Coming in a little late to this discussion with a bit of a tangent, but one thing that seems very clear to me, particularly here in the U.S., is that the corporations own the culture, or as much of it as they possibly can, and are trying to reach for more all the time. This is a trend that I've seen become more and more pronounced over the last 25 years. Any sphere that is owned by the corporations has had the majority of its creative diversity choked by the bottom line. My personal favorite pet peeve is that the quality of science fiction/fantasy for adults has plummeted since the 80s, as publushers have been increasingly unwilling to publish anything that deviates from what they believe will sell. I was in East Germany in 1990, when the state controlled the book publishing world, and only things that served the state could be published, resulting in multiple copies of few books in bookstores. Although I certainly wouldn't say it's that bad here and now, as more and more smaller bookstores and publishing houses go out of business, less interesting things are being published and suddenly the only place to discuss interesting ideas or be inspired by great writing is the internet (and some children's literature, but that's another subject). My personal opinion is that people have no idea what amazing things they could imagine, so they just don't, because there's no inspiration to. It all becomes very banal and uninteresting. Of course, this whole argument is a somewhat simplified discussion of the problem.

I like to blame it on Ronald Reagan, who basically set the stage for the corporations to take over the world. :)