Capitalists commodify and simplify culture.
Capitalists commodify and simplify culture.
The common view of summarizing American culture abroad as the triumphant march of Disney and McDonald's embodies this thesis. While it seems at times as if everything has its price and we admire only what is profitable or expensive, it is not clear that this is so very much worse than the earlier sort of society in which things were valued according to their aristocratic prestige or holiness. After all, market value is an expression of collective democratic attitudes. If we decide that a basketball player is more valuable than a ballerina it is not because we are capitalists but because more people enjoy basketball than ballet. So there is some truth in the accusation.