YANKS IN EUROPE
William McGurn finds
the Old World consenting to its own cultural rape
AN AMERICAN can find himself in no more precarious situation than when he picks up his pen and turns his attention to Europe. The way is fraught with perils. Although the US has been a sovereign nation for roughly two centuries now, the etiquette regarding comments about one's mother country has yet to be established, and the American is bound to emerge the worse for it when he makes an attempt. Mothers are funny that way.
Indeed, however much else they may disagree, on this issue Europeans display a unity that, politically channelled, would be the saving of the Common Market. I would almost say it is genetic; even as unabashed an Americanophile as Alexis de Tocquevil- le drew the line here. 'An American should never be led to speak of Europe,' wrote the Frenchman, 'for he will then probably display much presumption and very foolish pride.' What M. de Tocqueville so elo- quently decried 150 years ago is a truth that superpower status has done nothing to alleviate. The travelling Yank is doomed to come across as either an annoying provin- cial (given to repeating 'Whatever would you have done without us?' at regular intervals) or one of those obsequious little American professors Evelyn Waugh had so much fun with in his novels.
Personally, I am more prone to the sin of obsequiousness. On my first sojourn in Europe I was — like most Americans — awed. Bowled over, if you want a suitable New World expression. Europe struck me as so. . so. . . old. Real castles. Majestic cathedrals. And ruins everywhere — God, how I love ruins. Powerful stuff to one weaned on the Pepsi Generation, and to that 19-year-old student Europe was the Goddess Culture.
This ought not to come as a surprise to the local folk. However high European noses are thrust into the air, it is more than matched by the degree of deference Amer- icans have shown to Europe in all matters of taste: food, clothing, art, war, and so on. If the truth be known, Europeans have been trading shamelessly on this deference for years, from all those hack French Impressionists, who quite properly starved in their own land, to old geezers like Alistair Cooke, who without his English accent would have found himself teaching literature in some rural midwestern junior college.
But the seven years between my resi- dences in Europe have made me in- creasingly suspicious of European claims to cultural superiority. Granted we Amer- icans have an annoying tendency to think we can beat anyone at their own games — even to the point of coming up with a better monarchy if we wanted to — but the Old World today exhibits an unnerving passion for the cheesiest aspects of Amer- icana. From the Coca-Cola motif garbage cans on sale in Europe's most fashionable shopping centres, to the French-, German-, Dutch- and Italian-dubbed versions of the television serial Dallas, Europe's slumming amid America's pop culture belies the cold disdain it purports to have for the New World.
Looking back, I see now that there were signs of this even in my student days in Ireland, signs that only confused me then. My interests and those of my Irish friends were, shall we say, worlds apart. Where I was fascinated by Celtic folklore, the dark romance of Ireland's mediaeval past, and the haunting eloquence of the tin whistle, my Irish classmates were forever preoccu- pied with Kojack, the Florida beaches, and the astonishingly low cost of Levis in the 'That's where British Gas keep their profits.'
States. When I showed my cousins how to pop popcorn (I had to resist their strong inclinations to pour sugar on it), I knew what the British missionaries must have felt when they introduced tea to the In- dian.
One answer to this is 'cultural imperial- ism', an answer that has found a vociferous proponent in the person of Jack Lang. Certainly America's culture has con- quered. Even in the darkest reaches of Provence, chances are the 14-year-old daughter of the village fruit peddler will be sporting a 'University of Michigan' sweat- shirt. This sort of thing grates on the collectivist sensibilities of M. Lang. As though that were not enough, in addition to all those Burger Kings, Wendys, and McDonalds sprouting up in Europe's most exclusive neighbourhoods, a host of con- tinental imitators has sprung up: Quickbur- ger, O'Kitch, Manhattan Burger etc.
M. Lang's cries of cultural rape — ghastly exports of burgers and Dynasty reruns forcing themselves on an unwilling and refined Europe — make me look with new respect on the she-was-asking-for-it defence. Quite simply, when faced with this unpleasant fact, the European lies. A gentleman I met in a local Brussels cafe was typical. He informed me that McDo- nald's is not at all liked by Europeans. There is a case to be made against McDo- nald's, but to believe such a statement is to believe that Brussels' three McDonalds (not to mention the various Quickburgers) all derive their profits from the American expatriate stomach. Even given the large Nato contingent in the area, the proposi- tion seems dubious.
The point, I should think, would best be made by a random sampling of customs inspectors. Excluding the intercontinental traffic in mind-altering drugs, the Amer- ican abroad displays far greater apprecia- tion for the finer things than his European counterpart. Take the former through Dublin, London, Paris, Rome and Munich, and he will return home with a fine Aran sweater, a Wexford vase, a Gucci scarf, and a few Hummels. The average European, by contrast, will likely return from the land of opportunity with some Mickey Mouse ears, a T-shirt bearing an advertisement for some brand of motor oil, and a bad case of indigestion. Though it can be argued that the former is merely bourgeois, he appears to great advantage when compared with the latter.
Lest my European friends misunder- stand me, I do not endorse any, of the above. I repeat the facts with no relish, for I too think that the blighting of the landscape with Michael Jackson's grinning visage is a common menace. America never had a long cultural tradition; what it comes up with naturally is a bit rough. But Europe had a tradition and has turned its back on it. And people who choose Starsky and Hutch oughtn't to throw stones.
William McGurn is editorial page features editor of the Wall St Journal (Europe).
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