the book. Key to the argument is the fact that for most cultural goods there are
three markets; the audience, the advertiser, and the freelance producers who sell their
content to cultural middlemen such as publishers. Economists and international trade
tribunals (mostly involving economists, trade lawyers and judges) tend to focus solely on
the sale of the audience to advertisers (as does Canada’s Competition Bureau in its
examination of media monopolies).
“Part Two: The Cultural Tool Kit” begins with a chapter on the nationality of culture and
then examines six different methods by which nations can assist in creating a space for
national culture and filling it with successful content. The policies include
 public ownership (of broadcasting);
 content and scheduling quotas (in programming and in prime time for example);
 spending rules (by ‘retailers’ of cultural content to acquire content, e.g.,
broadcasters, cable companies and the like):
 national ownership (of privately owned culture producing institutions (e.g.,
television and cable stations, newspapers, book and magazine publishers and so
on);
 competition policy (that takes into account the peculiar economics of cultural
production); and
 subsidies (of books, magazines, films, etc.).
For the reader who has only a passing interest in the actual intricacies of each mechanism
the final chapter of the section, ‘The Tool Kit at Work’ brings them altogether and makes
a convincing case that they can work if the citizens of a country have any real interest in
their own culture.
“Part Three: The Challenge” is positively exciting in so far as it brings forward a
thorough account of the development of the New International Instrument for Cultural
Diversity (NIICD) with which Grant has been intimately involved. Of the four chapters in
part three, the technology chapter is not as inspired as the rest, however it does have the
strength of pointing to the interests all culture producers have in respecting territoriality.
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“Trade Wars” pulls no punches in looking at the past, present and likely future actions of
the US as the dominant producer and exporter. But the inspiring content comes in the last
two chapters “A New Direction” and “Room to Grow”.
Most involved in communication and cultural industries have heard of the New
International Instrument on Cultural Diversity (NIICD) largely as an effort of former
Heritage Minister Sheila Copps. The instrument is meant to serve as a mechanism for
establishing a separate set of rules for cultural production that balances the economics of
the business with the cultural dimension to create a much healthier foundation for
international peace and understanding. Using the NIICD, Grant thinks we can learn to
live with, even tame globalization and the cultural imperialism that is inherent in the US,
and to a lesser extent, UK domination of international trade in movies, television, sound
recording, magazines and books.
The aim of the NIICD is to “sustain the diversity of thought and expression essential to
societies’ resilience, adaptation and regeneration and growth.” (p. 315). The measures
contained within a NIICD must not stop societies from changing. Nor should they stop
foreign products from being heard or seen. Their purpose is to invigorate culture by
creating an interaction between the domestic and the international. The rationale behind
the NIICD rests on the right to and need for cultural diversity.
I would like to be as optimistic as Grant but I cannot. On the horizon I see market
economists and their captured politicians who are not interested in understanding
economic subtleties. They are born-again believers in the simplest economics principles
central among which is comparative advantage. Grant’s optimism rests on a belief that an
ordered universe of law and principles of fairness can prevail in international trade and
that policies are agreed to on the basis of evidence that they generate the greatest benefit
for the greatest number. The alternative is that power rules and that the current excess
power of the US is breeding extremism both for and against it. Thankfully this state of
affairs cannot continue indefinitely. The increasing power of Europe, China, India, and
even Russia is challenging US hegemony. Once power is more widely shared, perhaps
we will see a diminution of terrorism.
In addition to insisting that cultural products are different from normal commodities,
Blockbusters argues the economics of the matter—that unrestrained free trade does not
yield higher real income for all participants (as the theory comparative advantage claims)
but rather leads to the dominance of a few advantaged producers. The authors lend
strength to their argument that the world may be moving in the right direction by
referencing statements released by numbers of international fora in 1982, 1994, 1998,
1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, all essentially calling for corrective action in addressing trade in
cultural products and services. They report the end point as the basing of a NIICD in
UNESCO. This is not good news. At least as far back as 1980 with the MacBride report,
UNESCO has been the seat of attempts to constrain unfettered free trade. The NIICD is
probably viewed by free traders as UNESCO’s latest attempt to establish an anti-free
trade agenda in culture dressed up in new language. And they have the power. As the
authors point out, for the NIICD to gain any force, the WTO must recognize a UNESCO-
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authorized NIICD in a supplemental agreement. The possibility of that happening, I
suspect, is remote.
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