Greetings Economists, Yoshie's thread here is quite interesting to me. A very important thread in my view.
Yoshie writes, Visual culture certainly complicates the history of empire. Doyle, Yes, American culture is spread by movies. Why? I agree with the basic premise of this thread by Yoshie, take away the dollar and the empire's culture, what Yoshie refers to as English would not be so strong would decline fragmented by the multiple demands of culture upon English. Yoshie writes Americans would have to learn another language in addition to English. But that really is asking for a sense of how justice would come out of the cultural exchange between languages. It's not even words as much as the capacity of making American movies that everyone watches would break down. Why are movies so important? Over and above the spread of English as a commercial vehicle of imperial power, the motion picture influences the global audience even more? The reason is of two kinds, meaning is spread not just by words, but by culture. But the key element is the face as the conduit of meaning. The big files of movies are valuable because they represent the face based meaning of language. Rather than quote Agar at length I'll just reference (read his book on pages 165 to 167) a little of his comments about the cultural miss match between Athabaskan culture and Yankee culture. That his discipline calls a frame miss match. The frame is a whole structure in Athabaskan culture. A wholeness to their everyday life. Capitalism splinters society. The frame is destroyed for culture. Yet replaced by other means to create the frame. The clash between modernity and socialism over realism is very interesting. Suppose we took Picasso's trope about cubism and we asked what does it really mean to see motion? Well we know from neuroscience that seeing motion is seeing wholeness. Suppose we wrote motion pictures as a means to socially construct a wholeness to a socialist society? See Oliver Sacks tribute to Francis Crick in the latest NY Review of Books where Sacks references migraines affect upon seeing motion. And the excited exchange between Sacks and Crick over seeing motion. Suppose we asked of the coming culture that we know where we are in place when we look at pictures? Not put them on the wall but anchor them in space like a gps knowledge of where a car is located in the traffic? We are asking an important question of the reality of pictures. We are asking what is the whole frame of language by asking a movie frame itself in space for us. A question that is at least as important to culture and language as any word will ever be. The frame we could build that unites humanity through a new type of realism beckons to us as the dollar declines. The guns, the dollar financial idols can't destroy the need for the wholeness of the frame of language, the culture need that anchors English and other languages. That Picasso didn't think about when his paintings explore the cubist conceit. thanks, Doyle Saylor
