Cultural diplomacy, or should I say the American version of cultural diplomacy is now being vilified and excoriated by Western European countries, and has been criticized for decades by Middle Eastern countries as well. But, is the critizism justified? In a word-no. While it is true that American culture can be somewhat crass at times, European and Middle Eastern culture leave a lot to be desired too. The caste system in India, the rule of Sharia in Islamic countries, and the denial of European culture and heritage by the Europeans themselves have left a vacuum that will be filled by people searching for an identity they can call their own. The politically correct ideology that Europeans have embraced, denying their own contributions to culture throughout the ages, has eviserated their national identity and corrupted their own sense of self worth. While Americans as a whole are extremely self criticial and judge ourselves rather harshly when it comes to our self image, our national identity is intact and we are extremely proud of who we are as a people and as a nation.
It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The authoritarian rule in the former Soviet Republics, the lack of freedom and denial of human rights in the Middle East where Islam is the rule of law, and abulic attitiude Europeans have embraced to the deference of a dominate immigrant culture, has exacerbated the national identity crisis on the continent and elsewhere. American culture has been emulated in part because of that crisis. If the desire to reclaim national identity is paramount, then Europeans and others need to eschew the trappings of politically correct multiculturism, and instead embrace the unique individuality and heritage that history has bestowed upon those nation states. And recall that is was this individuality and heritage that gave birth to America.
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The Return of Cultural Diplomacy
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Americans reject both government censorship and, in recent years, self-regulation by the entertainment industry. In any case, such limits are ineffectual; any attempt to censor would be quickly subverted by mass piracy and the Internet. But beyond these practical reasons, there is an important principle at stake. To censor American exports would be politically imprudent in a world of rising authoritarian powers (China, Russia, the Gulf states) that proudly dispense with American-style free speech. To defend their freedoms, Americans need to show that they are self-correcting—that the country possesses not only liberty but also a civilization worthy of liberty.
Civilization? What civilization? I can already hear readers scoffing. America's rich artistic and literary heritage is increasingly unknown to the rest of the world—even to its friends. In Poland, I met a professor of American literature who confided in me that when she tells other Poles what she does for a living, they laugh and say, "That's impossible, there's no such thing!"
This anecdote is borne out by Simon Anholt, a member of the British Foreign Office Public Diplomacy Board who researches the global reputation of nations and cities. Together with the opinion research firm GfK Roper, Anholt conducts an annual survey of 1,000 online respondents in 20 countries who are asked to rank 50 nations according to such criteria as "governance," "people" and "investments." The Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index for 2008 ranks the United States 33rd for "culture." Notably, a previous survey that separated "popular culture" from "culture and heritage" ranked America dead last in the latter category. "The old idea that the U.S. is only good for popular culture and commerce has now hardened into a very negative perception," says Anholt.
During the cold war, Washington strove to share America's cultural heritage through scholarly and professional exchanges, artist and writer tours, libraries, translations and culturally oriented international broadcasting. Any new investment in American "smart power" should include a substantial cultural component. But it won't be easy: ever since Sen. Jesse Helms attacked the National Endowment for the Arts in the 1980s for supporting works such as Robert Mapplethorpe's sadomasochistic photographs, American artists have expressed hostility toward their government, often through their art. Can the government be blamed for not wanting to export such work?
Still, plenty of artists do not trade in politicized shock. The way to reconcile democracy and civilization is to exercise good taste in ways that are open and communicable to all. One example: a 2004 production of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" mounted by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, performed in colloquial Arabic by some of Egypt's leading actors—a highly regarded and universally accessible bicultural treatment of home, community and the swift passage of time that showed just as the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal was breaking.
In the same vein, U.S. radio broadcasters could take a cue from Radio Sawa. If pop music succeeds using the "together" approach, why not other forms of music? Why not fund a series of regional channels devoted to making Western and non-Western classics comprehensible to all listeners?
It is an American knack to present high culture not in a stuffy academic way but in a way that is both respectful and down to earth. To quote a favorite saying of Cole Porter's, "Democracy is not a leveling down, but a leveling up." The American cultural ideal has always been to recognize art on its merits, regardless of where the artist hails from, and to make the finest fruits of civilization available to all. This ideal has never been fully realized. But that is no reason to abandon it, especially now when the country's ideals in general are in need of refurbishing.
Bayles teaches in the honors program at Boston College and is the author of “The Ugly Americans: How Not to Lose the Global Cultural War,” to be published by Yale University Press in 2009.
© 2008
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