1 Unit Eight Core Text The Leisure Empire By Carl Bernstein Just outside Tokyo 300,000 people troop through Japan's Disneyland each week, while 20 miles outside Paris a new city is rising on 8 sq. mi. of formerly vacant land. Once Euro Disney Resort opens for business in 1992, forget the Eiffel Tower, the Swiss Alps and the Sistine Chapel: it is expected to be the biggest tourist attraction in all of Europe. In Brazil as many as 70% of the songs played on the radio each night are in English. In Bombay's thriving theater district, Neil Simon's plays are among the most popular. Last spring a half-dozen American authors were on the Italian best-seller list. So far this year, American films (mostly action-adventure epics like Die Hard 2 and The Terminator) have captured some 70% of the European gate. America is saturating the world with its myths, its fantasies, its tunes and dreams. At a moment of deep self-doubt at home, American entertainment products -- movies, records, books, theme parks, sports, cartoons, television shows -- are projecting an imperial self-confidence across the globe. Entertainment is America's second biggest net export (behind aerospace), bringing in a trade surplus of more than $5 billion a year. American entertainment rang up some $300 billion in sales last year, of which an estimated 20% came from abroad. By the year 2000, half of the revenues from American movies and records will be earned in foreign countries. But the implications of the American entertainment conquest extend well beyond economics. As the age of the military superpowers ends, the U.S., with no planning or premeditation by its government, is emerging as the driving cultural force around the world, and will probably remain so through the next century. The Evil Empire has fallen. The Leisure Empire strikes back. "What we are observing," says Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, "is the increasing leisure hours of people moving increasingly toward entertainment. What they are doing with their time is consuming entertainment -- American entertainment -- all over the industrialized world." For most of the postwar era, hard, tangible American products were the measure of U.S. economic success in the world. Today culture may be the country's most important 2 product, the real source of both its economic power and its political influence in the world. "It's not about a number, though the number is unexpectedly huge," says Merrill Lynch's Harold Vogel, author of the 1990 book Entertainment Industry Economics. "It is about an economic state of mind that today is dominated by entertainment." What is the universal appeal of American entertainment? Scale, spectacle, technical excellence, for sure: Godfather Part III, Batman. The unexpected, a highly developed style of the outrageous, a gift for vulgarity that borders on the visionary: a Motley Crue concert, for example, with the drummer stripped down to his leather underwear, flailing away from his instrument riding across the rafters of the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey. Driving plots, story lines and narrative: a Tom Clancy hero or one of Elmore Leonard's misfits. Indiana Jones' strength of character, self-reliance, a certain coarseness, a restless energy as American as Emerson and Whitman. "People love fairy tales," observes Czech-born director Milos Forman, "and there is no country that does them better than the United States -- whatever kind of fairy tales, not only princesses and happy endings. Every child dreams to be a prince; every adult has a secret closet dream to be Rambo and kill your enemy, regardless if it's your boss or … whoever." Donald Richie, the dean of arts critics in Japan, sees a broader appeal. "The image of America radiates unlimited freedom, democracy, a home of the people," says Richie. "This certainly appeals to the Japanese, who live in a very controlled, authoritarian society." Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, concurs, arguing that American entertainment -- particularly movies, television and rock -- was a primary catalyst in the collapse of communism in Europe and the Soviet Union. On a recent visit to China, David Black, the supervising producer for Law & Order, watched young Chinese sell bootleg copies of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis tapes in Shanghai. "In Hollywood," says Black, "we are selling them the ultimate luxury: the fact that people don't have to live the life they're born into. They can be a cowboy, a detective, Fred Astaire -- and that's what America is selling now. The hell with cars. Cars are just wheels and gears. People want to be able to play at being other people more than they want transportation." Money, lavish production, the big-budget blockbusters that only the American movie studios are willing to finance -- these are part of the appeal. And of course the newness of it all, whether in music or film or TV. Only in the U.S. does popular culture undergo almost seasonal rituals of renewal. Michael Eisner, chairman of Walt Disney Co., and other industry executives argue that 3 the unique character of American entertainment is the result of the polyglot nature of the society itself -- and the clash of cultures and races and traditions within it. The U.S. is the only country in the world with such a heterogeneous mix, uniquely able to invent rap music, Disney World, Las Vegas, rock 'n' roll, Hulk Hogan, Hollywood and Stephen King. "The most important megatrend of the century is the availability of free time," maintains Italian Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis, who is working on a book about the new dynamics of global economy. "This is the reason the U.S. will remain the most important economy in the world -- because its GNP is increasingly geared to entertainment, communications, education and health care, all of which are about individuals 'feeling well,' as opposed to the 19th century concept of services intended to protect the workplace and production." De Michelis' notion illustrates another aspect of today's entertainment business: the lines between entertainment, communications, education and information are increasingly blurred, and the modern U.S. entertainment company is uniquely positioned to provide software in all four areas. Just as the auto industry determines the basic health and output of a host of other industries (steel, plastics, rubber), the American entertainment business has become a driving force behind other key segments of the country's economy. As a result of this so-called multiplier effect, the products and profits of dozens of U.S. industries are tied to American entertainment: fast food, communications technology, sportswear, toys and games, sporting goods, advertising, travel, consumer electronics and so on. And the underlying strength of the American economy, many economists believe, has a lot to do with the tie-in of such businesses to the continued growth and world dominance of the American entertainment business and the popular culture that it exports. Though the business is increasingly global, the domestic entertainment industry is still the backbone, and it is still thriving. The enormous profits of the '80s are being reduced by the recession. But the amount of time and money the average post-adolescent American spends in the thrall of entertainment remains astounding: 40 hours and $30 a week, if industry statistics are to be believed. By the time U.S. culture goes overseas, it has been tried, tested and usually proved successful at home. Another effect of globalization: rather than waiting months or years before being released outside the country, American movies and television programs are beginning to enter the foreign marketplace in their infancy and even at birth -- and boosting profits. Universal opened Back to the Future II in the U.S., Europe and Japan simultaneously. The film made more than $300 million, and the receipts were available months earlier than usual, 4 accruing millions of dollars in interest. The pervasive American presence is producing a spate of protectionist measures around the world, despite vigorous protests by American trade negotiators. The 12 members of the European Community recently adopted regulations requiring that a majority of all television programs broadcast in Europe be made there "whenever practicable." Leading the resistance to the American invasion has been France and its Culture Minister, Jack Lang, a longtime Yankee basher who has proclaimed, "Our destiny is not to become the vassals of an immense empire of profit." Spurred by Lang, who has gone so far as to appoint a rock-'n'-roll minister to encourage French rockers, non-French programming is limited to 40% of available air time on the state-run radio stations. But even Alain Finkelkraut, the highbrow French essayist and critic who is no friend of pop culture, concedes, "As painful as it may be for the French to bear, their rock stars just don't have the same appeal as the British or the Americans. Claude Francois can't compete with the Rolling Stones." In Japan too, where the influence of American entertainment is pervasive, the misgivings are growing. "Younger people are forgetting their native culture in favor of adopting American culture," says Hisao Kanaseki, professor of American literature at Tokyo's Komazawa University. "They're not going to see No theater or Kabuki theater. They're only interested in American civilization. Young people here have stopped reading their own literature." Though movie admissions cost about $12 in Japan, customers seem willing to pay that to stand in the aisles for American films. "To the Japanese, American movies are hip and trendy, and Japanese audiences would rather die than be unfashionable," says William Ireton, managing director of Warner Bros. Japan. Aside from the Islamic world, where laws based on fundamentalist strictures often forbid access to any entertainment, there seem to be very few places where that is not the case. Even in secular Iraq, teenagers jam the half a dozen or so little shops in downtown Baghdad that sell pirated copies of American rock-'n'-roll tapes and where the walls are covered with posters of Madonna and Metallica. The exponential growth of the American entertainment industry since the late 1970s has taken place in an era of extraordinary affection and goodwill toward the U.S. in the industrialized world. In Europe, Asia and even Latin America, anti-Americanism is lower than at any time since the Vietnam War. The phenomenon is in part self-fulfilling: to a large extent that goodwill can be traced to the projection of America as seen through its popular culture rather than to the nation's actual political or social character. If anything, 5 there is an increasing dissonance between what America really is and what it projects itself to be through its movies and music. "Even in Nicaragua, when we were beating their asses in the most horrible way, they had this residual love for us," observes author William Styron, who visited the country during the contra war. "They love us for our culture, our books, our heroes, our baseball players, our sports figures, our comic strips, our movies, everything. They had this consummate hatred of Reagan, but underneath was enormous love and affection for us as a kind of Arcadia." The American entertainment business captures much that is appealing, exuberant -- and excessive -- about the American character. The fantasies and limitless imaginations of Americans are a big part of who they are. It is also, ironically, the source of America's moral authority. For it is in the country's popular culture -- movies, music, thrillers, cartoons, Cosby -- that the popular arts perpetuate the mythology of an America that to a large extent no longer exists: idealistic, rebellious, efficient, egalitarian. In the boom time of their popular culture, Americans have found new ways to merchandise their mythologies. This is what America manufactures in the twilight of the Reagan era. Christopher Lasch, the social historian who wrote The Culture of Narcissism, sees the development of an entertainment-oriented economy as the final triumph of style over substance in the U.S. Lasch believes the most singular American psychological characteristic -- the desire for drama, escape and fantasy -- has come to dominate not only American culture and politics but even its commerce. "It's all of a piece. Its effect is the enormous trivialization of cultural goods. Everything becomes entertainment: news, political commentary, cultural analysis," he says. "The most significant thing about the process is that it abolishes all cultural distinctions, good and bad, high and low. It all becomes the same, and therefore all equally evanescent and ultimately meaningless." Is the imperialism of American popcult smothering other cultures, destroying artistic variety and authenticity around the world to make way for the gaudy American mass synthetic? "It's a horrible experience to go to the most beautiful place in the world only to turn on Crossfire," says Leon Wieselthier, the literary editor of the New Republic.