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By Matthias Petry
A variety of prominent foreign journalists and American filmmakers discussed the role of the media in this conflict during two real-time interactive seminars from the Museum of TV and Radio in New York that were broadcast to American universities, including Utah State University. The first seminar, on Monday, discussed how foreign journalists portray the United States; the main issue of the second seminar Tuesday was the influence of American popular culture on foreign countries and their culture. Mark Damazer, deputy director of BBC News UK, said Monday that the "anti-American situation" at the moment is nothing new and that the United States has gone through a lot of popularity crises since World War II. He named as examples the 1956 Suez crisis, Vietnam and the era of President Nixon, who "made President Bush look like Tops of the Pops," he said. He added that the rest of the world should become more realistic and realize that an "American solution" is not suitable for every single problem. A main issue of the discussion was of course America's foreign policy and also the attitude of the American people toward foreign countries and their knowledge of them. Lauren Cohen-Tanugi, a French author and columnist, said that the United States is lacking behind in terms of political globalization. "It seems like that the United States have not realized that the world is politically global. . . . And so there's a gap between this sort of very U.S.-centric aspect of foreign policy and its international implication. So, somehow U.S. foreign policy has to become more international in a way," he said. Akwe Amosu, producer of allAfrica.com, raised the question if and how the American population wants to engage with the rest of the world. "It is a great surprise for a non-American to come here and discover just how little is known about the outside world. . . . It seems to me that if the United States is going to take such an aggressive role in other parts of the world . . . Americans here need to know an awful lot more about those places so that they can evaluate the actions of their government," she said. Reinhard Meier, editor of the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung, disagreed, saying that "if you really want to be informed, you can be. There is a factor of personal responsibility; you cannot blame the government for that." In general, everybody agreed that most of these issues always have two sides -- for example that the United States is just as much influenced by other cultures than they influence other cultures or that American products have to be heavily adapted to the respective market, such as McDonalds food in India. On Tuesday, three American filmmakers then discussed the influence of American popular culture such as movies, music and TV series on foreign countries and their cultures. Joan Ganz Cooney, creator of Sesame Street, talked about her problems with politics when she started a Sesame Street-like program in Israel, Jordan and Palestine whose goal was "to teach children to see and respect differences and similarities," she said. Charles Stuart, director of the documentary "Hollywood and the Muslim world," shared his experiences when he interviewed people for the film in Lebanon, Egypt, Kathar and Northern Iraq. "In a faith which doesn't even like dating, you can imagine what the weight is of American sitcoms which deal with homosexuality and premarital sex." he said. The discussion also raised the question if American pop culture is "taking over the world." Everette Dennis, media professor at Fordham University, said that the total percentages of American TV series are actually going down, despite the "enormous bombardment of American content going everywhere in the world," he said. A main problem of exporting American pop culture is the simultaneous export of certain values that might not be an acceptable way of life in certain cultures. Stuart said that he believed in "pumping it all out there. Hollywood doesn't make these films with an international audience in mind. . . . If you don't like, turn it off. Or, as I like to challenge people, not only turn it off, go and make something better." A good example for an American export that has been sensitively adapted to the "target culture" is Radio Sawa. It is a American-style radio program broadcast in Arabic throughout the Middle East that plays American as well as local music and news. So, both seminars discussed several aspects of American influence in other cultures at length and came to the conclusion that there are two sides to this story and that the export of American culture and values, contradicting its reputation, can also have good effects in the recipient cultures. If you are interested in tapes of these seminars, please contact the USU journalism and communication department at (435) 797-3293. MS |
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