Culture war taking aim in Hollywood

Will Canada and Brazil lead a Western Hemisphere revolt against Hollywood movies, music, video games and other forms of U.S. cultural influence? Will Latin America enter an era of cultural protectionism?
Judging from what Brazil's culture minister and world renowned folk star Gilberto Gil told me in an interview last week, the whole region may be moving in that direction.
Brazil is actively promoting a recently approved U.N. Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Diversity, which gives member countries the right to "take all appropriate measures to protect" their "cultural expressions."
The convention was approved 148-2 -- the United States and Israel opposed it -- in October at the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It will become a binding treaty once 30 countries ratify it, which is likely to happen soon: Canada has already ratified it, and several Latin American countries, as well as the European Union, are taking it to their respective parliaments.
Foreign products
"We support this very strongly," said Gil, who was in Florida to dedicate a Brazilian culture center at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. "We need to do something to avoid being suffocated by the unscrupulous presence of foreign [cultural] products in our countries."
Asked whether Brazil is proposing that countries follow the example of France, where by law 40 percent of all movies exhibited in the country must be French-made, Gil responded with a qualified yes.
"Countries must find the way to sustain their industries," he said. "And if quotas, or positive discrimination, can be a helpful mechanism to improve national production, they should be used with moderation, with good judgment, but assertively."
Several countries in the region already have local content laws demanding that a certain percentage of their television shows be produced locally. But while television airwaves are regulated by the state, the new convention would allow countries to extend such laws to lesser regulated products, such as movies, music or books.
The Bush administration fears that the convention will encourage trade protectionism, or that it may be used by governments to restrict what their citizens can watch, read or listen.
In a telephone interview from Paris, France, U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO Louise Oliver told me that the convention's language is too vague, and that "it can be very easily misinterpreted or misused." For instance, it leaves up to countries to decide what a "cultural expression" is, she said.
Object of trade?
"In the case of France, they have declared that wine is the essence of their culture. Does that mean that wine production comes under this convention in a way that allows them to protect it?" she asked. "Brazil could say that coffee is a cultural object. When is it a cultural object, and when is it an object of trade?"
UNESCO officials reject such fears.
"When we prepared this convention, we made sure that this is really related to the issues UNESCO deals with: education and culture, not trade," says Mounir Bouchenaki, a senior UNESCO official. "Protectionism is not the spirit in which we used the word 'protection'."
Regardless of who's right, most experts agree that the convention will have a significant economic impact in many countries. According to U.N. figures, worldwide cultural trade has doubled over the past decade, and amounts to about $60 billion a year. The United States, Britain and China account for 40 percent of the world's cultural exports, while Latin America and the Caribbean for only 3 percent.
My conclusion: There is little question that Latin America, with its great movie makers and some of the world's best musicians, must do something to increase its pitiful 3 percent of the world's cultural exports. And, contrary to what free-market purists may say, countries in the region may need to give some financial support to their cultural creators.
But protecting their local cultural industries by slapping quotas against Hollywood products will backfire.
In addition to creating a fertile ground for corruption and political censorship, cultural protectionism will only help to develop mediocre, parochial and less competitive creative industries, which will have an even harder time conquering the global culture market.
X Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.