A Narrow Stream

March 26, 2022 11:57 AM

In How American Culture Ate the World [The New Republic; ungated], Dexter Fergie reviews Sam Lebovic's new book, A Righteous Smokescreen.
posted by chavenet (11 comments total)

Woah! The part about the US using newspaper paper shortages to influence politics around the world was totally in character but also really surprising.
posted by congen at 2:15 PM on March 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

After being an exchange student in the mid-80s and being utterly SHOCKED at how different life was in a Very Western Country ([Then]West Germany), I've continually been frustrated with how Americans don't really understand how different the world is outside the US borders. I've long felt it was a weakness in our culture, and obviously it's coming back to bite us at this point.
posted by hippybear at 2:38 PM on March 26, 2022 [16 favorites]

I made this comment here some years ago but I think it's still valid. I wonder if the book looks at the sheer economics of cultural production.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:34 PM on March 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

This is interesting and concerning. But there DO seem to have been a lot of crossover international hits lately. Psy and Gangnam Style, Squid Game, K-Pop, Anime. Or even from Russia, I'll laugh along to Little Big videos. And I'm really in love with Bollywood, and more serious film auteurs will eat up Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray. Even a deep dive into cat videos on youtube will find a universal currency, from Maru to Cyrillic commented cats. Although one could argue that a lot of this has been influenced by American culture and is just refracting back to us.

I've been keeping up via social media with friendships with hundreds of students in India I met about 5 years ago when I went there. I got idealistic about India being the largest democracy. I'm a little concerned now though about how the disease of ethnonationalism has been spreading there. I have both Hindu and Muslim friends, but the Hindu friends have started to write about a documentary going around called The Kashmir Files (about historical anti-Hindu actions); I wonder how much information they have about the recent Indian occupation of Kashmir, which has dropped from our own headlines. It seemed rather inflammatory, reminding me a bit of Putin's resentment about how residents of Donbas who identify with Russia may have been mistreated, although I think Kashmir has been more legitimately disputed. Yet I've hesitated to bring up these issues with my Indian friends if only to ask about them, as it may seem rude, and I don't live with their culture as they do.
posted by Schmucko at 3:51 PM on March 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

It seems insanely short sighted how thoroughly the US has failed to follow through on its purported principles internationally.

How much long term damage resulted from the so-called “economic liberalization” of the former USSR, which turned out to be just another round of financial rapacity?

Or, 20 years ago it was clear that China would grow to be demographically unstoppable except by a truly multilateral world order, which was absolutely within this country’s power to instigate, yet the “Project for a New American Century” was not laughed out of the room and the US proceeded to burn the last of their post-WWII authority on comical attempts to retrench its supposed unipolar power.

I only regret that Europe and ASEAN and others similarly failed to get their shit together, so presumably the world will continue to follow the grade school “Rule by the Biggest Bully” for the foreseeable future.
posted by bjrubble at 4:37 PM on March 26, 2022 [9 favorites]

On a lighter note, this reminds me of a very funny TikTok bit called "How American TV sounded as an Australian kid" (here, here, here and I'm sure there are others).

Rings very true for me -- and I still don't know what some of these words mean, even though I have now lived in the US for many years. The comment sections on each are also very funny (and also full of Americans who don't really understand the joke, which is also funny).
posted by retrograde at 11:13 PM on March 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

Woah! The part about the US using newspaper paper shortages to influence politics around the world was totally in character but also really surprising.

I can't help feeling like the two examples the article mentions feel a bit cherry-picked. That's a pretty small data set. I'd be curious to know how representative they actually are.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:45 PM on March 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think “how to hide an empire” by Daniel Immerwahr does a better job of explaining American Imperiliasm and how it was turbocharged by the environment of the post WWII era.
posted by roguewraith at 3:51 AM on March 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

I still think Dylan Moran just nailed it.
posted by flabdablet at 7:57 AM on March 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

I've read better versions of this argument by thoughtful American writers in the American press. I found the first half of this article still shining the exceptionalism glow over the rest of the content.

I'd also ask how much of this was due to efforts to project soft power through popular culture during the Cold War era? blue jeans/a can of coke/rock and roll were the epitome of aspiration

In a world still divided by the Iron Curtain, humble blue jeans became coveted symbols of freedom, via Western capitalism

sadly that efficacious projection has been completely destroyed by ad tech and meta.
posted by infini at 11:39 AM on March 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

From where I'm sitting, I'd have thought the author (of the piece, not the book) would have touched on how Eastern culture has taken a small niche foothold and expanded to the point where my 77 year old aunt is way way deep into South Korean teen dramas despite not speaking a word of the language*. The pervasiveness of global media plays a part here as well.

Sure, America did it more thoroughly and did most of it in the pre-cellphone era. They were helped by the dissemination of material during WWII, whether it was baseball, cigarettes, books and of course movies.

*My uncle did work/live in Japan and China both pre and post WWII, so it's not like it was totally out of the blue.
posted by Sphinx at 11:21 AM on March 28, 2022 [1 favorite]