AMERICA'S IMAGE -1

How to improve America's standing around the globe? My good friend Martha Bayles, cultural critic and Serious Popcorn proprietor, comes up with some incisive suggestions in the new edition of the Wilson Quarterly (not yet online, unfortunately). Tracing the history of public diplomacy from the era of Woodrow Wilson through the Cold War, she argues that the US has quite simply forgotten how to sell itself to the rest of the world:

We can discern a troubling pattern in the decades before September 11, 2001. On the one hand, efforts to build awareness of the best in American culture, society, and institutions had their funding slashed. On the other, America got the rest of the world to binge on the same pop-cultural diet that was giving us indigestion at home....Popular culture is no longer "America’s secret weapon." On the contrary, it is a tsunami by which others feel engulfed.

At the height of the Cold War, the US sent jazz musicians abroad as cultural ambassadors. Now it leaves a large part of the work to MTV and Adam Sandler. Focussing on the Arab world, Martha offers some excellent practical advice:

Support a classical radio channel—classical in the sense captured by Duke Ellington’s remark that there are only two kinds of music, good and bad. Instead of mixing American bubblegum with Arab bubblegum, mix American and European classics (including jazz) with Arab classics...

Support a spoken poetry program, in both English and (more important) Arabic. It’s hard for Americans to appreciate the central position of poetry in Arabic culture...

Invest in endangered antiquities abroad. The model here is the Getty Conservation Institute, whose efforts in Asia and Latin America have helped build a positive image for the Getty in a world not inclined to trust institutions founded on American oil wealth...

Launch a people-to-people exchange between young Americans involved in Christian media and their Muslim counterparts overseas....If just a few talented visitors were to spend time learning how religious youth in America (not just Christians but also Muslims and Jews) create alternatives to the secular youth culture touted by the mainstream media, they would take home some valuable lessons: that America is not a godless society— quite the opposite, in fact.

Great piece. Try to catch the whole thing as soon as it's available on the Web.

Comments

[James Smith]

Pardon me, but what the f*** is this about "religious youth"?!

There's plenty of shitty pop Christian music, you know.

And most of the best western contemporary music is not, I repeat NOT religious.

Has nothing to do with religion.

I mean what is the point of this religious bit, anyhow. How off the wall! Where did it come from?

[Clive]

Martha wasn't talking specifically about music. She was simply discussing how to find common ground between religions.

[Parabellum]

"How to improve America's standing around the globe?"

Why should foreigners perceptions of the U.S. matter one bit? We're going to be regarded as the proverbial 800 pound gorilla no matter what we do.

Or, as a friend of mine is fond of saying "Ya get what ya get."

Even if we wanted to change perceptions, holding poetry readings isn't the answer.