Walmart’s retail dominance compels cultural producers to self-censor and consolidate production

Evidence

In order to pre-empt the risk of censorship, recording studios have been forced to create special Walmart editions of records and films (Ahearn 2009). Similarly, Walmart’s huge control of access to cultural commodities has seen almost all small and independent publications, films, music and periodicals frozen out of the markets that might sustain them (Maneker 2009; Rich 2009). Still unsatisfied with the risks of trusting to the anonymous engines of cultural production, Walmart has begun to work directly with publishers, artists, studios and the like to produce its own proprietary products (Fox 2005). Many popular recording artists have released albums exclusively through Walmart, scrubbed clean of any offensive lyrics or themes (Pareles 2009). — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 299

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly parallels the ‘Grafting & Growth’ article’s theme of distribution infrastructure shaping what culture can survive — here Walmart functions as cultural infrastructure whose access requirements determine viability, like tree grafting determines what kind of timber a forest produces.
• SEED: Essay angle: distribution power is culture power — the Walmart censorship case is a generalizable model of how control of shelf access, not ideology, determines cultural production.
• XREF: connects to: Walmart’s power goes unchallenged partly because it produces its own subjects — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 304; Vertical integration lets Walmart dictate cultural aesthetics through economic leverage — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 299

Broader Connections

• Vertical integration lets Walmart dictate cultural aesthetics through economic leverage #expands (0.95) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 299
• Walmart’s power goes unchallenged partly because it produces its own subjects #expands (0.85) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 304