The Myth of Anti-Americanism cont.

I mentioned to Andy Markovitz that, having lived in Europe for a year, I felt a certain solidarity with people who felt that the Europe they knew was "disappearing." He didn't have a lot of time to respond. He already had to go. So he gave me a pretty direct, simple response: "But that's bullshit," he said.

Aha. I would have liked to offer a follow-up. "Do you mean 'bullshit' in the neo-Wittgensteinian sense recently explored by Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt (Schmoes in the Tower Press, 2004?) or was it more in the Biff-at-the-Bar vernacular sense of challenges to your wisdom that you really don't feel like listening to?"

Either way, I beg to differ. Europe is disappearing, and "Americanization" -- while crude and imprecise - is often an appropriate descriptive.

I remember living in Berlin in 1993, when Clinton's Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen showed up to lecture the Europeans on the need for greater "labor flexibility." America had a stunningly successful economic model, the man said, and Europeans need to get on the stick or they're going to continue their slow, miserable decline.

Lloyd was not shy about saying this was an "American" model. Neither are the proponents of lower taxes, broken unions, and a shrunken social state. Now maybe these are good ideas for Europe, or maybe they are not, but they are undoubtedly American -- with very real ramifications for the way of life in most European countries. Why, then, don't Europeans have the right to attack this economic model as "American?" And why don't they have the right to be pissed, including the right to "demonize" the model they abhor?

And now The New York Times reports that Europe is going down the American path of SKY high executive compensation. Quoth the Times:

"For decades, Europeans were far more conservative than Americans when it came to rewarding the boss.

Now, European executives are less inhibited about seeking American- style compensation. And oftentimes they are getting their wish. But while huge paychecks have become a staple of American corporate life, in Europe it appears to be less acceptable and, in some countries, a backlash is building."

Backlash, ja. Probably the critics see obscene executive salaries -- almost totally disconnected from performance - as a distinctly American phenomenon. Probably they would be right.

What else? The German language as we know it has been mutating. There is so much Americanese absorbed into the language - much of it gratuitous and ridiculous - that some of these folks already sound like Valley Girls while still (supposedly) speaking deutsch. I see more Austrians driving SUV's, more Belgians eating frozen french fries, more French eating crappy chocolate. Mon dieu, they are even drinking our wine (and the vineyards of Burgundy are in crisis.) There are also more bad jokes before academic presentations.

Markovitz said a staple of anti-Americanism is to criticize something as "American" and then to criticize the opposite as "American." This demonstrates that they really just hate us - totally apart from the actual things we do, choices we make.

His example: A british journalist criticizes the gym workout craze and criticizes the "American body type" that Brits are now striving for. Then just a couple years later, Markovitz tells us, the same journalist writes a piece criticizing obesity and desribing growing obesity in England as an American import. Pace Markovitz: You can't have it both ways! Skinny/muscular and fat/slovenly can't both be "American" threats to Europe.

But, alas Dr. Markovitz, it does go both ways. America is the world-capital of gym-freaks, lipo-suction, breast-implants, and, as part of the same package deal, anorexia. But America is also the most obese country on the planet. If you don't think there is such a thing as the "American body type" stroll through the old city of Vienna when the tourists come out to play, and play guess who is American. It's all too easy. On the one hand, homo americanus tends to have muscles in strange places: unnaturally bulking shoulders, triceps that press against the back of their sleaves, sculpted chests. These are obviously not the muscles you get from, say, loading furniture into vans. They are middle class muscles, workout muscles, and while ubiquitous among the Amis, they are still rare (though increasing) among the yuppies of Vienna and Berlin. At the same time, on your anthropological stroll, you will see lots more serious weight problems among the tourists than among other inhabitants of the city. And you'll see a few really serious weight problems too, the "morbidly obese." The Germans have been terrified lately by a frightening uptick in their obesity rates, but it's still nothing compared to the USA. In weight class, we're first class.

Maybe a little extra winter oil isn't such a bad thing. Who is to say? But I marvel at the paranoid tunnel vision of an academic who assumes that the notion of "American body-types" is an invention of Yank-bashing European journalists. (There is an interesting history too, which I'm sure Markovitz is aware of. After World War I, Europeans condemned slim, narrow-waisted, athletic-looking women as having "American" bodies. The French in particular feared this "boyish" look -- made popular by the fashion mags and then by Louise Brooks in "Pandora's Box" -- was the harbinger of a new woman, obssessed with fun and rejecting her duty to bear children. In that case, "America" was an abstract symbol, so I don't see any direct connection between these discourses, however interesting the parallels.)

Who really hates America? Who hates the real America - rather than just some tentative, temporary stand-in? I've had trouble finding anyone. I suppose Ganica's comments to my previous posting suggest that self-hating Americans, at least, might be out there somewhere. But he/she is abroad, no? I think that self-lacerating criticism of American culture while living abroad doesn't really count. Like hyper-patriotism, it's usually just a passing stage, part of adapting to the local bacteria.