NAFTA and PCA: Twin Thrusts and Goals

The international thrusts of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Popular Culture Association have the same goals, that is, one encouraging and the other understanding the uninhibited flow of two kinds of human activity-commerce and cultures-across political and cultural boundaries in North America in a mutually beneficial way. Popular Culture scholars may or may not be interested in the economics but they are concerned with comprehending the engines that affect and are affected by commerce. The most felicitous model, perhaps, is the Olympic Games, where nationalism and personal ambition are rife but all participants play more or less according to the rules, except when abrupt interruptions-like terrorists' strikes-cause aberrations. NAFTA, along with GATT, is one of the latest efforts to reduce or eliminate the barriers preventing the free flow of trade between countries in the Americas, especially between the United States and Mexico. There is nothing new in humankind's desire to trade and acquire materials from other countries and peoples. According to Alison Brooks, of George Washington University, the history of such trade is lost in the earliest traces of human societies. "Humans were using long-distance trading networks for the exchange of quality stone and other goods in Africa at least 100,000 years ago," she believes (U.S. News, May 20, 1996). In our more immediate past since the 13th century when Marco Polo traveled the spice trail to China in order to establish better trading and cultural relations, it has been assumed the trade-intercourse is one activity through which people get to know one another, and the better they understand the less likely they are to go to war. Thomas Jefferson feared that trade makes merchants people without a country: "Merchants have no country," he said. "The mere spot they stand on does not constitute any stronger attachment than that from which they draw their gains." But more internationalminded Tom Paine wrote that people who commerce together do not war. We of course know the danger of relying too heavily on trade as the great pacifier since it has been demonstrated that Adam Smith's reliance on "enlightened self-interest" (Wealth of Nations, 1776) is too simplistic because personal greed and ambition, nationalism, tribalism, madness, and various other vagaries can be stronger drives. But it may be time to give commercial intercourse between peoples another chance. Maybe "enlightened self-interest" can work if we can ever get it "enlightened." At the moment commercially and culturally the United States is reaching out in every direction. Media mergers, for example, according to Joseph Turow (Communication Research, 1992) drive "the globalization of mass media activities" (687), energized by age-old greed for more profits. Newsweek (Aug. 14, 1995) commented on one aspect of America's outreach: "Entertainment is not just one of America's largest exports, it's also our culture gone global" (2). During the summer of 1996, American TV through CNN and NBC penetrated more and more deeply and widely in Mexico, and American professional football and baseball filled Mexican stadiums while playing five pre-season games in various Mexican cities; in the so-called Texas Stadium in Mexico City, for example, the game drew 102,000 screaming fans during August. We have also reaffirmed that trade or the promise of trade can cool the blood of the gods of war, as we saw during the summer of 1996 when the U.S. and China negotiated over the pirating of American intellectual products and avoided military conflict. So the role of NAFTA becomes clearer. But what of the PCA? Before proceeding let me clear up the definition of popular culture and popular culture studies. Popular culture is the way of life in which and by which most people in any society live. In a democracy like the United States it is the voice of the peopletheir likes and dislikes-the lifeblood of their daily existence, their way of life. …