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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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 Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 9:04 pm Post subject: Failures Of US Cultural Diplomacy |
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An informative historical overview, and a few interesing(if problematic) suggestions for improvement. However, the writer's personal distaste for current youth culture comes through loud and clear.
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That same sentiment led the State Department to value popular music, too. Building on the wartime popularity of the Armed Forces Radio Network, the VOA began in 1955 to beam jazz (��the music of freedom,�� program host Willis Conover called it) to a regular audience of 100 million listeners worldwide, 30 million of them in the Soviet bloc. The Russian novelist Vassily Aksyonov recalls thinking of these broadcasts as ��America��s secret weapon number one . . . a kind of golden glow over the horizon.�� During those same years, the USIA sought to counter Soviet criticism of American race relations by sponsoring wildly successful tours by jazz masters such as Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie. The tours revealed a dissident strain in American popular culture, as when Armstrong, during his 1960 African tour, refused to play before segregated audiences. Former USIA officer Wilson P. Dizard recalls how, in Southern Rhodesia, ��the great ��Satchmo�� attracted an audience of 75,000 whites and blacks, seated next to each other in a large football stadium. Striding across the stage to play his first number, he looked out at the crowd and said, ��It��s nice to see this.����
The countercultural tone of much popular culture in the late 1960s and 1970s might have led one to think that the government��s willingness to use it as propaganda would fade. But it did not. In 1978, the State Department was prepared to send Joan Baez, the Beach Boys, and Santana to a Soviet-American rock festival in Leningrad. The agreement to do so foundered, but its larger purpose succeeded: America��s counterculture became the Soviet Union��s. Long before Václav Havel talked about making Frank Zappa minister of culture in the post-communist Czech Republic, the State Department assumed that, in the testimony of one Russian observer, ��rock ��n�� roll was the . . . cultural dynamite that blew up the Iron Curtain.��
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It is indeed odd, in view of the Bush administration��s conservative social agenda, that $100 million of the money allocated for cultural diplomacy goes to a broadcast entity, Radio Sawa, that gives the U.S. government seal of approval to material widely considered indecent in the Arab and Muslim world: Britney Spears, Eminem, and the same Arab pop stars who gyrate in the video clips.
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Yeah, that's not very bright. It's one thing for Muslim youth to hear a Britney tune on a locally-owned radio station, it's quite another thing to have Britney Spears openly promoted by the US government as a representative of American culture. You're pretty much writing bin laden's speeches for him when you do that.
One of the author's suggestions:
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Launch a people-to-people exchange between young Americans involved in Christian media and their Muslim counterparts overseas. The existence of such counterparts is not in doubt. Consider Amr Khalid, a 36-year-old Egyptian television personality who has made himself one of the most sought-after Islamic speakers in the Arab world by emulating American televangelists. Indeed, his Ramadan program has been carried on LBC, the Christian Lebanese network. Or consider Sami Yusuf, the British-born singer whose uplifting video clips provide a popular alternative to the usual sex-kitten fare. His strategy of airing religious-music clips on mainstream Arab satellite music channels rather than on Islamic religious channels parallels precisely that of the younger generation of American musicians who have moved out of the ��ghetto,�� as they call it, of contemporary Christian music.
One obstacle to the sort of people-to-people exchange proposed here would be the injunction against anything resembling missionary work in many Muslim countries. For that reason, such a program would probably have to start on American turf and involve careful vetting. But the potential is great. Not only would the participants share technical and business skills; they would also find common ground in a shared critique of what is now a global youth culture. In essence, American Christians and foreign Muslims would say to each other, ��We feel just as you do about living our faith amid mindless hedonism and materialism. Here��s what we have been doing about it in the realm of music and entertainment.��
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The problem, of course, would be finding conservative Christians willing to refrain from prosletyzing on these missions. Plus, I could see the proposed interfaith critiques of secularism degenerating into a bunch of "Why We Hate F ags" seminars held on the public dime.
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=135777 |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 3:49 am Post subject: |
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Then:
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| Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie. |
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| Joan Baez, the Beach Boys, and Santana |
Now:
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| Britney Spears, Eminem, |
Anyone care to argue if the West is in decline or not? |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 8:02 am Post subject: |
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Then:
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Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie.
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Joan Baez, the Beach Boys, and Santana
Now:
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Britney Spears, Eminem,
Anyone care to argue if the West is in decline or not?
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But I think the criteria for who gets played might have changed. The article said that nowadays the propaganda outlets play what's popular, as dicatated by the market. If they had been using that criteria in the past, the "then" section of your above list might look considerably less impressive.
Baez, The Beach Boys, and Santana, for example, were supposed to play Russia for the State Department in 1978. But my recollection of what the average yokel was listening to in 1978 is more along the lines of...
(that's supposed to be a Saturday Night Fever poster, in case it's not showing up)
The article also states that Armstrong, Gillespie et al were highlighted as a rebuttal to Soviet critiques of American racism. But we can wonder if artists of that calibre were really what the market was supporting in the 1950s. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 5:02 pm Post subject: |
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| But I think the criteria for who gets played might have changed. |
The question then becomes: What idiot changed the criteria?
You're quite right that mainstream pop was pretty dreary in the 70's (or any other time), but I would be very interested to hear anyone's defense of dear Britney. Until then I stand by my contention that Western Civ is in Dire Straits. |
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jaganath69
Joined: 17 Jul 2003
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| Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 5:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Interesting to note that in Indonesia, where I have most experience of seeing the effects of soft power, that shows like American Idol are immensely popular with young people. US pop culture still packs a powerful punch in certain parts of the Muslim world. What's more, American fast food restaurants have been hugely successful with Muslim middle classes both there and in Malaysia by branding themselves as family venues. I realise the Southeast Asian context is slightly different to that of the gulf, but I wouldn't be as glum about the power of popular American culture to be a positive force all around the world. |
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