The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

assumptions about cultural value beneath the supposedly neutral measures
of economic potential and market power. (Acland, 2003, p.182)
The ultimate logic and sacrosanctity of the free market (as the great equalizer) is part of a
global neoliberal ideology identified and critiqued by Bourdieu (1998) and countless
others, including the oft-cited Chomsky and McChesney, whose work joins forces in the
title that resistance movements invert as a rallying cry against neoliberalism: “Profit Over
People” (Chomsky, 1998).
The particularity of Acland’s observations – that culture and cultural products do
not fit neatly into the free market rationale – is also found in the recently published
Blockbusters and Trade Wars: Popular Culture in a Globalized World, by Peter S. Grant
and Chris Wood. In a chapter called “Curious Economics” they argue that many cultural
products and exchanges are “public goods” (Grant and Wood, 2004, p.56) that should not
be treated a commodities under international trade rules set out by bodies such as the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization
(WTO). Concerning cinema, they argue that a DVD exchanging hands is a private
transaction, subject to such trade regulations, but the broadcast or licensing of a
documentary film is a service and is more complicated concerning trade and regulations.
Grant and Wood summarize:
…free competition will theoretically produce a market equilibrium at
which the price of any good is equal to its marginal cost and social welfare
is maximized. This is what economists call an “efficient” market, since
theoretically no other price could improve on the market outcome without
making someone worse off.
The trouble with applying this theory to cultural goods is that these goods
fail to support a single one of its underlying assumptions. (2004, p.57)
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