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The exponential growth of the American entertainment industry since the late 1970s has taken place in an era of extraordinary affection and goodwill toward the U.S. in the industrialized world. In Europe, Asia and even Latin America, anti-Americanism is lower than at any time since the Vietnam War. The phenomenon is in part self-fulfilling: to a large extent that goodwill can be traced to the projection of America as seen through its popular culture rather than to the nation's actual political or social character. If anything, there is an increasing dissonance between what America really is and what it projects itself to be through its movies and music.
"Even in Nicaragua, when we were beating their asses in the most horrible way, they had this residual love for us," observes author William Styron, who visited the country during the contra war. "They love us for our culture, our books, our heroes, our baseball players, our sports figures, our comic strips, our movies, everything. They had this consummate hatred of Reagan, but underneath was enormous love and affection for us as a kind of Arcadia."
The American entertainment business captures much that is appealing, exuberant -- and excessive -- about the American character. The fantasies and limitless imaginations of Americans are a big part of who they are. It is also, ironically, the source of America's moral authority. For it is in the country's popular culture -- movies, music, thrillers, cartoons, Cosby -- that the popular arts perpetuate the mythology of an America that to a large extent no longer exists: idealistic, rebellious, efficient, egalitarian. In the boom time of their popular culture, Americans have found new ways to merchandise their mythologies. This is what America manufactures in the twilight of the Reagan era.
Christopher Lasch, the social historian who wrote The Culture of Narcissism, sees the development of an entertainment-oriented economy as the final triumph of style over substance in the U.S. Lasch believes the most singular American psychological characteristic -- the desire for drama, escape and fantasy -- has come to dominate not only American culture and politics but even its commerce. "It's all of a piece. Its effect is the enormous trivialization of cultural goods. Everything becomes entertainment: news, political commentary, cultural analysis," he says. "The most significant thing about the process is that it abolishes all cultural distinctions, good and bad, high and low. It all becomes the same, and therefore all equally evanescent and ultimately meaningless."
Is the imperialism of American popcult smothering other cultures, destroying artistic variety and authenticity around the world to make way for the gaudy American mass synthetic? "It's a horrible experience to go to the most beautiful place in the world only to turn on Crossfire," says Leon Wieselthier, the literary editor of the New Republic.