Date: Sat, 11 Feb 1995 11:48:38 -0500 From: Quizro-AT-aol.com Subject: Re: Culture, hegemony, et al. #2 Don Kenner wrote: > The East German playwrite Heiner Muller was asked why he stayed in East Berlin when it took about fifteen years for a play of his to make it through the censors and be given approval for production. He pointed out that everything he (or others) wrote in East Germany was important, whereas in the West you can write anything but it is buried under an avalanche of meaningless, pre-approved garbage: Control of information using the market to sort out mass quantities.< An intriguing point. Perhaps the most insidious form of censorship is the lack thereof. I can't recall the last time the U.S government banned something on political grounds (well, I'm sure most of you can), but the forces of the market cause the shelves to be filled with Danielle Steel and Rush Limbaugh while books that seriously challenge the status quo are hidden in dark corners because "they don't sell". I know the Corporation for Public Broadcasting isn't perfect by a long shot, but the Republican efforts to pull all government funding for it send chills up my spine for just this reason. One positive turn of events is the new availability of Noam Chomsky's writings in an accessible, inexpensive mass-market format. And yes, "they sell"! Wade Rockett --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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