And why today’s dream doesn’t export as well as the original

MARTHA BAYLES OCT 10, 2015

The American dream has always been global. In 1931, when the historian James Truslow Adams first introduced the concept, he credited the dream with having “lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores.” Yet in recent years, a troubling gap has developed between this original dream and a new one that speaks far less eloquently to the rest of the world.

The original dream has three strands. The first is about prosperity: the classic saga of penniless strivers working hard to lift their families into the middle class. An integral part of this saga is continuity between generations—with parents sacrificing so their children can succeed, and successful children never forgetting “where they came from.” Needless to say, this dream of hard work and intergenerational mobility is shared by the 95 percent of humanity who are not American. But it is called the American dream because the United States was the first nation in history where it actually came true for large numbers of people.

The United States is also the nation where the deliberate exclusion of any individual or group from the dream came to be condemned. This points to the second and third strands: democracy and freedom. For the dream to function properly, the basic rights of individuals must be respected. On this point Adams is clear: “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.”

A recent poll commissioned by The Atlantic found that, while Americans are feeling quite optimistic about their own lives, that optimism does not extend to the American dream. Indeed, the poll found that a large majority is losing faith in it. This, too, is dangerous, because if these Americans now feel weary and mistrustful of the dream, they will not make the necessary effort to share it with others.

During the Cold War, the U.S. government invested substantial resources in “public diplomacy,” a term that covered a host of overseas activities—from libraries to lecture tours, art exhibits to world’s-fair-style expositions, international visitor programs to radio and TV broadcasts meant to undermine Soviet censorship. As conducted by the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the State Department’s Division of Cultural Relations, these activities sought to convey what President Harry Truman called “a full and fair picture” of American history, culture, society, and political institutions—including the American dream as experienced by generations of immigrants.

Today, this form of diplomacy is sometimes dismissed as propaganda. But that is unfair. Having witnessed the extreme propaganda emanating from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the men and women who crafted America’s Cold War public diplomacy generally knew the difference between outright lies and truthful attempts at persuasion.

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After the Cold War, authoritarian leaders began separating the American dream’s strand of prosperity, which they wanted, from the strands of democracy and freedom, which they did not.
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Here we encounter a challenge rarely acknowledged in the debate over public diplomacy. The post-Cold War spending cuts left a vacuum, which was quickly filled by America’s most successful export: commercial entertainment. Everywhere in the world, people view the United States through some kind of screen, whether a big one in a movie theater or a small one in a television or computer. And what appears on those screens has the power to shape foreign opinion of the American dream and what it stands for.
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This new dream features a fantasy of young, unattached men and women enjoying a degree of affluence and personal freedom that is unheard of in most societies.

After 9/11, for example, many studies were done of America’s tarnished image, and one, headed by former U.S. Ambassador Edward Djerejian, quoted an English teacher in Syria asking, “Does Friends show a typical American family?” The question was odd, given that Friends, which ran on NBC from 1994 to 2004, was notable for not showing a family.
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But as I discovered in talking with over 200 producers, consumers, and observers of popular culture in 17 countries around the world, the TV genre represented by Friends and its many successors, from Sex and the City to The Big Bang Theory, has been tremendously influential in projecting a new American dream—one that, unlike its predecessor, requires no connection with either political freedom or democracy.

In this new dream, the saga of one generation working hard to raise the prospects of the next is replaced by a fantasy of young, unattached men and women living in an upscale urban setting with little or no contact with their families or communities of origin, and enjoying a degree of affluence and personal freedom, including sexual freedom, that is unheard of in most societies. As described by the creators of Friends, it is about “sex, love, relationships, careers … [at] a time in your life when everything’s possible … because when you’re single and in the city, your friends are your family.”

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The original American dream appealed to adult men and women willing to commit themselves to a risky path of hard work, sacrifice, and hope for a better future. The new dream panders to adolescents and post-adolescents who are fearful of growing up. This is not an accurate or full picture of American life, and neither is it appealing to many people whom America needs on its side. To say this is not to recommend censorship—there is already far too much of that in the world. But it is to recommend some self-reflection, and maybe restraint, on the part of the producers and consumers of American entertainment, which, like it or not, is now this nation’s de facto ambassador to a turbulent and skeptical world.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international...plomacy/410080/

Quote: Cincinnatus wrote in post #2

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May God help us: The post-Cold War spending cuts left a vacuum, which was quickly filled by America’s most successful export: commercial entertainment. Everywhere in the world, people view the United States through some kind of screen, whether a big one in a movie theater or a small one in a television or computer

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