>While in Germany, I saw a teen girl, who looked to be about 14, who'd
>decorated her backpack with silver magic markered versions of U.S.
>corporate logos - among them the Nike swoosh, of course, and FUBU
>(For Us By Us, intensely popular in black urban neighborhoods). What
>does that mean? Why did she do that? Is is "manipulation," or was she
>expressing some desire? "America" represents something to people
>outside this lovely country - what is it? "Manipulation" is just too
>simple an answer; people aren't *that* malleable, are they?
Hard to say. 14yos are hard to read for we oldies. Dunno if LBO's German contingent would agree with me, but I did discern a widespread liking for a very straight-faced sarcasm there. Perhaps the madchen was passing comment on a craze for brands that went so far a couple of years ago that it was necessary for her like to wear their trousers below the, er, builder's-cleavage, so as to expose the appropriately branded underpant ...
But sure, 'America' is a very powerful signifier. It probably the most successful branding coup in history, after all. 'Course, that cuts all ways ...
For a blood'n'soil nationalist it's a handy summary of all that's wrong (and could express this with the kind of thin-lipped sarcasm I describe above); for a lefty or greeny it could manifest in much the same way; and for a rebellious kid (and I speculate that German culture's rather explicit affection for propriety and order would very much get up the nose of many an adolescent), brought up on a diet of MTV and Tarrantino flicks, well, 'America' would mean what America tells everyone it means, freedom from irrelevant old ways and respect and opportunity for youngsters with atitood.
Now, there's a little truth in this last, I don't doubt (albeit American expatriates tell me American culture has its own discrete way of imposing constricting propriety - never mind its occasional leather-slapping approach to order), but it certainly ain't the whole truth. 'Manipulation' is an appropriate word either way, but, as Gramsci said, hegemony is never complete, and I dare say neither of us'll ever know whether you saw an instance of hegemony or counter-hegemony.
America is the Manchester United of nations - a formidable behemoth to which one can react only with strong emotions. You can hate all of it. Love all of it. Or hate some of it, love some of it, and be indifferent to none of it. No other options seem thinkable. Not from the outside - where only unprecedented marketing and the boundless imagination are decisive - anyway.
I'm of the passionately ambivalent persuasion, myself, but I do think 'the postmodern turn' feels different (less exciting and also less unsettling) the closer your traditions are to the spirit of its dominant form (I'd pinched the word 'californication' the other day). What may feel like evolution, like a comprehensible phenomenon, to a middle-class American, would feel different to an Australian, more different to a German, and positively bemusing to a Laotian. It's all to do with how far you're being asked to go in how short a time, and how one's meaning system is equipped to make sense of it.
WRT class, a boojie German might see a welcome changing of the guard. But then a prole German'd probably feel (rightly, I reckon) that s/he's on the way to losing status, relevance, security and respect - that the whole moral economy (to use EP Thompson's idea), a difficult century in the making, is on the way out. Whether a 14yo would feel or reflect any of that now, I dunno - but Germany seems a pretty thoroughly polarised polity to me these days.
Cheers, Rob.