Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II

Critics of the spread of U.S. mass culture abroad charge that it has led to the ""Americanization"" of Europe, debasing tastes, uprooting traditions and creating passive consumers. This is mostly a myth, declares Pells in a sweeping, eye-opening study rife with tales of transatlantic misunderstandings. Europeans, he argues, have always reinterpreted and adapted the messages of American pop culture to suit their own needs and circumstance; for example, Sartre and Truffaut used American novels and films to overthrow France's literary and cinematic old guard, while European teens embraced rock music as a symbolic alternative to repressive regimes. Furthermore, the U.S.-Europe dialogue has been an exchange of metaphors and projections more than a sharing of information, contends Pells, professor of history at the University of Texas, Austin. American mass culture, he notes, became a weapon to be deployed in an internal dispute among European authority figures at a time of class antagonism; Europeans remained convinced of their cultural superiority. Meanwhile, a symbolic Europe, wise and urbane, drew American writers and intellectuals, as well as tourists, diplomats and businesspeople who rarely came into sustained contact with the Europeans themselves. Pells has produced a major piece of cultural criticism that recasts the debate over the globalization of American culture. (May)