THE SMITH CENTER

for Private Enterprise Studies

Our Most Dangerous Export

Dr. Richard B. Speed,

Department of History,
CSU East Bay

Over the last thirty years or more, activists of various sorts have often criticized American trade, arguing that many of the products we export to foreign nations, especially those in the "third world," undermine either, the health and safety of the people, or their social and political institutions. Among the products often singled out for such criticism are cigarettes, soft drinks, fast foods, pesticides, food additives, and of course military equipment. These critics however almost never focus upon the most powerful and dangerous of all American exports: the products of studios in Hollywood and New York.

The entertainment industry has been in the business of packaging and shaping American popular culture since the 1920s. Over the course of three quarters of a century or so, the American entertainment industry has grown from the nickelodeons of New York into an enormous enterprise with global reach and influence. Silent films initially reached only a relatively small audience of viewers who paid the admission to theaters. But over time, with the advent of sound, the products of Hollywood studios reached ever greater audiences. Before the outbreak of World War Two, audiences around the world flocked to see the latest American movies. Such films as Jimmy Stewart's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," and "The Grapes of Wrath," based upon the novel by John Steinbeck, portrayed an idealistic America in which admirable heroes grappled with its social and political problems. Other more light hearted films starring the likes of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers delighted audiences from Rome to Rio. Around the world, a favorable image of the United States was created by the movies Hollywood produced. Although his image of America was not swayed by American films, even Adolf Hitler was captivated by "King Kong," the story of beauty and the beast that was produced in the year the National Socialists captured Germany.

During the struggle which followed, Hollywood enlisted in the war effort, producing numerous films which promoted the heroism of the allies, and the idealism of their cause. These included such motion pictures as "Bataan," "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," John Ford's "They Were Expendable," and after the war was over, "The Sands of Iwo Jima," starring John Wayne. Under the leadership of Walt Disney, the cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck participated in the war against the Nazis. Frank Capra made a series of explicit propaganda films for the War Department under the general title, "Why We Fight." Like Joseph Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl, Hollywood understood the power of motion pictures to influence public perceptions.

Amidst the ruins of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, American cultural influence spread with the nation's rising political, economic and military hegemony. Hollywood motion pictures, increasingly in color by the late 1950s, flooded the world just as did American cars, cigarettes, soft drinks and other consumer items. Collectively they constituted an enormous advertisement for the "American way of life." During the cold war competition for the "hearts and minds" of hundreds of millions around the planet, this was powerful propaganda indeed. The products of the American "dream factory," had a profound impact on the image of the United States which was formed in the minds of people who had never been to the U.S. and had no other way of finding out what the nation was like. That image was focused through the lens of Hollywood. The advent of television broadcasting expanded Hollywood's reach and intensified its power for good or ill many times over, because it could bring its images into the homes and gathering places of men and women around the world twenty-four hours a day.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, under the impact of the African-American crusade for equal rights, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the trauma of the Viet Nam war with its resultant civil conflict at home, Hollywood's depiction of the United States changed. No longer was the United States a land of opportunity. Even as the nation underwent the most profound transformation in race relations that had taken place in a century, it was portrayed as a land of intractable discrimination where members of minority groups could seldom get a fair shake. The three major news networks regularly broadcast intense color pictures of race riots in American cities. This was news and they had to broadcast these films, but nevertheless, they certainly tainted the American image throughout the world. Before the era of television, the international damage caused to the U.S. would have been much less. The theme of racism was pursued in numerous movies from "To Kill a Mockingbird," and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," to "Mississippi Burning" and "The Color Purple." Furthermore it was explored in hundreds of TV shows from courtroom dramas and police shows to situation comedies. Most notable of these was the mini-series "Roots," based on the novel by Alex Haley. Even as the United States opened its doors to more immigrants from the "third world" than ever before, Hollywood depicted the nation as a place where intolerant ethnocentrism was predominant. In short, the message went out from Hollywood: the United States is racist.

After 1968 or so, GI s who a generation earlier had gone abroad on a mission to rescue the world from Nazi tyranny, were depicted as little better than imperial storm troopers crushing the aspirations of innocent peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America in order to assure the profits of greedy American billionaires and arms merchants. In the Hollywood version of the world, it wasn't Stalinist Russia, with its extensive network of prison camps and secret police that replaced fascism as a threat to liberty and progress. According to Hollywood, the United States, which sacrificed a hundred thousand of its children to contain Marxist totalitarianism on battlefields from Chosin in Korea to Khe Sanh in Viet Nam, played that role. American soldiers, in the movie version of the Viet Nam war were dope smoking rapists and mass murderers in such movies as "Apocalypse Now," and "Platoon."

Meanwhile, the Norman Rockwell version of America, often portrayed in American films, gave way to a much grittier image. No longer was the United States a place where men might be found "Singing in the Rain," and families lived in pleasant ranch style homes. Instead the nation's cities were increasingly ruled by evil white businessmen like Oliver Stone's Gordon Gekko, who enshrined "greed" as a primary American virtue in the 1987 film "Wall Street," and they were inhabited by a downtrodden black underclass, prone to drug addiction, illegitimacy and violence. Uplifting themes increasingly gave way to despair and degradation. The police were violent, racist and corrupt. Business and government were venal and dishonest at best. At worst, the United States government was run by "fascists" who as Oliver Stone told the world in "JFK," killed the president in order to have a war to fatten the profits of the defense industry. Conspiratorial themes were not limited to the big screen where CIA agents always seemed to lurk in the shadows. Popular television shows like "The X-Files" featured two lone FBI agents fighting the entire national security apparatus of the U.S. government which was under the control of a secret cabal. During the 2002 television season, the contemporary show "24" featured a conspiracy by American oilmen to detonate a nuclear weapon in Los Angeles and cast blame on an innocent Middle Eastern country. According to this unlikely plot, an angry president would retaliate in kind, oil prices would skyrocket and the evil oil tycoons would make enormous profits as a mushroom cloud rose over L.A. and American bombs incinerated the inhabitants of several cities east of Suez. This was of course, a thinly veiled attack on the Bush Administration, its alleged oil connections, and the policy of confrontation and war against Saddam Hussein.

In the face of all this, the American people were, according to Hollywood, ignorant, passive and increasingly, obese. Those few with noble instincts were defeated by dark forces far more powerful than they. American men were ignorant, violent, avaricious, beer swilling louts, obsessed with brutal games like football. If not the latter, they were effete weaklings ruled by their women. American women on the other hand were shallow, demanding sluts addicted to alcohol, drugs, and sexual pleasure. If you doubt the depravity of the average American, just watch "Traffic," or for that matter, listen to "American Woman," the Guess Who song from 1970 which said it all. "Colored lights can hypnotize, sparkle some one else's eyes. . . . I don't need your war machines, I don't need your ghetto scenes." According to this version of reality, American women were not only vapid, but they were somehow complicit in war, poverty, and racism.

While it is true that Hollywood has produced a few upbeat portrayals of American life during the past thirty years, aside from comedies, it is hard to think of them, and even many of those such as "MASH" or "All in the Family" have featured dark social commentary. When satirical criticism has not been explicit, many comedies have, like "Seinfeld," pushed the envelope of the socially, morally and culturally acceptable. The recent eruption into prime time of homosexual characters is a case in point. While this may be quite acceptable to many Americans, in those quarters of the world where traditional cultures prevail, it is deeply offensive to many.

By the beginning of the new millennium, hundreds of millions of people throughout the world had seen in the movies and on television, degrading depictions of Americans, and life in the United States. For over thirty years, Hollywood has been redefining the image of America. Among the multitudes who have seen these films and television shows, few know anything about the lives of real people in the United States. All they have ever seen is the caricature produced in the studios. So how can we wonder why people in the Islamic world might think the United States, the "great Satan"? Why should we be surprised that men such as Osama bin Laden and millions like him might think that the United States is the source of evil in the world? Hollywood has been saying so for over thirty years.