America, the pop culture superpower: our popular culture distorts who we really are and fuels hostility

My wife and I drove up Mount Zion toward Jerusalem a few years ago and got stuck in traffic. I was somewhat drunk on the Old Testament phrase repeating in my head, "I shall go up to Jerusalem." My wife turned on the radio, and what I can only call Hebrew rap music came on. We agreed that America was going to have a lot to answer for someday.

That day has, of course, long since come. We Westerners once thought modern communications were bringing the world closer together. Those hopes were partly correct, mostly among peoples who already shared a good deal. Yet they have also proved illusory. Some cultures encounter alien ways and are repelled. Others may envy and imitate. Still others may be threatened.

The United States is the sole remaining superpower in this realm too. In the postmodern international order, all three of these reactions to American culture--popular culture--profoundly shape the world's attitudes toward the United States.

Popular culture took on social importance in the reaction against an earlier form of globalization: the universal civilization promised by the Enlightenment. Among 19th-century German Romantics, the mores, folk stories, songs and beliefs of the people were values tied to a particular tribe or nation and resistant to France's claim to a universal civilization. Though Enlightenment universalism has self-destructed, we all still feel a tension between our desire for modern benefits that stem from global civilization and our natural attachments to beliefs and practices we regard as sacred and threatened.

An American, especially a Christian, will sympathize. We're sorry that we have the decadent popular culture we do at home, and we're even sorrier to be exporting it. There are two principal problems with American popular culture. First, American popular culture is corrupt and corrupting. There is no need to repeat the familiar litany of sex, drugs and violence. But these all-too-human elements also appear in the Old Testament. Our genius has been to glorify and glamorize bad behavior in music, films and television. Many other cultures, some decadent and some not, resent it bitterly,

The second problem involves what our exported culture leaves out. Any American who follows the trail will be shocked at how much never makes it through the pop culture filters. If you tell a group of foreigners, for example, that 90 percent of Americans are believers who practice religion, you will get wide stares: What about Britney and Madonna, Marilyn Manson and Mapplethorpe? Or you will get misinterpretation: We know your media and ours claim that your government is conspiring to impose a theocracy on America, convert Muslims in the Middle East, and bring about Armageddon in Israel.

At others times, this schizophrenia (America is bad, libertine or Puritanical) would not matter. In the current context of Islamic fundamentalism, it only adds fuel to several fires. But let us not deceive ourselves. Even without our obvious faults and the fantastic claims, many people hate us. Sayyid Qutb, a founder of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, was pro-American until he visited the United States from 1948 to 1951. He left disgusted because in those innocent pre-Elvis years he saw men and women dancing together at church-sponsored social events. Many since have adopted the same view on much more substantial grounds.

What do we do about this part of the international struggle? There are benefits and drawbacks to every approach, but four principles might guide us:

* We need to distinguish between anger over cultural imperialism and envy of the power of our "relatively undeveloped culture," a phrase much used in France. America has much to offer the world and the world has imitated our virtues, as well as our vices.

* We need to clean house for its own sake, knowing no amount of reform will satisfy everyone abroad. American men and women will dance together publicly in any foreseeable future and, by and large, we should be happy they do.

* American pluralism, civil rights, religious toleration, and equality before the law are values that we proudly defend--with arguments and information first, with more substantial means when necessary. Both the U.S. government and private institutions have largely abandoned the kind of public information services we used to provide even in friendly countries in the form of libraries of American books and periodicals, cultural events and lectures. We need more of this again.

* American culture is not a universal civilization but neither is it the depths of depravity. America is conspicuously open within certain notions of liberty. We grew great because we absorbed many things from many quarters. We would grow smaller if we stopped that process. But our political, cultural, and religious institutions need to do a much better job in portraying what is good with us, even as we wrestle over fixing what's bad.

The truth sets us free. Telling real if surprising truths about America while we try to heal our culture is essential if we hope for better lives at home and with the rest of the world.