McDomination: The Americanization of Global Popular Culture

In his utopian novel Looking Backward (1888), author and journalist Edward Bellamy predicted that by the year 2000, the world would be linked together in a “single planetary consumer market.” As Bellamy saw it, such a global economy would eradicate poverty and want worldwide by making everyone a participant—both as a producer and as a consumer—in government-planned and government-directed industrialization and distribution of goods. To Julian West, the novel’s hero, who had fallen asleep in 1887 and had not reawakened until September 10, 2000, it was a world that had eliminated not only poverty but also national conflicts and class warfare.

Although Bellamy’s socialist vision never materialized, his dreams of a global economy and a worldwide consumer market seemed prophetic to people actually living in the year 2000. Brand names and products such as Nike footwear, Nokia cellular telephones, and Pokémon trading cards and films are perhaps better known to men, women, and children worldwide than the names of the most important global political leaders. As Zygmunt Bauman commented in his book Globalization: The Human Consequences, global commerce and consumption creates “a strange circle whose center is everywhere.”

While many nations and culture contribute products, services, and advertising images to the global marketplace, none has been more successful in doing this than the United States. The near-tidal wave of U.S. exports has raised serious questions about the power of multinational corporations and the efforts of other nations to withstand the American economic onslaught and to protect their own manufacturers—something that Bellamy clearly did not anticipate. The central issue, however, is less economic than cultural: the possible effects of economic globalization on those cultures that consume American products. For a Benjamin R. Barber has explained in his thoughtful book Jihad vs. McWorld, “selling American products means selling America: its popular culture, it putative prosperity, its ubiquitous imagery… and thus its very soul.”

No American corporation has been as successful in its efforts to capture the global marketplace as McDonald’s, the fast-food giant that by 2008 boasted more than 31,000 restaurants in 119 countries and served an average of 30 million customers each day. So pervasive are the company’s trademarked golden arches that one eight-year-old girl from South Korea saw a McDonald’s restaurant while visiting Boston, Massachusetts, and exclaimed, “Look! They have our kind of food here.” The world’s largest McDonald’s (with 700 seats, 29 cash registers, and 605 employees) opened in 1990 in Moscow, while in 1992 the first McDonald’s opened in Beijing, with 40,000 customers being served on its very fist day. Somewhere in the world, three new McDonald’s restaurants open for business every day.

This global spread of American products and popular culture, however, has not been without opposition. Often many people in the West and non-West alike, labeling this phenomenon cultural imperialism, accuse the United States of undermining and even destroying other cultures that allow American products and popular culture to gain footholds on their native soils by eroding their traditions, cultures, languages, and even identities. This resistance thus far has been most prominent in France, where farmer Jose Bové touched off a wave of assaults on McDonald’s restaurants in 1999 and in doing so became a national and even international hero. Although opposition to American cultural intrusion in general and McDonald’s restaurants in particular has been less dramatic elsewhere, there is little doubt that deep opposition to American cultural ubiquity is widespread.

Please click on the following links (Part I and Part II) to view several documents involving McDonald’s global presence and influence. After studying the documents I would like you to reflect on and discuss the following: How does McDonald’s give us insight into the globalization of popular culture? Which pieces of evidence help you answer that question? In what ways is the Norwegian tray liner helpful? What other poster does that tray liner bring to mind? Why did Queen Elizabeth II make a brief stop at a McDonald’s restaurant? What did she order from the McDonald’s menu? What is the central point of the London Times story about the queen? How can you explain the enormous popularity of McDonald’s in East Asia, and specifically China? It has been said by some people that in certain places Ronald (or Donald) McDonald is more recognizable than Santa Claus. To whom does McDonald’s market its products? How does McDonald’s marketing strategy in Hong Kong and China explain globalization? What do these sources omit? What do all of these sources tell us about the recent history of the People’s Republic of China? What are the benefits of the globalization of popular (largely American) culture? What are the liabilities? In China, has globalization had any benefits at all? What things have not changed? Many French farmers, led by Jose Bové, saw only the liabilities of the “McDonaldization” of French culture. What are those liabilities? According to McDonald’s, what were the benefits to French farmers? Why did the Bermuda government bar McDonald’s? According to Thomas Friedman, do the benefits of cultural globalization outweigh the liabilities, or vise versa? Where does Thomas Watson stand on that question? The story on Bermuda reported that Bermuda had “struck a blow against American cultural imperialism.” Where do your other sources stand on that issue? To what extent should people preserve their own culture and traditions by keeping out other cultural influences? Are cultures that permit the intrusion of other cultural influences ultimately doomed? What comparisons or accommodations are possible? Do you agree or disagree with those who accuse the United States in general and American commercial enterprises in particular of a different form of imperialism (cultural imperialism)? Your thoughts…