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Vicente
Verdú
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Vicente
Verdú (born Elche, Spain 1942) is a writer and
journalist. He earned a doctoral degree in Social Sciences
from the University of the Sorbonne, and is a member of the
Nieman Foundation of Harvard University. He writes regularly
for El Pais (Madrid), where he has been both Opinion Editor
and Culture Editor. He is the author of several books that
have become best-sellers in Spain, including his emblematic
look at the relationship between couples, Engagement and
Marriage in the Spanish Bourgeoisie (in collaboration with
his wife, Alejandra Ferrándiz); and a work that ranks
as a classic among soccer fans, Soccer: Myths, Rites,
Symbols. His book Days Without Smoking was a finalist for
the Anagrama Essay Prize in 1988. Verdú wrote Planet
America while living with his family for two years
(1993-1995) in Haverford, Pennsylvania, USA.
Introduction
The twentieth
century has given birth to a lot of myths. But there is one
myth (now that others have died and the century is drawing
to a close) that rises up above all the rest: The United
States.
The United
States is quite a bit more than just movies and cars, music,
Westerns, multimillionaires, skyscrapers, Calvin Klein and
the NBA. No item in this grab-bag any longer fascinates as
an isolated element: the phenomenon now consists in the
entire American gestalt, which matters as a complete lot.
Not only lifestyles but the substance of life; not only ways
to have fun but fun itself; not only a catchphrase but also
a language; not only a recipe but the actual meal; in the
end, family spirit, ways of buying, ways of loving, dressing
and dining, study plans and plans for retirement, and even
sects - all are part of the American nature. It makes no
difference whether the phenomenon draws attention in Great
Britain, in France, in Italy or in Spain: under a single
idea, the unified market and the global village fashion
themselves American-style, from Indonesia to Chile by way of
Beijing.
This book was
written with the aim of demonstrating that just because this
expanding social, political and economic agenda is
consistent with the founding ideals of the United States and
its particular idiosyncrasies, we non-Americans do not on
that account have to embrace it all. Even a large part of
America's own inhabitants no longer benefits from it.
Now that the
world seems disarmed of its ideologies, a powerful idea
reappears in the name of liberty, of the quality of human
life and the well-being of culture: don't surrender to the
fate of an American planet.
CHAPTER ONE:
AMERICAN
PRIDE
It is not
unusual for some American high school seniors, at the height
of their final term, to confuse the location of Australia
and Russia on an unmarked map, place the Mediterranean Sea
in the waters of the Indian Ocean, to not know whether
Europe extends below the Straits of Gibraltar and conceive
of Spain as a country near Guatemala. One must not take it
the wrong way: at times they also totter over the location
of the United States.
Geography
matters less in America than in other parts of the world.
For residents of America, the nation is rounded off as an
exclusive area that seems unrelated to anything else. The
average education in the United States does not in fact
distinguish itself by yielding a heavy load of knowledge, be
it mathematical, historical or geographical. Instead it
functions as a practical training that succeeds, above all,
in raising dedicated citizens, with high doses of
self-esteem and self-confidence &endash; strong and able to
prosper within the territory of the United States, where not
only they happen to be but also where one assumes the entire
world will end up being.
Seen from an
American perspective, the outside world is a stage whose
theatrical repertoire every passing day incorporates more
and more of the performances of Planet America. It is others
who need knowledge of the essence and exemplary way of life
of the United States. That is, just as subordinates know and
concern themselves more about the spirit of their chief than
chiefs about the mood of their subordinates, the rest of the
world will lend (and now lends) its attention to what
happens in America and not the other way around. American
television, radio, and newspapers offer proof of this
disavowal of knowledge day after day. Unless something truly
sensational happens &endash; or, at very least, American
citizens, troops, or capital become involved &endash; the
news in the papers or on TV is domestic news. No other
modern society lives so lost in thought about its domestic
affairs and reduces to so little importance the events of
others.
In popular
American sentiment, the foreigner is a product that must
sometimes be endured with his strange differences and other
times must be tolerated by virtue of his inexorable
procession towards conversion. In the end, in time, he will
end up being recycled into American fabric, given that
America (why kid oneself?) is the sublime essence of
modernity. It follows that the outside world grows less
interesting, except for troubling those who think about the
inopportune immigration it generates or about the
incomprehensible military and ideological tangles it
occasionally provokes. No doubt many Americans would feel
better without foreigners, calmer and free from the
conflicts that have nothing to do with their
lives.
The Americans
have been famous as interventionists, placing their hands on
whatever chunk of land suits them economically or does not
suit them ideologically. But one must accept that in a good
number of cases they have done so in spite of themselves
&endash; contrary to their vocation of keeping themselves
isolated.
Americans are
extremely home-loving and fear getting lost farther afield.
The so-called Lost Generation did nothing other than write
about their home, and around the world one will see few
Americans &endash; always very rare &endash; enjoying a site
outside their borders. Nothing seems more significant to
Americans, nor promises them more abundant rewards, than the
inside of their home. The founding ideal of the country was
to build a cosmos from scratch, freed from the contamination
that smoked in the outside world: a modernity stripped of
the sombre bonds of old European history and cemented in
such a way that nothing or no one could triumph over
it.
The echoes of
"Yankee Go Home" could not correspond better with what the
American family desires: to go home. Not to take
trans-Atlantic voyages, but to celebrate Thanksgiving in the
seclusion of their home, to live their life without having
to confront the babel of the surrounding humanity speaking
its different languages, invoking its age-old civilisations
and pitting complex ideas (in the end difficult and
unproductive) against American pragmatism and
clarity.
In spite of the
accusations of meddling that have been brought against
America, one ought to take into account how bored Americans
have been when they have ventured out from their home, and
how bad-tempered when they have dealt with matters removed
from their circumstances. Their mistakes committed abroad,
the proverbial ignorance of their leaders in international
politics, their botched military actions and other failures
have now restored their national ideal to its longing for
seclusion. There's no place like home, given that it alone
is big enough, dynamic enough and prosperous enough to
satisfy any request. Other countries may be attractive
outlets for doing business, propitious for selling, but in
the end devoid of any entity worth emulating. Only Japan
since the seventies and Germany shine like two beacons
before which the American economy has no alternative but to
keep its eyes peeled. Almost all the others form an
aggregation where the only things shining are the decorative
twinklings of Italy and France. Asia, Latin America, and
Australia are simply markets. Some stranger than others,
some dumber than others, but all, in short, are vast
agglomerations of real estate and potential
clients.
Out of
character with the imperialist zeal that the anti-capitalist
Left attributes to Americans, Americanism has put its stamp
on the world more with the inspiration of a businessman or
commissar than with the epic poetry of a conqueror. There is
no American Napoleonism, but rather marketing ambition or
the desire to cleanse the ideological suburbs on the edge of
town. When it comes to acquiring territory, Americans have
had enough of their own frontier myth and have shown no
interest in everyone else's borders. If they have infringed
on others, they have done it not so much to add them to
their map as to ward off their possible threats. Far from
being warlike expansionists, which they in no way seem, they
are first of all managers or (if need be) policemen. Never
are many customers enough, nor are plentiful markets too
many. Nor will ideological or pathological delinquency catch
them disarmed. But they do not possess the spirit that moved
empires, and the path of heroes does not attract them.
American history is full of deserters, strategic errors, and
deaths caused by friendly fire. The American is a colonist,
a man of enterprise, a bold businessman or, at times, a
psychotic serial killer &endash; but never a warrior who
risks his life in foreign conquest. The rest of the world is
just a hazy shadow that in the future will no doubt try to
creep over the natural light of America. One need look no
further than one's own surroundings.
While in Europe
not a day goes by when one is not informed of American
happenings in some sphere or another, in the United States
the rest of the world is hardly seen; and there are
nevertheless groups who would like to see still less of
it.
Overall, the
United States thinks of itself as sufficiently autonomous
and enchanted with its domestic furnishings. Whenever
Americans have discussed ways to improve their judicial,
educational, or sanitary system, it has never occurred to
them to put forward the example of another country where a
model has been successfully tried out, no matter how
impressively.
In contrast
with the numerous admiring evocations of the United States
that are heard in Europe, for the United States Europe is a
past from which one can hardly expect ideas for the future.
It is true that, when trying to call attention to the
American crime rate, the experts do mention the lower
figures of other parts of the world &endash; but only to
emphasise the magnitude of the domestic problem. Nothing
having to do with expounding the preventive system of other
Administrations or the dialectics of another archetype. The
American system seems to have nothing to learn from outside
itself, and even less to copy from the second sons that
surround it.
All the
socialist whims of the Thirties faded away after World War
II and, later, the reformers of the Seventies disappeared
during the Reagan Administration. Now the pieces are mostly
in place; the cultural, political and economic pulse of the
planet already beats an American rhythm. Why bother copying
others? What good can be got from that, when everybody else,
through their governments and through their culture, are
busy adopting American patron saints? The American operates
at these heights like a true Church &endash; with its good
and its evil &endash; that has received the recognition of
its rival Churches and has little by little converted the
pagans, from Portugal to Singapore. It has converted them to
the politics of the central banks and the institution of the
jury, to the privatisation of public enterprise, the models
of the labour market, and the deposit system; to the malls,
the music, the clothes, the fast food; to the mimicry of its
sports or performances.
From time to
time Europe puts up small resistance to the American tide,
but it does not concern itself with barriers that all its
countries might share; nor do its measures seem like
anything but lamentations on the eve of a final surrender.
From the growing loss of the welfare state to the politics
of employment, from the competitive sense to the sense of
the family, the European continent seems to be fashioning
its future more as a reflection of the United States than
with its own distinctive plan. The ideal of a single
language in the European Union (EU), which will wind up
being English, corresponds with the aim of a single currency
in the style of the dollar and a flag that copies the
star-spangled design of the first American banner. And
besides the EU, the old Soviet Union, the Pacific East, the
states of Latin America, and the Mediterranean shores
accentuate their orbital movement around the productive
image of Planet America.
Without raiding
parties, calling home the troops and closing military bases,
the Americans are now carrying out the most efficacious
colonisation of any age. Families everywhere eat Kellogg's
for breakfast and Oscar Mayer's at dinnertime. And in
between, from morning to night, they are bombarded by media
blasts &endash; debates over ethics and health, financial
quandaries, computer programs &endash; American idols and
merchandise.
The European
cultural market is already a market of business à la
Americana; the publishing and film industries, the radio and
TV stations &endash; all adopt the prototypes of American
space, and young people work and play with models imported
from over there. In Europe the assassins already murder in
McDonald's just like in the United States, and European
travellers stay more and more in one of the hundreds of
Holiday Inns or Ramadas that are opening up near the old
cattle tracks. American-style pragmatic culture induces the
elimination of humanities courses from curricula in college
or before. The "experts" are American or at least inspired
by the United States. European youth dream about finishing
their training in the United States while the European
university has followed a managerial drift towards
resembling its American counterpart.
The World Cup
of football was played in the Unites States in 1994 with the
hope of "footballising" America. The result, before and
after, has been to Americanise football; just as pizza,
Chinese food, croissants and hamburgers were Americanised
before. American high school football does not follow the
rules of the whole world these days. It is played with two
referees and no line judges, as in basketball. There are
four periods, and players are changed every few minutes, as
in basketball or hockey. Managers prepare their players in
lines, coaching separately the defence and offence, as in
American football. Even the ball of FIFA has been modified
in weight and composition. In time the whole world will
probably do it their way. Why worry about learning what is
practiced elsewhere?
In contrast
with American cultural power over Europe, European cultural
output fails to reach the United States beyond the
university circuit and, even there, with a time lag that in
and of itself qualifies the interest as limited.
Structuralism and deconstructivism reached Harvard ten years
later than it rose up in France (and always reduced to
collective semi-secrets). American publishing houses report
poor sales of translated books, even world-wide best-sellers
such as Sophie's World, simply because they are not
American. Even fashion in clothing is adopted with calm
delay, and foreign films hardly count in a medium inundated
with Hollywood productions. There are merciful exceptions
and, for example, in 1995 they remembered during the Oscars
to pay tribute to Antonioni; before that they put the death
of Fellini and Truffaut on the front page of the largest
national newspapers. But these are, as one may infer,
posthumous gestures fit for the appreciation of the
exquisite in extinction.
The Americans
reached America having left Europe behind and pronouncing
its physical and moral degeneracy. What has come to pass in
the following two centuries tends to be, in their opinion, a
legitimisation of that farewell. Europe is burning up on its
hot coals. The Middle Ages, Gothic cathedrals, and Baroque
palaces are smoke signals from some embers proclaiming their
own carbonisation. There is still time to visit Europe, to
hurry before it winds up turned into ashes; with summer
coming, Americans see promotions for tours to England,
France and Italy, but they do not seem to get that excited
about the idea. On the eve of the end of the century, only
2% of Americans have ever been to Europe, and not because
they are unaccustomed to moving around: 20% of them change
residence within their own country every year. Although they
do not travel abroad much, their domestic mobility is
greater than that of any other country in the world. They do
not visit other countries because they believe they have the
interesting part of foreign countries, the future of foreign
lands, stored away at home. Twice as much. It is at home in
the heterogeneity of religions, ethnic groups and cultures
that reside there. And it becomes ever more accessible,
seeing that everything abroad is itself, day by day, merely
a reproduction of American products.
And so, just
who are the Americans and the American? In Spain or in
Europe people may argue about national or continental
identity, but in the United States the issue has in recent
years become an obsessive debate. The difference in the
discussion is that in Spain or in Europe, "to be or not to
be" raises spirits from their graves; while in the United
States the questioning has a certain healthy tangibility. In
the first place, nobody disputes the existence of America;
how could one have doubts about this entity? America exists
like a god: immanent, omnipresent, unchallengeable. America
is a utopia in living flesh, its territory enclosed by
providence, without a glimmer of confusion. All the same, if
we agree on that, then who are the true Americans? Are white
Anglo-Saxon Protestants American, but not blacks or the
latest wave of immigrants? Are the Koreans who have been
selling fruit for thirty years American, but not Colombian
taxi drivers or first-generation Polish manicurists? How
many descendants must an immigrant have to attain the true
condition? How much evidence of American blood must one
present in order to be assimilated into the veins of the
fatherland? None of this has been precisely fixed. America
may be one and distinct, but the American people are an
agglomeration.
Whereas in
Europe a distinction is still made between Europeans and
immigrants, in America everyone is at the same time American
and immigrant. The European stew appears done and freezing;
the community in the United States finds itself at the
height of the cooking stage. In the face of dozens of
centuries of decantation, the United States is still being
distilled. To begin with, the first man set foot on its
domains only after the human species had already inhabited
the Earth over a million years. Still in its youth, the two
hundred years of its political history are opposed to the
thousands of the continent that it renounced as obsolete.
National inexperience corresponds with its domestic agility
and the teeming mixture of its groups. Its very landscapes
seem more open and wild &endash; unpredictable places that
bring to mind untrained behaviour. A tornado on the plains,
a flood along the Missouri, another earthquake in
California, or a hurricane in Florida pummels a surface
that, by comparison, seems inaccessible in Europe. If
Europe's anatomy is set and its countenance carved in stone,
America's features are still being drawn. A 1994 Time
magazine cover used computer morphing to put together the
future face of "America," mixing the features of Africans,
Asians, Latinos, Anglo-Saxons, Chinese, and Vietnamese. In
1990 the population was 76% white, 12% black, 9% Latino and
3% Asian. By the year 2050 the Anglos will have fallen to
52% and the Latinos will have risen to 22%. Blacks will
constitute 16% and Asians one tenth.
The ancestors
of the current population were of all these types and more.
Some 58 million have German forebears, while the ancestors
of 39 million are Irish, 33 million are English, 24 million
are African, 15 million are Italian, 12 million are Mexican
and 10 million are French. Another 25 million claim roots in
Poland, in Holland, or among the American Indians. Nowadays
as much as 10% of the population was born outside the
country and yet, in more than a few cases, these same
immigrants proudly claim the United States as their
homeland.
More than a
hundred languages are spoken in the schools of New York,
Chicago and Los Angeles by students whose families profess
beliefs that cover every class of world-wide religion and
subreligion. At the centre of the faith a dozen great
Protestant denominations blend together, but nearby them
swarm countless parachurches that are born, flourish, and
fade away daily.
Seen this way,
America is nothing specific, but precisely the unspecific
and unexpected. What is nonetheless so essential that no one
loses hope or gets confused?
America
combines everything on the globe to mythically create a new
world, and becoming an American does not mean so much to
acquire a nationality as to embrace a superior mythology. In
the past one may have been Romanian or Vietnamese, but now
(once over there) one belongs to America. Its capacity for
absorption and metabolisation inside itself is parallel to
its powers of seduction outside. The American fantasy may
suffer setbacks, but its ardour always runs deep and it is
never completely lost. More than a nation in the European
sense, America resembles a gigantic and privileged community
of residents spirited by sharing a blessed space that will
aggrandise the future of every individual.
As a matter of
fact, the best days of the United States never appear to be
in the past, with its unavoidable stains &endash; genocide,
slavery, the Great Depression &endash; but rather always lie
ahead, beaming bright and clear. In popular thought, the
United States is not only modernity but the perpetual future
and the beginning of the human superfuture. And why not
adhere to that metaphor of optimism and
immortality?
In the midst of
the joy of this forward-looking faith, nothing seems
unattainable for the power of the United States. The French
were not able to finish the Panama Canal, but they were. The
Russians sent the first satellite into space, but the United
States was the first to put a man on the moon. The Americans
won the crusade against evil in Europe, and in the end have
achieved a round planetary hegemony with the fall of
heretical Communism. They have also triumphed in their
economic scrimmage with Japan after several years when the
Orient was a menace. And not only conventional and accounted
space is in their charge: cyberspace too is now falling into
their hands.
A Spanish or
French person may be patriotic, but an American is patriotic
in a special way &endash; being a member of Number One.
Nowhere more than in America does one see the constant
flying of the triumphal flag. In gas stations, department
stores, jewellery shops, restaurants, on house porches,
America is celebrating itself as though it were at every
moment occupying the podium of several never-ending world
championships.
Twenty percent
of Americans don't know how many stars array their national
flag, but that fact (like geography) matters little with
regard to the sacred. Presidents and candidates for whatever
office display the national colours on their ties and on
their banners. There are trousers, blouses, underpants,
microwaves, pastries, condoms &endash; any object one can
imagine &endash; sporting the red, white and blue of
America. As many as 59% of homes keep a flag on hand to fly
on their facades, and two thirds of the population declare
themselves not only patriotic but "very
patriotic."
The fatherland
is loved like a beneficent deity and is revered with hymns
and ceremonies in honour of the most insignificant
occasions. Across the country one finds stores selling
emblems, posters, postcards, buttons, pennants, and
photographs of the history of the United States, its
forefathers and its holidays. A button from Nixon's last
campaign can cost 200 dollars; a figurine of Uncle Sam, 20
dollars; a red, white and blue coffee set, 70. These
establishments recall souvenir shops on the one hand, but on
the other they remind one of the stalls selling pictures and
medals inside shrines. Americans who visit them seem at the
same time tourists of their own land and the devout faithful
of it. Belief in the prosperity that this environment offers
and faith in a free land, beloved by God, are the two faces
of the same religious ideal in which floats the stout
peculiarity of America.
AMERICAN
PLANET was published in Madrid in 1996 by Anagrama in
Spanish. The English edition is translated by Allen Hougland
and is to be published by The Zero Press in 2000. It is the
Winner of Spain's prestigious Anagrama Essay Prize for 1996.
It has also been at the top of the nonfiction bestseller
list in Spain
Translation
© 1997 Allen Hougland.
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