Global lingua franca

The main problem in discussing American popular culture is also one of its main character­istics: it won't stay American. Regardless of what it is, whether films, food and fashion,music, casual sports or slang, it's soon at home elsewhere in the world. There are several theories why American popular culture has had this appeal, especially since the 1920s. One theory is that it has been "advertised" and marketed through American films, popular music, and, more recently, television. But this theory fails to explain why American films, music, and televi­sion programs are so popular in themselves. They are, after all, in competition with those produced by the other countries.

Another theory is that because America is "a nation of nations," its popular art and culture find it easier to "return home," to appeal to the traditions and tastes of other countries. This fails to clarify why schoolchildren in Italy wear clothing saying "baseball" and "football," why the Japanese buy cowboy boots, or some Czechs are "into" Hip-Hop.

Still another theory, probably the most com­mon one, is that American popular culture is internationally associated with something called "the spirit of America." This spirit isvariously described as being young and free, optimistic and confident, easygoing and infor­mal, disrespectful and streetwise. The final theory is less complex: American popular culture is popular because a lot of people in the world like it.

Regardless of why it spreads, American popular culture is usually quite rapidly adopted and then adapted in many other countries. As a result, its American origins and roots are often quickly forgotten. "Happy Birthday to you," for instance, is such an everyday song that its source, its American copyright, so to speak, is not remembered. Black leather jackets worn in American movies by James Dean and Marlon Brando, too, could be found, a generation later, on all those young men who wanted to make this macho-look their own. Potato chips are sold as "crisps," "real American hot dogs," also called "wienies," appear in Vienna, and Thousand Island salad dressing is found on the tables of people who might not be able to find them on a map.

Two areas where this continuing process is most clearly seen are clothing and music. Some people can still remember a time when T-shirts, is sweatshirts, and jogging clothes, the light wind-breaker, "letter jackets", sneakers, denim or "Levi" jackets, shirts, and plain old blue jeans were not common daily wear everywhere. Base­ball caps, truckers' hats and vests, quilted hunting jackets, football jerseys, "the college look," and the classic Humphrey Bogart style have all become familiar. American in origin, informal clothing has become the world's first truly uni­versal style.

The situation with American popular music is more complex because in the beginning, when it was still clearly American, it was often strongly resisted. Jazz, as is well known, was once thought to be a great danger to youth and their morals, and was actually outlawed in several countries. Today, while still showing its rather humble American roots, it has become so well established that it's practically a middle-aged, middle-class pursuit. Swing, rock 'n' roll and all its variations, rhythm & blues, soul, and country & western music, all have more or less similar histories. They were first resisted - often in America as well - as being "low-class," musi­cal trash, and as "a danger to our nation's youth." The BBC, for example, banned rock and roll until 1962, forcing the pirate radio stations to smuggle in Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, the Big Bopper and all their shocking American friends. And then the music became accepted, local varieties based on the American originals took hold, and the new genre or style was established. The music is translated, often extended and developed, and then commonly exported back to the U.S.

Sometimes, it is difficult even for an Ameri­can to distinguish between the original and the gifted imitation, whether that man or woman singing the blues was born in Birmingham, Alabama, or Birmingham, England, whether that cowboy moaning about his sweetheart or pickup truck is home on the range in Kansas or on the road to Calais. But as in the case of the opera singer who has learned to sing in Italian, the game is given away when the singer speaks. However, no one finds it difficult to understand what "American" music is like. Whether Dixie­land and Boogie-Woogie, the Big Band sound, the protest-song tradition of Woody and Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, Bluegrass, New Age, or all the variants of the rhymed poetics of rappin', it has become, as it is echoed and replayed and performed around the world, the type of music that most people also listen to outside the United States.

Experts have debated at great length about why American popular culture is so popular and pronounced upon its international effects. An American professor of sociology, for instance, states that "American popular culture is the clos­est approximation there is today to a global lingua franca." (But what then is English?) A Norwegian researcher suggests that it has become, or is becoming, "everyone's second culture." Others talk about a "universality of the American Dream." It seems enough to say here that what at first seems simple is not.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16