Unesco and the US At Odds Again; the Potsdamer Manifesto; Debord and Cinema
UNESCO AND THE US AT ODDS AGAIN
Le Monde’s Nicole Vulser reports on Condoleezza Rice’s attempt to prevent Unesco from adopting a convention to protect cultural diversity around the world. Initiated by Canada and France, the convention was well received by the majority of 191 member states at the 33rd general meeting of Unesco in Paris last week. The United States had already expressed its opposition at the last meeting of Unesco’s executive council in September; the US was the only country among fifty-three attending members to vote against the convention. Rice is taking an even tougher stance. In a letter sent to the foreign ministers of Unesco member states, the US Secretary of State expressed a "profound concern" about the new convention, which she believes will "incite authoritarian regimes to violate the right to freedom of expression and minority rights." Rice wants the convention’s "major faults" to be corrected; she ends her letter by expressing hope that the controversy will not "undo" all the work that Unesco and the United States have accomplished together since the US returned to the organization in 2003 after having been absent from it for almost twenty years.
In fact, writes Vulser, the convention aims to dilute the authority of American culture. "It’s about nothing less than trying to stanch the American cultural flood," writes Vulser. "As French minister of culture and communication Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres reminds us, 85 percent of all movie tickets sold in the world are for Hollywood films." And, Vulser and other critics of the US position seem to agree, the real impetus behind Rice’s opposition would appear to be a desire to maintain this cultural hegemony and the economic benefits that come with it.
"The Americans will do everything to try to undo this; they are never going to ratify the convention, just as they did not ratify the Kyoto protocol or certain arms treaties," said Pascal Rogard, head of the Société des auteurs compositeurs dramatiques (SACD), a group that represents French playwrights and composers. But, Vulser adds, the convention will probably go into effect anyway. "The US does not have veto power," she observes. "The adoption of the text requires a majority of two-thirds of the member states, which is sure to occur. The battle will be played out in a second phase, at the moment of the convention's ratification."
THE POTSDAMER MANIFESTO
The Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Jens Bisky assesses another document with international implications: the Potsdamer Manifesto. Penned by physicist and Nobel laureate Hans-Peter Dürr in consultation with researchers from many fields, the manifesto was presented by Dürr, philosopher Rudolf Prinz zur Lippe, and geographer Daniel Dahm in Berlin last week in concurrence with a conference on Albert Einstein. Indeed, inspiration came from the 1955 Russell Einstein Manifesto, in which the philosopher (Bertrand Russell) and the physicist called for a new way of thinking, one suited to the nuclear age. The Potsdamer Manifesto aims to take a similar quantum leap by proposing the world as both a reality and “a potential.” "If we oriented our thinking according to these views," writes Bisky, "it would be possible for us to encounter crises—wars, environmental destruction, economic inequalities—in a creative way. Their cause, says the Manifesto, lies in a spiritual crisis, which demands more ‘directional’ thinking instead of recourse to ‘available ideas.’" But can science provide answers to global crises after coming up with so many recipes for destruction, including the atomic bomb? Bisky is skeptical and questions the Potsdamer Manifesto’s position on the relation between economy and sociocultural issues. "The paper wants to subjugate economy to culture," writes Bisky. "Wouldn’t it be wiser to try to understand the conflicts between the economy, the state and society and to look for ways to resolve these conflicts?"
DEBORD AND CINEMA
Le Monde’s Jean-Luc Douin assesses Guy Debord’s conflicted relationship to cinema. Debord, who committed suicide in 1994, spent much of his life criticizing cinema, only to end up using the camera to wage what Douin calls "his war against film’s falsifications." The recent French publication of the fifth volume of Debord’s correspondence, and the release of his films on DVD, are adding more details to our knowledge of the battle. Debord’s passion for cinema dates back to 1951, when he saw an Isidore Isou film at the Cannes Film Festival. "Determined to overturn neo-capitalism by any means necessary, even artistic ones, Debord wanted to destroy an alienating type of cinema, ruled by the market economy," writes Douin. The result was the 1951 Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howls for Sade), "a film without images, whose projection was accompanied by an indescribable racket, stink bombs and sneezing powder." After other unique efforts, Debord eventually turned his own manifesto The Society of the Spectacle into a film, made in 1973 with his publisher Gérard Lebovici in what the latest volume of Debord’s correspondence reveals to have been an extremely close collaboration. After Lebovici’s murder in 1984, Debord, who was falsely accused by the French press, removed all of his films from circulation. "He was against film when it was a symptom of the bourgeois order, an oppressive instrument of capital, a soul-destroying high mass," writes Douin. "But he agreed to use film to extend his written work." And, perhaps, to honor his friend.