Islamic "Barbie"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060111/wl_mideast_afp/afplifestylearabegypt_060111151107

I thought that this item might be of interest. I'm a bit amazed that anyone would call Barbie a "Jewish doll," but I suppose it's an effort to drive a wedge between Western Christians and Jews.

In some ways, the popularity of this Islamic Barbie is a curious development. The Left has focused on criticizing the products of popular culture such as Barbie as anti-feminist and conducive of eating disorders in the West. So Barbie in the Middle East shifts from a superficial, consumeristic, skin-revealing bimbo to an earnest, pious, self-effacing drone. I don't think we're getting very far here.

It makes me wonder whether all this tinkering with popular culture that issues inevitably from the criticism of popular culture is the best solution to social problems. Since the 1960s, academics, the press, and popular sentiment have tried to ignore high culture, tried to destroy the distinction between high and low culture, or tried to denounce high culture as elitist or irrelevant (those two adjectives would seem to be contradictory). Well, if high culture is vacated of its power, then we must turn to low culture such as Barbie dolls if we want to reform society. I suppose I'd admit that low culture does in some respect embody values, but in the end, it's entertainment and amusement. And I grow weary of attempts to sanitize low culture because it will always be imperfect, low, edgy, and a little dirty. It appeals to a certain time and place in life--namely, leisure. So long as a person is also simultanteously being formed by high culture, then I fail to see how a little low culture hurts. Alas, Puritans attack high culture's status--overthrowing good religious art, etc.-- while at the same time demanding that low culture adhere to a rigid moralism. Nothing could be worse for a society trying to produce moral people or people with a sense of humanity and humor. I think it's another example of how the cultural far left and fundamentalists collude.