The purpose of this blog post is twofold: first, to recommend the new NPR series "Intelligence Squared", which features Oxford-style debates on hot cultural and political issues; and second, to ask a question about the recent episode, “Hollywood and the Spread of Anti-Americanism”. One aspect of the conservative position, as advanced by participant and AEI scholar Joshua Muravchik, strikes me as poorly thought out. Muravchik complains about the fact that Americans (the CIA, US-based multinationals) are now the bad guys in many political thriller and documentary films. Once upon a time, he lamented, the villains onscreen were communists. How will Hollywood’s new choice of antagonists affect already too conspiracy-minded international audiences?
There are at least two problems with this perspective. For one thing, the capacity of American writers, actors, directors, producers, and distributors to make movies that engage in national self-criticism will tend, if anything, to foster sympathy for our country by underscoring the distinction between the people and culture of America and the policies of the government that allegedly enacts our will, which is a humanizing and moderating influence.
A related but more fundamental point is that the kinds of films in which the identity of the villains always corresponds to those targeted by conservative dogma will obviously tend to appeal only to conservatives, or to those who already harbor a kind of pro-Americanism that does not serve the best interests of America (including those who supported foreign policies and wars that are disastrous for human rights and civil society). Most people abroad will not be persuaded, but rather further antagonized, by pro-American propaganda. Leave aside Iraq for a moment (where civilian casualties of our invasion have been broadcast to large audiences on al Jazeera, or were until the station was banned from broadcasting there). Think instead of the many people in the affected countries and regions, for instance, who already know all too well of CIA involvement in the overthrow of democratically elected leaders in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, or of our funding of a host of unsavory paramilitary forces in proxy wars during the cold war. There are many people, in other words, who are going to be suspicious of US government power and intentions regardless of any pronouncements we make declaring our own virtue. Are we apt to gain influence more by acknowledging moral complexity or by wishing it away? Self-deception is a poor foundation for international relations or cross-cultural communication, not least because others are usually more aware of our power and the range of its uses than most of us stateside have had to be.
Some depictions of Americans-as-bad-guys are obviously problematic, because, for instance, they emphasize only the malign aspects of our intentions and only the harmful consequences of our policies, and obscure the bad plans and actions of foreign states and organizations, including those of our enemies. Conservative critics make a useful contribution when they point out these simplifications.
Another aspect of our TV and movies is that (to quote debate participant Richard Walter) “most art sucks” -- the vulgarity of our cultural products often leaves much to be desired (although even that judgment is too simple, because highbrow and lowbrow tastes, for instance, intersect in numerous ways, and many films mingle subtle as well as crude comic and dramatic sensibilities). If no one watched these movies and TV shows, however, they would not be such moneymakers for the studios. Obviously, puritanically minded moviegoers abroad may offer sweeping rejections of our culture, government, and people based on their irritation with the messy, prolific Hollywood output and its international influence. But such visceral judgments clearly contain impulses hostile to freedom and equality (perhaps our core aspirational values as Americans) no less than objections to the superficiality of feeling and parochialism found in some of these products. Therefore, the proper response to these voices cannot be to appease their most sweeping critiques of our culture, which are not coincidentally often the most regressive, even though they contain food for thought (however inarticulate). Because in large part, these voices are criticizing us for the things that are, or ought to be, sources of pride. As regards legitimate criticisms of our movies and television, one proper response to cultural anti-Americanism has to be to improve our products by deepening our imagination and producing better works; when the authors of such works gain an audience, they will raise the bar for their peers. This pattern would be a far more useful response to foreign cultural antipathy than the imposition of some moral and political Code by which to plan ideologically congenial works of art.
To be sure, it’s striking to find conservatives in a post-9/11 discussion acknowledging in any context that it does somehow matter what others think of us and our country; that it does affect our security and our interests whether we have cultivated friendships abroad. Like most Bush-era efforts at public diplomacy, however, conservative cultural criticism concerned about Hollywood’s impact abroad has the circular quality of a brand of patriotism that repeats endlessly the virtues and assumptions of its own community but is disinclined either to listen to other views or to ask itself new questions. Liberal and leftist political art can be demagogic and absurd with the best of them. But thoughtful liberal students of American and international mass culture, in addition to having their own criticisms of movie producers’ formulas, do distinguish themselves from their conservative counterparts by generally celebrating the proliferation of voices and ideas and images that make our culture stimulating and ever-changing, the springboard not only of much global debate but of so many different aspirations. Seeing a million dreams displayed on a screen, including the vapid ones, people everywhere are spurred, at unpredictable times and in unpredictable ways, to dream anew for themselves. Like relationship (its most elemental form), culture is a practice always to be improved but undeniably a precious gift.
