Abstract

This study examines the particular interest in the diversity and otherness shown for several years now by the global cultural industries - with the multimedia industry being their spearhead. This interest can be better understood in the context of the globalized market of cultural goods. The article argues that although to the listener's ear or the viewer's eye reaches an unprecedented diversity of cultural and artistic products, it still stays out of the sight and systematically suppressed the fact that the terms and the conditions of this achievement keep functioning at the expense of the less developed societies and the less favored social strata (in the economic, social and cultural sense). At the same time, the illusion about art as a universal or global "language" that might resolve more easily the asymmetries and the social contradictions of our time is supported by artistic means too. Finally, the study argues that these developments might advance a policy to encourage the cultural development on a local level and contribute to the development of a critical artistic and aesthetic culture.