The Myths of America

It is healthy to reconsider our view of America and the United States. Stian Bromark and Dag Herbjørnsrud (B&H) make a powerful claim in The fear of America: Our lack of knowledge about the United States contributes to weakened criticism and reduced dialogue with the country that has both cultural and military world domination. There is good reason for a national self-examination if their claim is correct.

The argument is that our relationship with the United States has developed on the basis of cultural guidelines with deep roots in our own European cultural history. B&H believes that our need to define our own identity in relation to, and especially as something other than the United States, gets in the way of a more sober analysis. The consequences of this are that our notions of, our ability to communicate with, our political stance on or our rebellion against the United States, are more colored by our own needs than knowledge of American politics and society.

Ultimately, this may have contributed to intellectuals in the United States losing some respect for their European counterparts. Precisely because in our criticism of the United States, we seem to possess some of the historylessness, superficiality, and self-loathing we often blame them for. Our America criticism has become a mirror image. There is a lot of common sense in this, and the authors document many of their claims in a very informative way.

They believe that among the intellectual elite in Europe, it was the utopian notions that prevailed until 1776, and then slowly replaced by more bleak and dystopian images. These performances are a red thread throughout Europe's history in many disguises; fear of the traditional, fear of the modern, fear of racially mixed ethnic America, fear of technology and progress, and not least the fear of we ourselves should be like America.

From 1945, with a strong American presence in Europe, the fear of losing our own national and European identity becomes overshadowed. American politics and the cultural industry threaten to wipe out European uniqueness. This fear is amplified after 1989, when the United States wins the Cold War and openly seeks to establish global world domination.

In order to understand our ideas, it is important according to B&H, that we understand that they come more from who we think Americans are, than from what Americans do. Our prejudiced perceptions of who Americans are color our interpretation of their actions. The authors have set out to show "not how the concrete descriptions of the United States should be, but rather how the mythological depictions of America should not be". At the same time, they suggest that our America photos tell something about ourselves. To put it in good Norwegian; "Tell me your image of America and I will tell you who you are".

It is easy to agree that we need to strengthen our US knowledge in Norway. And that European criticism of the United States reflects European needs, not least the need to define our own identity. But this is not a revolutionary thesis, rather a dominant theory of explanation. We define our identity in relation to the other that we are not. We are becoming more Norwegian on the border with Sweden. Norwegians stand out on the Danish boat. The United States precisely defined its identity as The New World as opposed to Europe; The Old World.

This is what amazes a little in the presentation. It seems that B&H feels, unlike most European intellectuals, that they have discovered that European notions of the United States do not correspond to reality. And that they never really did, either. Hamsun, Mykle and Bjørneboe are referred to as young men who have traveled to the United States and experienced how their illusions about America do not survive the encounter with reality. The European guidelines will thus explain why they have no doubt about where they feel most at home. Without being paternalistic, it must be allowed to suggest that most young people's encounters with reality lead to a number of lost illusions in most areas of life. So no surprise that this also happens in the meeting with America.

One problem I have with the book is that the arguments are too coarse-grained. They would have benefited from letting the nuanced understanding they themselves express in relation to the United States, to a greater extent, also shape their presentation of our notions of the United States. The division into utopian perspectives as dominant until 1776, and then to be replaced by dystopian ones becomes too schematic. It is possible to argue that the dystopian perspectives have even deeper roots in Europe. One of the first Norwegian explorers turned in the year 987 before he reached the land we today call America. He did not think much of what he saw.

In the 1760s, there was an essay competition in Europe; "Was America a Mistake?" What was surprising was both the large number of answers and the unambiguous answers. Several referred to the "degeneration hypothesis". B&H repeatedly mentions the phenomenon, without mentioning this hypothesis by name. Why not? It simply suggested that the American climate created a new type of human being for the Europeans who traveled there. This hypothesis was taken so seriously in the United States that both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson referred to it in their writings.

In the same way, it is possible to argue that the utopian performances had a much longer lifespan than B&H suggests. Of course, many from de Toqueville via Hamsun to Bjørneboe have been concerned about the development possibilities of the tank in the USA. But almost half of the Norwegian professors at Blindern around the 1970s had had an apprenticeship in the United States. One year in the United States was an inspiration rather than a limitation of one's own thinking. And most of those who have studied in the United States come home, not as disappointed young men, but as better educated than when they left. The utopian notions of the United States were one of the reasons why many Norwegians emigrated to the United States, and they were still alive when Norwegian families sat and opened American packages well into the 1950s.

The fact that perceptions coexist also makes it easier to understand that the images of America do not just change due to changes in the USA or Norway. They also change due to conflicts between people in Norway. Both Hamsun and Bjørnson are mentioned in the same section, without Hamsun's negative USA analysis being seen in light of his contradictory relationship with Bjørnson. The generational uprising of the 60s was also a revolt against the post-war generation's understanding of America.

In the same way, B&H seems to have a schematic distinction between culture and politics. At least this clear distinction did not have American governments after the war. In the late 1940s, the US government subsidized movies released on the European market with $ 25. The book refers to the French critique of Coca-Cola in 000, and the threat they felt it represented against French winegrowers. They should have mentioned that the French parliament decided to ban Coca-Cola, which lasted for six months. It was only after pressure from Washington with threats to stop financial support, that the ban was lifted. Seen through American eyes, Coca-Cola and American films were good propagandists for "The American Way of Life in Europe". Were these political or cultural decisions?

Perhaps the most provocative is the authors' distinction between who Americans are and what they do. They claim that it is only during the Vietnam War that we begin to criticize them for what they do. This again becomes too schematic. Do they think we were ignorant of the Civil War, the Native American Wars, the workers' uprisings of the latter half of the 1800th century? Do they believe that fluctuations in the number of emigrants were only related to the Norwegian grain harvest regardless of what the Americans practiced “Over there”? Furthermore, it can be interpreted as meaning that our criticism of what they do is not as justified if it is "shaped" by our notions of who they are. This can easily become a derailment. Our critique of US foreign policy may also be based on respect for democratic principles and human rights, as well as knowledge of alternative conflict resolution methods.

Chapters 8 and 9 are informative and instructive – they show how our ideas will be, if they are formed by Cappelen's textbooks in history, which B&H believes gives a very deficient understanding of non-European Americans.

Any teacher who still belongs to the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) tradition should read B&H's review of the Indians' influence on American history. The same, of course, applies to those who think the Indians' favorite expression is "Ugh, talk to me a little". In a country where the Norwegian media coverage of the American Indians 'situation is minimal, it is therefore liberating to see Norwegian journalists take the Indians' situation in the United States seriously. But must there be better textbooks than those referred to?

It is true that American studies have long focused on cultural products created by white European men. But the subject underwent a radical change, especially in the 1960s when Afro-American studies, Native American studies and so on came on the agenda. It is inconceivable that this has passed Norwegian teachers by. On the contrary, it is deeply integrated into the Norwegian American Studies community. The USA is not a melting pot but a salad bowl.

The authors' distinction between concrete descriptions of the United States and the mythological depictions of America provokes reflection. When Cowboy Harry puts on his hat and goes to a country festival in Telemark, he has no illusions that he is traveling to the USA. He knows he's traveling into his own American imagination. I would think that this distinction is quite clear to most people. When we talk about mythical America, we mean something other than the real United States.

But B&H sets out to explain how the mythological explanations should not be. Why? Is there any point in demythologizing American notions of Norway, if this gives some Americans meaningful rituals and festivals? Mythical America is a tale of inspiration and curse worldwide. This story existed as the authors point out prior to the very discovery of America. Is not the fascination with mythical America, precisely in that it is a story with a message about what is right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, what is important in this life and with mythical heroes as bearers of central values?

We have to look at these two perceptions in context, to understand why the repeated revelations about the "real" reality in the United States do not shatter the myth of America. It lives its own life independent of the sociological data from the everyday United States. Is the solution to demythologize America? Is it at all possible? Or will the myth of America continue to exist almost independently of US action in the world.

This is problematic in part because American presidents themselves are helping to perpetuate the mythological images We saw this in the Ronald Reagan phenomenon. Baudrillard reflects on Reagan as a symbol of the American state. If we use B&H's analysis tools, we can conclude that Baudrillard's conclusion is first and foremost a reflection of his experience of America as a film. Ronald Reagan can hardly be perceived as a typical American by the Americans themselves who live in a multicultural and in a multiethnic community. Reagan, on the other hand, becomes a symbol of our understanding of the United States. Of course, Reagan deliberately played this into the political processes that pointed to the fall of communism.

Europeans have their notions of a mythical America in parallel with the United States exercising its world domination. It was no coincidence that American films were subsidized and that Coca-Cola was pushed back into the market. B&H has many of the arguments, but because they focus too strongly on the fear of America and too little on our fascination with America, they do not see the conclusion: Our mythical notions of America are one of the most important prerequisites for the United States to exercise its world domination. American governments are fully aware of and dependent on the magic and myths we spin around America. They are very skilled in exploiting these notions. It was not the United States that won the Cold War. It was America.