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Avant-garde French moviemakers study Hollywood directors, who return the compliment. Basic rock 'n' roll, formed in the U.S., peaked in England with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, who proceeded to influence U.S. music. The French invented the discothèque, but the discaīre at New Jimmy's in Paris plays mostly American records. Italian coffeehouses proliferate in big U.S. cities, while the Italians wear Jantzen swimsuits on their beaches. Japanese transistor radios, TVs and tape recorders do as well in New York as James Baldwin's novels in Tokyo or Edward Albee's plays in Athens. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol created a pop art derived from the Dadaists and Marcel Duchamp; their work, in turn, has influenced such pop artists in Britain as Joe Tilson and Peter Blake.
Just as American society has not basically changed under the pressure of influences from abroad, much of what passes for Americanization abroad occurs on a very superficial level. The most significant denominator of a culture is its rhythms, from the way the telephone jangles to the cycle of the seasons, and those rhythms are resistant to most change. Italian life is still essentially baroque beneath all the surface trappings. Japan, for all its material modernization, remains quintessential Japanese in its process of thinking, its personal relations, its social organization. Moreover, though technological change can and does profoundly affect societies, modernization is mostly confined to the big cities, particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where the heartlands remain relatively untouched by progress. Even in the cities, there is a distinct time lag; some of the more jarring aspects of American culture continue to flourish abroad even while they are on the decline in the U.S., where the general level of sophistication is steadily rising.
Too Much or Not Enough?
The U.S. has also exported many nonmaterial things, including a new concept of woman's role that is slowly catching on abroad. But perhaps the most valuable commodity that the U.S. has given to the rest of the world is the basic American spirit that has made possible its affluence and style of living and that blends its material possessions into a unified pattern of existence. Bertrand Russell summed up the American outlook as: "Man is lord of the earth: what he wants, he can get by energy and intelligence." By its example, the U.S. showed the world that things could be done, that dreams could be embodied in action, that a better life could be achieved with effort and ingenuity. The American style reflects a questing spirit, a desire for change and investigation, an irreverence for authority that has lasted since 1776, a built-in dissatisfaction with the status quo. The American system is a constant seeking of practical means to an end. "Americans," says French Humorist Pierre Da-ninos, "adapted naturally to the modern environment. They seem to be born into this age, born to make long-distance calls, hop international flights or act in films."