A culture can’t be unwillinglly accepted by a society. I’m going to use Princeton anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s definition of communication: “Culture is shared meaning, shared understanding, shared sensemaking.” I.e, culture can be seen as the collective output of a society and the way that this society reacts to its environment.
As such, culture is dynamic and changing; as long as the environment or the society is changing, so too is the culture. A culture can’t help but be influenced by a change to its environment. So, when McDonald’s introduces a chain of restaurants into a society, the society can choose to accept or reject the new addition to its environment. If no-one in the society wants the McDonalds chain, then there’s nothing much McDonald’s can do, short of staging an orgainised coup, implementing their own McGovernment and making McDonald’s mandatory eating. Which, when you think about it, isn’t exporting American culture at all anyway. When was the last time American’s were forced by law to eat McDonald’s. But I’m waffling… enough of this imagined McTerrorism.
However, as has been mentioned above, McDonald’s can (and does) use its economic strength to raise consumption of their product. Again, same as before. McDonalds cannot force people to want their burgers, but if they’ve got enough money (which they do), they can make enough people start thinking about McDonald’s, whether it’s positive, negative or apathetic thoughts. McDonald’s succeeds because people do want the service it provides, and because it can tell people about that service so that they have the option of wanting it. If local cultural output does not have the economic strength to compete against this, then the introduced culture will indeed dominate.
As such, the problem is American economic dominance, rather than cultural dominance. The second is an effect of the first. If a culture changes, it’s only because the society wants it to change. Economic circumstances can affect its range of choices, however.
And Jockstrap, re Australian sitcoms, how about the classic Mother and Son or the recent Kath and Kim (which is being highly acclaimed, but I believe it is somewhat patchy. However, when it’s good, it’s very good.)