| [an error occurred while processing this directive] |  |  |
 |  | |
| ||
| |||||||
| |||||||
|
| ||||||
| |||||||
| |||||||
 Recent commentary from National Journal: Social Studies: To Beat the Axis of Evil, Confront the Axis of Anti-Semitism (June 28, 2003) Increasingly and ominously, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are converging. We Americans are all Jews now. By Jonathan Rauch. Legal Affairs: Getting Serious About Race: The Next 25 Years (June 28, 2003) The challenge is to address the causes of the disastrously deficient academic performance of many minorities. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: The Abortion Wars (June 28, 2003) Pre-emptive strike launched against any would-be Justice opposed to Roe v. Wade. By William Schneider. Wealth of Nations: Misleading Voters About WMD Is No Way to Spin a War (June 17, 2003) In prosecuting this long war against terrorism, the electorate's trust is a vital strategic asset. By Clive Crook. Media: The Counterswing (June 17, 2003) As we turn away from all things Rainesian, let's not lose brightness and dash. By William Powers. Political Pulse: The Hunt for a Winner (June 17, 2003) Most Democrats are more interested in beating Bush than in having a nominee with whom they agree. By William Schneider. Legal Affairs: Ashcroft and the Post-9/11 Arrogance of Power (June 17, 2003) Ashcroft owes apologies to several hundred people for holding them far longer than necessary. By Stuart Taylor Jr. More from National Journal. |
Media 
Sitcom PlanetThe spread of U.S. media is forcing the rest of the world to take a crash course in surviving the media jungle by William Powers ..... The current critique of American power says that this country is hell-bent on taking over the world. And, the argument continues, we're doing this not just with our bombers and our tanks but also with our media and entertainment products: American TV shows and movies are leveling proud civilizations, despoiling ancient beliefs and traditions with the likes of Friends and Sex and the City. It's a tidy way of understanding this historic moment, and it makes intuitive sense. Lately it really does seem as if Disney, CNN, and the other big U.S. media players are intent on conquering every inch of foreign cultural turf and turning the residents into loyal ticket-buying, remote-clicking subjects. But can they, really? Is the American media juggernaut as sinister and baleful as the critics suggest? For answers, there's no better place to turn than the Arab world, where the conquest is rolling along at an especially accelerated pace. In 1990, there was just one Arab satellite television channel; today there are more than a hundred, and they are full of content that was either made in America or is trying desperately to look that way. "Will & Grace can be seen in Qatar." This stark sentence appears on screen for a moment all by itself at the beginning of Hollywood and the Muslim World, a provocative new documentary that premieres on July 14 on AMC, the cable and satellite TV channel mainly associated with classic movies. It's supposed to be an ominous datum, a powerful token of what the film's director and narrator, Charles C. Stuart, calls a "cultural invasion." The Will & Grace bulletin is followed by a broader textual announcement: "American culture is threatening Arab and Muslim identity." The film finds numerous sources on the ground in various Middle East countries who view the arrival of American sitcoms—and, worst of all, a gay sitcom—as a genuine cataclysm, the 21st-century equivalent of infidels at the gates. A correspondent for Al Jazeera, the satellite news channel, regrets the Will & Grace incursion, gravely advising Stuart that lesbians and "sodomites" are not a part of Arab culture. I believe there's an ample cache of counter-evidence on that question, but never mind. The point is, for all the earnest brow-wrinkling about the United States' destroying the Arab world via satellite, it's sometimes hard to take the whole argument entirely seriously. One thing this documentary makes clear is that American cultural values are not exactly being imposed from without. The "invasion" is led from within, often by locals who speak passionately about traditional values, even as they turn a handsome profit piping in the very stuff that's undermining those values. Among several memorable figures in this film is Hala Sarhan, a "powerful and controversial" Egyptian talk-show host who's called "The Arab Oprah." At one point, she tells the filmmaker it's "outrageous" that American pornography is now available to illiterate Egyptians. Cut to a shot of the fur-clad mogul—like Oprah, she also helps run the business side of her company—being driven around Hollywood, shopping for hot content. She wants whatever is new, current, or, as she puts it, "very in." American entertainment may be a threat to Arab heritage, but hey, whatever sells. "We don't have to choose Sex and the City or Baywatch," she says from her limo. "But if you show it, I think the people will love to see it." Many will, no doubt. And others won't. The beauty of the polyglot society is there's something for every taste, and we all get to choose from the giant, ever-changing menu. Of course, market-driven culture comes at a price. It rewards those products that appeal to the largest audience, a brutal calculus that yields homogeneity, best-seller worship, and the least-common-denominator mentality that brought us reality television. American culture may be "overbearing" in the Arab and Muslim worlds, as this film argues. But you come away from it with a sense that the phenomenon is far bigger than the hegemony of one powerful civilization. The proliferation of U.S. media is forcing the rest of the world to take a crash course in how to survive the modern media jungle, where the good and the bad coexist side by side, often on the same cable menu. The film offers several instances of Arab media types who are trying to emulate the best Western media practices. One Al Jazeera reporter says his network strives for the "objectivity and fairness" of American and British journalism. Later, this same man laments, "We want to be well entertained, informed.... [But] we don't want American media to approach us with dozens of ridiculous films either conveying no messages at all or conveying wrong messages, or tackling major issues, especially those related to the Middle East, in a shallow, biased way. That's exactly what we don't want from America." It's also exactly the conundrum that every American media consumer faces every day. The objective and the profound come bundled, inevitably, with the shallow and the biased. In a free society, you can't have one without the other, and cultural contentment lies in making peace with this reality. At one point, the film notes in passing that American programming is starting to drop off on Arab channels, as local companies produce their own quality material. We then meet a bunch of young Cairo-based TV people who studied the ancient wisdom of Western sitcom producers and produced a successful show, a comedy inspired by Friends. "You have to have at least two or three laughters every minute," one of the show's creators confidently avers. Sad but true: He's right.
What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. He recently spent three months in Japan as a Japan Society Fellow, studying the role of reading in Japanese life. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. Copyright © 2002 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. | [an error occurred while processing this directive] | ||
|
Home |
Current Issue |
Back Issues |
Forum |
Site Guide |
Feedback |
Subscribe |
Search
| ||||
