Through a Screen Darkly

Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America's Image Abroad

Martha Bayles

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780300199314
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Geschichte des 21. Jahrhunderts

"How the vulgarization of American popular culture has distorted the image of the United States for millions of people around the world."—Francis Fukuyama, New York Times bestselling author What does the world admire most about America? Science, technology, higher education, consumer goods—but not, it seems, freedom and democracy. Indeed, these ideals are in global retreat, for reasons ranging from ill-conceived foreign policy to the financial crisis and the sophisticated propaganda of modern authoritarians. Another reason, explored for the first time in this pathbreaking book, is the distorted picture of freedom and democracy found in America's cultural exports. In interviews with thoughtful observers in eleven countries, Martha Bayles heard many objections to the violence and vulgarity pervading today's popular culture. But she also heard a deeper complaint: namely, that America no longer shares the best of itself. Tracing this change to the end of the Cold War, Bayles shows how public diplomacy was scaled back, and in-your-face entertainment became America's de facto ambassador. This book focuses on the present and recent past, but its perspective is deeply rooted in American history, culture, religion, and political thought. At its heart is an affirmation of a certain ethos—of hope for human freedom tempered with prudence about human nature—that is truly the aspect of America most admired by others. And its author's purpose is less to find fault than to help chart a positive path for the future. "An extremely intelligent mix of reporting, analysis, and policy prescription."—Robert Asahina, author of Just Americans
"Informative, witty, and thought-provoking."—Peter L. Berger, author of Invitation to Sociology

Part One
THE FUN-HOUSE MIRROR OF POPULAR CULTURE

PROLOGUE TO PART ONE:
CULTURAL EXPORT—AND PUSHBACK

Hoping to see a part of Shanghai not frequented by foreigners, I let the person I was meeting, a local video artist, choose the location. To my disappointment, she suggested the McDonald’s near Zhongshan Park. Arriving early, I bought a Coke and sat by a window covered with posters of American basketball stars, feeling annoyed by the thought that she was mistaking me for the type of American who travels the world eating Big Macs. Watching the chubby teenage boys at the next table scarf down a super-sized order of fries, I wondered whether American fast food was helping to create an American-style epidemic of obesity in China.

When the video artist arrived, she must have read my mind, because she immediately described this McDonald’s as “a place of happy memories.” One of the first in China, it had opened in the mid-1990s, when she was still in high school, and every afternoon she and her friends had come here to study—because, she explained, McDonald’s was a much better place to study than at home: “Our families’ houses were cold and dark, so we loved the warmth and brightness, the light music, everything so clean and friendly. We were under a lot of pressure to work hard, so being here helped us stay calm and focus.”

This young woman’s experience is not unique. Throughout East Asia, customers have turned the Golden Arches into youth hangouts, community centers, even high-prestige venues for romantic dates. And McDonald’s has adapted, as it does elsewhere. In France and Italy, for example, McDonald’s serves wine. In Russia, customers inured to public rudeness were requested, in the early days, not to feel mocked by smiling McDonald’s employees.¹ In Turkey, the menu includes the yogurt drink ayran, and the meat is halal (permissible under Islamic law)—as it is in Indonesia and the Arab world. In Israel and Argentina there are dairy-free kosher outlets; in India, beef-free ones. In the Philippines, McDonald’s serves a popular Filipino dish reflecting that nation’s long-standing ties with America: McSpaghetti, consisting of pasta, sweetened tomato sauce, pasteurized cheese, and a hot dog.

The neutral term for such adaptation is “localization,” but the process is not always neutral. It may be just a matter of taste that Filipinos like hot dogs with spaghetti, but it doesn’t take long for matters of taste to become matters of custom, even morality. The French and Italians do not just prefer wine, they also look down on people who prefer Coke. The Russians do not just dislike being smiled at, they also find smiling suspicious. And the dietary preferences of Muslims, Jews, and Hindus are part of their religion. I call this kind of localization “cultural pushback.” It occurs whenever a foreign market says, “We like most of what you are selling, but don’t try to sell us this.” To succeed in such a market, a company must heed the message. It must ask what isn’t wanted, and why.

The American entertainment industry still dominates the world, earning vastly more revenue than any other. But it is not the only game in town. Indeed, it has some hefty regional and local competitors, most prominently the Indian film industry, or “Bollywood.”² In terms of the sheer number of tickets sold, the global market for Indian films is estimated to be the biggest, with 3.6 billion tickets sold per year, as opposed to a mere 2.6 billion for Hollywood.³ As for television, America is still the international leader, but on most overseas channels the trend is toward fewer US programs and more domestic ones.

At the same time, most foreign TV programs are adapted from US originals. A lot of this localizing is done without the permission of US producers. But in the more lucrative markets, co-production with US companies is common.⁴ In all events the process resembles the localizing of the McDonald’s menu: some items are changed for neutral reasons, others for reasons of custom and morality—as when a host country cuts or alters material deemed offensive to local sensibilities. American companies go along with this cultural pushback when it would hurt their profits to do otherwise. But when their profits are not affected, US companies dismiss cultural pushback as either veiled protectionism or an attack on freedom of expression.⁵

Are they right? Protectionism definitely plays a role, as when the governments of France, Canada, and other nations use the language of “cultural exception” and “cultural diversity” to justify blocking the flow of American cultural products into their domestic markets.⁶ Clearly, the desire of such governments is to protect their own publishing and media industries from US competition. But at the same time, that desire is not easily separable from genuine objections to the tone and content of the American imports.⁷

What about freedom of expression? After a century of totalitarian denunciations of American music, films, and other expressive culture as a form of imperialism, dismissing pushback on these grounds is second nature, not only to Hollywood but to most Americans. With remarkable consistency, the dictators of the twentieth century, whether Communist or fascist, likened the inflow of American culture to an enemy invasion, and used every means, including brutal repression, to stem it. But as suggested in the introduction, this is not always the strategy of today’s authoritarians. Indeed, they are prone to regale the masses with the circus of popular culture while feeding them the bread of newfound prosperity. Ill-understood by Americans, this strategy is ignored by many US media companies hoping to do business in these markets. The result is a gray area within which twenty-first-century authoritarians encourage the import and localization of US entertainment, as long as it poses no threat to their power—or perhaps even reinforces it.

This strategy plays out differently in different countries. In North Korea, the regime still uses the media to browbeat the masses with old-fashioned propaganda. But in most authoritarian countries the media operate along Western lines, maximizing profit and audience share. The difference is that media companies in authoritarian countries tend to be hybrid corporations, technically private but in fact under state control. In China, for example, “marketized” media are given free rein (in entertainment, not news) until they cross this or that red line—at which point the reins are tightened by the Central Propaganda Department. The Arab media are similar but different. They are similar because most of the major companies are owned by wealthy investors from the Persian Gulf who either are members of their respective ruling families or have close ties with them. So here, too, there is a price for crossing the red lines. But because the Arab market includes twenty-four different countries, no one ruler can exert control. The result is a much more open and competitive media environment than in China.⁸

The point here is that virtually all foreign media, including those in authoritarian states, must pay attention to the tastes, values, and preferences of their audiences. In more lucrative markets, this means Nielsen ratings and other US-style audience research. Such measures are slower to arrive in less lucrative markets, but in virtually every country, media policy is made with substantial consideration for audience opinion, including the reactions of audiences to cultural imports from the United States. For example, both democratic India and undemocratic Oman forbid the release of Hollywood films containing raunchy sex or horrific violence. And while both decisions reflect the priorities of the regime, they also reflect genuine public sentiment—not least because in India and Oman, as in many other countries, movie-going is still a family affair involving everyone from toddlers to grandparents.

Despite the many local variations in its menu, the name McDonald’s is synonymous with standardization, because every one of its thirty-three thousand outlets around the world offers the same basic package of food, service, and physical setting. There is no denying that certain aspects of this package have universal appeal. For example, in all 119 countries where McDonald’s does business, the most popular menu item is the french fries.⁹ Equally appealing is the friendly service—and the cleanliness of the facilities. The video artist did not mention the restrooms in the Zhongshan Park outlet, but in countries where public toilets leave much to be desired, the company’s insistence on modern, well-maintained restrooms is a key selling point.¹⁰

The same is true of the kitchens, as I learned from Bambang Rachmadi, the first CEO of McDonald’s in Indonesia. In Jakarta Rachmadi told me that when McDonald’s was first introduced there, critics charged that it would drive street food vendors out of business. In response, Rachmadi pulled off a public relations coup: he invited the city’s street food vendors to participate in a two-day course on hygienic food-handling, followed by a tour of McDonald’s immaculate facilities. This made quite an impression, he said, in a city where food-borne illness is common and the majority of restaurants do not clean their kitchens very often.¹¹

Stepping back, we can see a pattern. Certain aspects of McDonald’s, such as the french fries, are universally appealing but bad for people—all people, regardless of where they live and what beliefs they hold.¹² Other aspects, such as the friendly service and clean facilities, are universally appealing and good for all people. Is there a similar pattern discernible in America’s exported entertainment? Do certain aspects of our music, movies, and TV shows appeal to all human beings while also affecting them in ways that are either universally harmful or universally beneficial?

I hesitate to say yes, because to make such a claim about McDonald’s is already to go pretty far out on a limb; to make a similar claim about popular culture is to cut the limb off. The responses of human beings to expressive culture are a lot more complex and variable than their responses to trans-fats, friendly smiles, and spotless commodes. Not only that, but a great many Americans believe that popular culture has no significant impact on the emotions, attitudes, or behaviors of audiences. Indeed, this is the prevailing assumption of our libertarian media regime.

Has this assumption been proven scientifically? The debate over media impacts is an old one, but over time social scientists have reached a rough consensus: the media do not brainwash us, but neither do they roll off our backs like the proverbial water off a duck. What they do is condition us, gradually and slowly, to accept—or at least consider normal—ways of thinking and acting that we otherwise would not. At the same time, social scientists admit it is impossible to quantify the impact of media on the beliefs, customs, and mores within a given society, much less across borders.

Yet the fact that social science cannot measure precisely the conditioning power of popular culture does not mean that rational analysis cannot conclude that this power exists, and that it may be used for good or ill. Nor does a lack of conclusive data prevent billions of human beings from treating their TV, movie, and computer screens as windows onto life in America—and from judging, on the basis of what they see there, whether its ideals and way of life are worthy of emulation or attack.

“RUBBER DUCK” GOES TO CHINA

After the return of Deng Xiaoping to power in 1978, the Chinese government began to allow selected US films to be shown in the country’s small number of theaters. According to Dai Xinghue, a professor of literature and film at Peking University, the films were chosen with careful attention to their use as propaganda.¹³ Thus, one of the selections was a justifiably forgotten 1978 release called Convoy, directed by Sam Peckinpah in his cups and starring Kris Kristofferson as “Rubber Duck,” a maverick truck driver who uses the hot new social medium of the time, Citizens’ Band (CB) radio, to lead a spontaneous revolt against a crooked, racist sheriff in the southwestern United States.

Asked why Convoy was chosen, Dai speculated that it was probably released for the purpose of disillusioning the Chinese people about the supposed high quality of Hollywood films (and because of its low cost).¹⁴ The film also serves the added purpose of making the United States look anarchic. In keeping with the countercultural mood of the 1970s, it shows Rubber Duck leading a milelong convoy of semitrailers across New Mexico to protest injustice, while also showing that the only way to obtain justice in America is to take the law into your own hands. At one point a headline-seeking governor offers help, but, sensing he’s about to be used for a photo op, Rubber Duck spurns the offer and, after surviving a military assault by the National Guard and staging his own death, rides off into the sunset with a sexy new girlfriend in a bus full of stoned Jesus freaks. In true Peckinpah fashion, the final shot is of the crooked sheriff, grinning in recognition of Rubber Duck as a kindred spirit.

Viewed this way, Convoy delivers just what the Chinese authorities wanted: a cynical message about America as a place where local officials are corrupt and tyrannical, higher officials clueless and self-serving, and the common man free only when defying the system. But the authorities failed to anticipate the film’s impact on a younger professor, Teng Jimeng of Beijing Foreign Studies University. Eyes sparkling, this member of the Tiananmen Square generation recalled how Convoy changed his life. I felt like saying, “You’re kidding,” but I bit my tongue when Teng waxed eloquent on Convoy’s depiction of an ordinary working stiff who goes wherever he wants, does whatever he wants, and punches out any thug in uniform who tries to stop him.¹⁵

Viewed Teng’s way, Convoy appears a potent messenger, if not of democracy and the rule of law, then certainly of freedom, equality, and individualism, all rolled together. The raw, gut-level urge to bust loose, kick over the traces, and light out for the territory has been a staple of American culture since the earliest days. Immortalized in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Walt Whitman’s Song of the Open Road, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, it is also a perennial theme of popular music and, needless to say, of Hollywood movies, where it typically involves a fast car, a vast expanse of gorgeous scenery, and a heart-pounding soundtrack.

Of course, the same combination of car, scenery, and soundtrack is also used to sell cars. Indeed, it is rare to see an automobile ad on television or the Internet that does not use this formula. Like it or not, the American love of freedom, equality, and individua...