Global Culture

Via Public Diplomacy Watch I found a reference to a speech given by Martha Bayles, of the Arts and Sciences Honors Program at the Boston College. The speech, which could be considered a preview to her upcoming book, was entitled The Ugly Americans How Not to Lose the Global Culture War, and addressed the issue of bad PR generated by the degrading aspects of American popular culture, mostly at the hands of a few corporate executives from the entertainment industry with too many connections in Washington.

I had addressed the issue of apparent American cultural hegemony in the post jazz & macdonald’s, observing among other facts that Hollywood had a great test bed for pop-culture in the millions of immigrants that were avid consumers of the American Dream. Whatever hit resonates with them is likely to do well elsewhere. Prof. Bayles comments:

the export of American popular culture skyrocketed. The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization reports that between 1986 and 2000, the fees (in constant dollars) generated by the export of “filmed and taped entertainment” went from $1.68 billion to $8.85 billion an increase of 426 percent.

However, such an overwhelming amount of media reaching out to all the corners of the globe is having a damaging effect on the perception of Americans by other countries:

The most lucrative sectors of youth culture–rap, ‚Äúdate movies,‚Äù and video games–are now so coarse, violent, and obnoxious, the Pew Research Center recently reported that over 60 percent of Americans are very concerned about what their children are seeing and hearing. And this debased material flows freely–by satellite, Internet, and piracy–to millions of human beings on the planet who have no other access to knowledge about the United States.

Prof. Bayles goes on to explain the origin of Hollywood’s romance with Washington all the way back to 1917 when President Woodrow Wilson needed good propaganda to get the U.S. into World War I. Even today, the U.S government continues to support very heavily Hollywood interests by lobbying alongside with the MPAA. It certainly makes business sense. However, her main conclusion is that without a good self-governance mechanism, the often cited freedom of expression is being abused and dragging popular culture down the drain:

the problem now goes beyond the familiar mantra of ‚Äúsex and violence‚Äù into a contest to see who can be the most cynical toward everything that holds American society together–not just our institutions but also the basic elements of trust and reciprocity that make up civil society.

The net effect is a very scary picture of what the American society holds true. While generalizations are always dangerous, the perception abroad is mostly based on these snippets of plastic culture targeting easy market segments such as youngsters, and without a good context it is very easy to misinterpret the content.