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"People love fairy tales," observes Czech-born director Milos Forman, "and there is no country that does them better than the United States -- whatever kind of fairy tales, not only princesses and happy endings. Every child dreams to be a prince; every adult has a secret closet dream to be Rambo and kill your enemy, regardless if it's your boss or communists or whoever."
Donald Richie, the dean of arts critics in Japan, sees a broader appeal. "The image of America radiates unlimited freedom, democracy, a home of the people," says Richie. "This certainly appeals to the Japanese, who live in a very controlled, authoritarian society." Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, concurs, arguing that American entertainment -- particularly movies, television and rock -- was a primary catalyst in the collapse of communism in Europe and the Soviet Union.
On a recent visit to China, David Black, the supervising producer for Law & Order, watched young Chinese sell bootleg copies of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis tapes in Shanghai. "In Hollywood," says Black, "we are selling them the ultimate luxury: the fact that people don't have to live the life they're born into. They can be a cowboy, a detective, Fred Astaire -- and that's what America is selling now. The hell with cars. Cars are just wheels and gears. People want to be able to play at being other people more than they want transportation."
The process exacts a spiritual cost. At work sometimes in the iconography of American popular culture is a complex nostalgia for the lost American soul. Madonna is not Monroe, Stallone is not Billy Wilder. But they are cultural forces with an authority and resonance uniquely American. Such gilded presences radiate signals of material success and excess on a scale heretofore unknown in popular entertainment. Perhaps more important, their influence -- as models for imitation, objects of media attention -- far outweighs that of the traditional heroes and heroines in what may have been an earlier and more accomplished age. The very adulation that the global stars receive simultaneously diminishes and trivializes them, as if they were mere image and electricity.
Money, lavish production, the big-budget blockbusters that only the American movie studios are willing to finance -- these are part of the appeal. And of course the newness of it all, whether in music or film or TV. Only in the U.S. does popular culture undergo almost seasonal rituals of renewal.
Giovanni Agnelli, the Italian automobile industrialist, adds another factor: quality. "What is unique about American movies and popular music and television?" asks Agnelli. "They are better made; we cannot match their excellence."