We’ve seen throughout the book that empires rose and fell, and that is the case for the new empires of the 20th and 21st centuries; corporations, that is.
It was very interesting to find in the book the map of the world with a visual representation of the McDonald’s restaurants on p.732, and that made me think about all the other products that I had seen coming, going, and staying in Buenos Aires (Argentina), as well as their transformation.
In Buenos Aires, aside from McDonald’s we also had Burger King and Wendy’s. Burger King managed to survive, but Wendy’s was short-lived, and it closed its doors a few years after it opened. Similar fate awaited Dunkin Donuts and Pizza Hut; they vanished in just a couple of years. Who, if I may ask, did the market research for these last two companies, and convinced them that it was a good idea to open businesses in a city with more Italian pizzerias and French/Italian-style bakeries than the market can handle? Who knows… In any case, aside from McDonald’s and Burger King, people did not like the rest. That was until Starbucks.
Starbucks sells a product, but also a style. It’s the invasion of the paper cup and plastic lid, but it’s also the crude reflection of social change: people are abandoning taking the time to sit down and have coffee with friends or relatives. The “Starbucks culture” praises individuality and a certain alienation from the rest. Before Starbucks, coffee shops did not serve coffee in paper coffee cups… that was heretical! Coffee was always served in porcelain cups, even when it was delivered from a nearby coffee shop to your office. Granted, some people are still going to coffee shops and enjoying coffee with friends (luckily there aren’t enough Starbucks in Bs. As. yet, though they are rapidly multiplying), but Starbucks is definitely marking a shift in “porteños’”societal habits. The Starbucks culture says “I am hip, trendy, I don’t have time for you, and I don’t need you” and it is appealing to certain sectors of society. That is the kind of cultural invasion that I don’t particularly like.
In that regard McDonalds was less harmful, although we can’t say the same about its food! Joking aside, it was interesting to see that the “porteño” culture actually transformed McDonalds. We don’t like drip coffee, especially if it has been sitting there for hours. We simply don’t pay for drip coffee (we call it “umbrella juice”), and we do not like the pastries that were offered with it, so that was an area that did not make McDonald’s any profit. The Styrofoam cup that burns like hell didn’t catch anybody’s attention, either. So McDonald’s opened an espresso McCafe, and added local pastries, and that’s when it started being profitable. That was an example of the local culture assimilating the “cultural penetration” as Strayer calls it, but also modifying it to its taste.
Now, behind the cultural invasion, there is also the willingness of the invaded to accept and assimilate, and that is the problem when it comes to products and services and the image they bring with them: the fact that they are appealing. People try to emulate or live the fabricated life that is sold, through the consumption of such products and services. Unlike the colonialist invasions, cultural invasions are less rejected, less fought against; they are even embraced willingly in some cases.
I hope there are still “traditional” coffee shops in Bs.As. by the time I go back... and that I still have friends who are willing to sit with me and enjoy a "real" cup of coffee!
No comments:
Post a Comment