JESSICA C.E. GIENOW-HECHT

Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht teaches history at the JohannWolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. Her firstbook, Transmission Impossible: American Journalism asCultural Diplomacy in Postwar Germany, 1945-55, wasco-awarded the Stuart Bernath Prize for the best first bookin diplomatic history. Her second book, Sound Diplomacy:Music and Emotions in German-American RelationsSince 1850, will be published by the University of ChicagoPress. She has taught at the University of Virginia, theUniversity of Bielefeld, the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, and Harvard University.

In the 1981 film The Gods Must Be Crazy, a pilotflying across the Kalahari Desert of Botswana dropsan empty Coke bottle into the midst of an Africantribe. The natives instantaneously regard the bottle as agift from their gods. But “the gift” changes the traditionsand social mores of their world for the worse. Finally, thenatives send a member of the tribe to cast the bottle awayover what they believe is the edge of the earth.This film offers insight into what has come to beknown as “The Grand Debate”: Are Americans “culturalimperialists” who conquer and corrupt the rest of theworld by spreading popular culture everywhere?It is true, as Richard Pells writes, that much of whatconstitutes American popular culture today originated ina mélange of foreign influences during the 20th century.But this does not explain why so many people aroundthe world are critical of what they perceive as “Americancultural imperialism.” Nor does it explain why this ideahas become such a force over the past century. If we wishto better understand this perception, we need to considerboth the makeup and the influence of American cultureabroad—as Pells does—and also its reception by non-Americans.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
It is a curious paradox in American history that anation whose cultural transfers became so controversialstarted out with little interest in the export of culture.Historically, Americans have found their distinctivenessprimarily in their political system rather than in their poets, artists, and novelists. They generally view theirpopular culture as a source of private entertainmentrather than as an instrument of foreign policy. They havenever seriously contemplated establishing a departmentof culture in the federal government. In 1938, theState Department established the Division for CulturalRelations, but many U.S. officials criticized the use ofculture as a diplomatic tool. Even today, most Americansbelieve that culture belongs to the realm of creativity,public taste, and free enterprise, not government.But following World War II, the situation wasdifferent.

During the Cold War, American diplomatsdecided that the United States needed to make the casefor the American way of life abroad. At a time when theSoviet Union sought to export communism, public figuresas well as policymakers sought to exert more influencethrough culture around the world. In the years followingVE-Day, the U.S. government created a number oforganizations and programs, such as the United StatesInformation Agency and the Fulbright exchange program,which promoted the transmission of information onAmerican culture.From an objective point of view, of course, theUnited States was not the first nation to export its wayof life. Since the Renaissance, European powers havefostered a variety of cultural exchange programs. TheBritish in India and the Middle East, the Germans inAfrica, and the French in Indochina all sent their ownculture abroad as a powerful tool to strengthen trade,commerce, and political influence and recruit elites fortheir own purposes.

A 1959 study by UNESCO revealedthat more than half of the 81 states queried, including allthe larger ones, had official cultural relations programs.Some of the European Community’s activities today reston collective cultural diplomacy—that is, the creation oforganizations promoting languages and the exchange ofcultural information.Argentina, Mexico, Egypt, Sweden, and Indiatraditionally export their media to adjacent countries.Moreover, the takeover of Hollywood movie studios inrecent years by foreign-based corporations has raisedthe question of whether Americans have changed from“cultural imperialists” to takeover victims. But even if theUnited States was not the first nation to export its way oflife, foreign critics have consistently focused their fears ofthe future on the United States.In the 1970s and ’80s, for example, Western Europesaw rising anti-American protests, peace groups, and massdemonstrations against the American military presence.In Europe, this anti-Americanism soon expanded tocultural matters. Critics believed that American productsexerted an influence that went far beyond their popularityamong consumers. U.S. goods seemed to dominate notonly foreign markets but foreign minds as well.

To manyEuropean intellectuals, mass culture, Hollywood movies,and commercialism seemingly threatened Europeansovereignty, traditions, and a social order based onprint culture. Mass culture also seemed to blur socialdistinctions, override nation-state boundaries, and spreadthe capitalist marketplace.Yet what Peter tells you about Paul tells you moreabout Peter than about Paul. What people around theworld think about American culture may tell us moreabout these people than about the United States.

CULTURE AND GLOBALIZATION
Today, many politicians and cultural critics aroundthe world lament the influx of U.S. movies. Europeanrepresentatives, for example, are concerned about theircultural distinctiveness and fear that they have alreadylost much of their audience to American products. Underthe headline “The Higher the Satellite, the Lower theCulture,” the former French Minister of Culture JackLang vehemently condemned U.S. cultural imperialismin a 1991 interview. This criticism was not new. In the1970s, Chilean professor Armand Mattelart and novelistand critic Ariel Dorfman had written an influentialpamphlet titled Para leer al pato Donald (How To ReadDonald Duck), which excoriated Hollywood’s distortedvision of reality and advocated liberation by the Chileanpeople of their own culture.Tiny nations, remote people, and unknown tribes find their way into theheadlines of internationaljournals through their vocalprotest against Westerninfluences.

From Iceland toLatin America, Central Africato the Philippines, representatives reportedly deplore thedemise of their cultures with the rising influence of Anglo-American television and culture.In many ways, however, the idea of “Americancultural imperialism” is inadequate. The Americansociologist John Tomlinson has argued that thisphenomenon may simply be the spread of modernity, aprocess of the loss of local cultures and not of culturalexpansion. Global technological and economic progressand integration simply lessen the importance of nationalculture. It is, therefore, misleading to place the blame fora worldwide development on any one nation. Instead, allcountries are affected by a global cultural change.In the future, the term “globalization” has thepotential to replace the criticism of U.S. culturalimperialism. Globalization refers both to the compressionof the world and to the growing perception of theearth as an organic whole. Although many speak ofglobalization as simply an economic phenomenon, itis multidisciplinary in its causes and its effects. Therather vague term includes many characteristics ofmodernization, such as the spread of Western capitalism,technology, and scientific rationality.

The central idearemains, however, that cultures and societies do notnecessarily overlap with the boundaries of the nation-state.In other words, the spread of modern mass culture maynot be the responsibility of the United States.In recent decades, much of the international criticismof “cultural imperialism” has moved away from itsanti-American line to a more global level, with no oneidentifiable enemy. Even major critics of the UnitedStates have aligned their earlier reproaches along theselines. Already in 1980, Armand Mattelart warned of thebroad and inappropriate usage of the notion of “culturalimperialism.” He emphasized that the term did not implyan external conspiracy but could only be effected by acombination of international and native (elite) forces.If the concept of U.S. cultural dominance is soquestionable, why then has anti-Americanism balloonednearly everywhere in the past decades and today? Thereasons often have less to do with the United States thanwith the protesters themselves. In a sense, there is noone cultural anti-Americanism but only a variety of veryheterogeneous expressions ofthis phenomenon, conditionedby geographical concerns andhistorical cycles. The shape andcontent of the phenomenonnot only differ according todimensions of space but also according to dimensionsof time: Each époque and each group has its own formsof anti-Americanism. In the 20th century, much of thiscriticism focused on the economic aspect of U.S. culturalexports.

In the 21st century, it seems, people around theworld worry more about the global political implicationsof American power.In the Cold War, French anti-Americanism originatedin the rift between communism and socialism. Publicdebates denounced American expansionism, NATO, andwhat was seen as the corruptive influence of Americanart, all of which horrified French elites but not the massof voters. Instead, the “American Way of Life” fascinateda generation of young French in love with consumerism,better living standards, and economic growth.The French case is instructive because it points to themost fundamental paradox of cultural anti-Americanism:At any point in time this criticism was and is unthinkablewithout the flipside, philo-Americanism. The tensionbetween the two represents the very condition necessaryto support the existence of both: High expectations andbitter disillusion are always joined at the hip.Still, most powerful states have experienced thebasic historical lesson that power generates suspicion,and the more power a dominant nation exerts the moreantagonistic other nations turn. In the interwar periodand even during the early Cold War years, a number ofpolitical and cultural observers grasped this point, andthey alerted U.S. policymakers to the consequences ofthis development.

As the United States became a worldsuperpower, it was inevitable that people abroad, in thewords of American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, would“hate those who hold power over them”—this is true inboth cultural and political terms When pondering thefuture of globalization and the role the United States willplay in this context, we may wish to remember the wordsof this wise man.