The article Copyrighting Che overviews the causes, reasons, and results of the Cuban government allowing the free
The Cuban government, in this border area of cultural economics, granted Cuban artists certain property rights regarding their intellectual labor that gave them an elite status compared to the average Cuban laborer. The economic impetus – the intellectual property and copyright laws set by the WTO that allowed copyright holders to be proprietors for compensation- sustained this elitism by allowing artists to become merchants and accumulate capital. In essence, it was a very non-Communist move for Cuba.
The entry of Cuban culture into the throngs of neoliberalism was not without its discontents; art was now seen as an individual achievement that achieved success for the artist alone. People that supported the base of the cultural economy but who are not at the most present, public positions began to resent the valorization these artists received and clamored for the revalorization of their own careers.
I found it interesting to compare the Cuban government and its approach to culture with the Korean government .We can look to both of these nations as examples of a government adopting an economic policy that is both inline with their general economic system but also inherently adopts parts of opposing economic structures. The communist Cuban government adopts a very neoliberal approach to transnational art while the democratic South Korean government adopts a very tightly state-controlled entertainment industry for the promotion of culture.
The Korean government’s perpetuation and promotion of South Korean popular culture help promote South Korean status in the world. Cuba looked towards the copyright system of intellectual property in its cultural economy. Much of the Korean culture that is in transnational markets are popular culture: pop music, film, television, while Cuban culture seems to be exported in more traditional forms of writing, art, and Cuban music/dance.
Cuban artists that achieve fame and sustained success vetted by the government to be “ideologically pure” in order to preserve the Communist ideology of Cuba. More recently however, the government seems to divorce ideological considerations from market practices, allowing depictions such as Gorki’s desecration of the Cuban flag to be produced internationally. On the other hand, many Korean artists that are promoted by the Korean government are required to have incredibly stringent rules on their art and personal lives so as to preserve their image abroad. Cuban artists have much more control over their own works, while many Korean artists, especially musicians, do not have ownership of their music, but their company does. This extends to many facets of their role, even into the clothes they wear.
I find it interest to compare the two because these two nations adopt economic policies regarding culture that seem contrary to their economic system: communist Cuba incorporating neoliberal transnational markets into their culture economy and democratic South Korea incorporating a highly regulated, state-controlled culture industry. What success have both of them seen relative to each other? What failures? Is one necessarily a weirder configuration than another?
