The cultural legacy of the US

By Professor George McKay University of Central Lancashire

US culture has been exported throughout the world

Almost all countries in the world have been influenced by American culture.

Professor George McKay assesses the impact, both positive and negative, across the globe.

When the American author Gertrude Stein wrote in 1935 that "the 20th Century has become the American century" she was articulating a common perception of a significantly shifting, western, world.

This was as evident in cultural forms as in socio-economic or military power. The last America century - and who knows possibly the current one too - was accompanied and characterised by vibrant and energetic cultural innovations.

Recognising and understanding these continues to matter, perhaps especially because we are in some cultural sense all American citizens nowadays. How has that come about?

We are invited to marvel when a new burger franchise opens up in a previously totalitarian regime

Professor George McKay

Film has been one key transmitter of America. From the genre of the Western movie to the failed transatlanticism of Titanic, to the mode rétro dystopia of a movie like Bladerunner, the US has popularised images of itself and (re-)invented its own past and future for willing audiences at home and abroad.

Hollywood, and more recently the small screen, has done more than this too, though: it has projected iconic images of American grandeur and ambition for the rest of the world to fantasise about.

Think of the open land and skyscapes that form the backdrop to a John Ford film, or the New York skyline of a thousand detective shows. Even space has been frequently framed in terms of American narratives of exploration and technology, as told through the eyes of Captain Kirk or Luke Skywalker.

Parker epitomises the "planetary force" of black music

In media terms more generally, with massive impact on the culture of advertising, the US has been at the forefront of the postmodern intertwining of commercialism and culture, from Andy Warhol's prints of supermarket products like Campbell's soup tins to the rise of the MTV satellite channel, with its relentless eye-candy diet of pop videos.

Slave trade legacy

From its multi-ethnic society, the US has consistently produced new sounds for the world.

From ragtime piano-playing to jazz, rock and roll to hip-hop, jiving to break-dancing, the pleasures of American popular music have entranced successive generations.

In fact, most of these examples have their origins in African-American music - a creative legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, perhaps confirming Paul Gilroy's bold statement about the "planetary force" of black music today.

Look at the continuing power of jazz for a moment, a music understood as American but played everywhere else in the world by non-Americans, too.

Clinton is also associated with the saxaphone

Even if people can profess ignorance about the saxophone innovations of Charlie Parker or John Coltrane in the past, everyone knows Bill Clinton and Lisa Simpson blow that horn.

The accompaniment of rock and roll to the invention of the teenager in the 1950s was essential: as part of the package came the promise of fun, rebellion, new styles of dress, incomprehension and distaste from parents and authorities.

All the factors that would contribute to later successful youth cultures, from the hippie movement of the 1960s to the grunge scene of the 1990s.

Fast food, fast cars

Speed itself characterises much of what we understand as America. The motor car is dominant here, a form of transport popularised by Henry Ford, which has had an extraordinary impact throughout our lives.

Cities are organised around the car, there are multi-lane highways, drive-thru facilities, drive-by shootings and wars about oil.

With cultural power comes inevitably resistance

Prof George McKay

Fast food too has become an extraordinarily popular form of consumption, and we are invited to marvel when a new burger franchise opens up in a previously totalitarian regime, understanding this as a symbol of freedom - or of the price of progress.

The internet itself is our most recent speedy experience, instant communication and information thanks to largely American corporations and developments.

I offer a brief caveat to this celebration of American cultural energy and imagination.

With cultural power comes, inevitably resistance, and I think, though 9/11 was, is, a hugely important event, it shouldn't always distract us from earlier manifestations of anti-Americanism, or from considering other moments of resentment or resistance.

Regular accusations of dumbing down, or of the homogenisation of local cultures, identified in terms such as coca-colonisation, or the McDonaldisation or Disneyfication of society, point towards a continuing anxiety in many countries around what has been called American cultural imperialism.

This, too, is part of the US's cultural legacy.

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What the World Thinks of America was broadcast in the UK on BBC Two on Tuesday, 17 June, 2003 at 2100 BST.

You can also watch this programme again from the website.

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