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1、Unit 14 Under the Sign of Mickey Mouse & Co。 Todd Gitlin 1 Everywhere, the media flow defies national boundaries。 This is one of its obvious， but at the same time amazing, features。 A global torrent is not, of course， the master metaphor to which we have grown accustomed。 Were more accustomed to Mar
2、shall McLuhans global village。 Those who resort to this metaphor casually often forget that if the world is a global village, some live in mansions on the hill， others in huts. Some dispatch images and sounds around town at the touch of a button; others collect them at the touch of their buttons。 Ye
3、t McLuhans image reveals an indispensable half-truth。 If there is a village, it speaks American。 It wears jeans, drinks Coke, eats at the golden arches， walks on swooshed shoes, plays electric guitars， recognizes Mickey Mouse, James Dean， E.T.， Bart Simpson, R2D2, and Pamela Anderson. 2 At the entra
4、nce to the champagne cellar of Piper-Heidsieck in Reims， in eastern France， a plaque declares that the cellar was dedicated by Marie Antoinette. The tour is narrated in six languages, and at the end you walk back upstairs into a museum featuring photographs of famous people drinking champagne。 And w
5、ho are they? Perhaps members of todays royal houses, presidents or prime ministers， economic titans or Nobel Prize winners？ Of course not. They are movie stars, almost all of them American Marilyn Monroe to Clint Eastwood。 The symmetry of the exhibition is obvious， the premise unmistakable： Hollywoo
6、d stars, champions of consumption, are the royalty of this century, more popular by far than poor doomed Marie. 3 Hollywood is the global cultural capital capital in both senses. The United States presides over a sort of World Bank of styles and symbols, an International Cultural Fund of images， sou
7、nds, and celebrities. The goods may be distributed by American, Canadian ， European-, Japanese- ， or Australianowned multinational corporations, but their styles, themes, and images do not detectably change when a new board of directors takes over。 Entertainment is one of Americas top exports. In 19
8、99, in fact, film， television， music， radio, advertising, print publishing, and computer software together were the top export, almost 80 billion worth， and while software alone accounted for $50 billion of the total, some of that category also qualifies as entertainment video games and pornography，
9、 for example。 Hardly anyone is exempt from the force of American images and sounds。 French resentment of Mickey Mouse, Bruce Willis, and the reset of American civilization is well known。 Less well known, and rarely acknowledged by the French, is the fact that Terminator 2 sold 5 million tickets in F
10、rance during the month it opened with no submachine guns at the heads of the customers. The same culture minister， Jack Lang, who in 1982 achieved a moment of predictable notoriety in the United States for declaring that Dallas amounted to cultural imperialism， also conferred Frances highest honor i
11、n the arts on Elizabeth Taylor and Sylvester Stallone. The point is not hypocrisy pure and simple but something deeper, something obscured by a single-minded emphasis on American power: dependency. American popular culture is the nemesis that hundreds of millions perhaps billions of people love, and
12、 love to hate. The antagonism and the dependency are inseparable, for the media flood essentially American in its origin， but virtually unlimited in its reach represents, like it or not， a common imagination。 4 How shall we understand the Hong Kong Tshirt that says “I Feel Coke”? Or the little Japan
13、ese girl who asks an American visitor in all innocence, “Is there really a Disneyland in America？” （She knows the one in Tokyo.) Or the experience of a German television reporter sent to Siberia to film indigenous life, who after flying out of Moscow and then travelling for days by boat， bus, and je
14、ep， arrives near the Arctic Sea where live a tribe of Tungusians known to ethnologists for their bearskin rituals。 In the community store sits a grandfather with his grandchild on his knee。 Grandfather is dressed in traditional Tungusian clothing. Grandson has on his head a reversed baseball cap. 5
15、American popular culture is the closest approximation today to a global lingua franca, drawing the urban and young in particular into a common cultural zone where they share some dreams of freedom, wealth， comfort, innocence, and power and perhaps most of all， youth as a state of mind。 In general， d
16、espite the rhetoric of “identity，” young people do not live in monocultures. They are not monocular. They are both local and cosmopolitan。 Cultural bilingualism is routine。 Just as their “cultures” are neither hardwired nor uniform， so there is no simple way in which they are “Americanized”， though
17、there are American tags on their experience low-cost links to status and fun. Everywhere， fun lovers， efficiency seekers, Americaphiles, and Americaphobes alike pass through the portals of Disney and the arches of McDonalds wearing Levis jeans and Gap jackets. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck， John Wayn
18、e, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean， Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson， Madonna, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, the multicolor chorus of Coca-Cola， and the next flavor of the month or the universe are the icons of a curious sort of oneworld sensibility， a global semiculture。 Americas bid for global unification su
19、rpasses in reach that of the Roman, the British， the Catholic or Islam; though without either an army or a God, it requires less。 The Tungusian boy with the reversed cap on his head does not automatically think of it as “American,” let alone side with the U。S. Army。 6 The misleadingly easy answer to
20、 the question of how American images and sounds became omnipresent is： American imperialism. But the images are not even faintly forceled by American corporate, political, or military power. The empire strikes from inside the spectator as well as from outside. This is a conundrum that deserves to be
21、 approached with respect if we are to grasp the fact that Mickey Mouse and Coke are everywhere recognized and often enough enjoyed. In the peculiar unification at work throughout the world， there is surely a supply side， but there is not only a supply side. Some things are true even if multinational
22、 corporations claim so： there is demand。 在米老鼠一伙的旗号下 托德吉特林 1 四海之内，媒体狂潮跨越国界。此乃其明显但同时也是很惊人的特点之一。当然，“全球浪潮”并不是我们习以为常的经典比喻.我们更习惯的是马歇尔麦克卢汉的说法： “地球村”.那些动辄把这个比喻挂在嘴上的人经常忘了,如果说世界是个地球村，那么有的人住在山上的豪宅里，而有的人住在低矮棚户中。有的人只需按下一个按钮，就可以把声音与影像四下传播,而有的人则按下按键收听收看这些影音节目。然而麦克卢汉形象化的比喻揭示了必然带来的半真半假的情况。如果有这么个村子，村民们讲的都是美语。他们全都穿着牛仔
23、服，喝着可口可乐，在麦当劳的金色拱门下用餐,穿着带有弧线标志的耐克运动鞋，弹奏电吉他，认得米老鼠、詹姆斯迪安、外星人、巴特辛普森、R2D2 和帕梅拉安德森. 2 在法国东部兰斯市的白雪香槟酒窖入口处，一块铭牌上写着玛丽 安托瓦内特曾为这个酒窖举行落成仪式.这个展览的说明使用 6 种语言，最后，你会走回楼上,走进一个博物馆，里面都是名人品尝香槟的照片。那么他们都是何许人也？是今天的皇室成员、总统首相、富商巨贾、诺奖得主吗？当然不是.他们是电影明星，从玛丽莲梦露到克林特伊斯特伍德，几乎全是美国人。展览的对称性显而易见，前提明确无误：热衷消费的好莱坞明星，才是这个世纪的皇亲国戚，比被送上断头台的可怜
24、的玛丽要来得吃香得多。 3 好莱坞是全球的文化首都-在双重意义上都是。美国执世界时尚业之牛耳，好比由形象、声音、名流组成的国际文化基金会。货物可以由各国的跨国公司发行，不管它是美国公司、加拿大公司、欧洲公司、日本公司,还是澳大利亚公司;但这些货物的风格、主题和形象即便是新董事会接管公司的话也不会让人觉察出变化。 娱乐是美国最重要的头等出口商品之一.事实上，1999 年,影视作品、音乐、广播节目、广告、印刷出版物和计算机软件在美国出口商品中独占鳌头，销售额接近 800 亿美元。单是软件就占到总量中的 500 亿美元，这个种类当中的某些产品也能算是娱乐产品,比如电子游戏和色情作品.几乎没人能躲过美
25、国影音作品的影响力.法国人素以痛恨米老鼠、布鲁斯威利斯和其他美国文化象征而著称于世。当然，比较鲜为人知，而且几乎不为法国人所承认的事实是， 终结者 2上映首月在法国就卖了 500 万张电影票这可是没有人用机关枪顶着观众的脑袋逼他们买的。1982 年，法国文化部长杰克朗声称达拉斯等同于文化帝国主义。此言既出，一时间此公在美国臭名昭著。 然而,也正是同一位文化部长先生， 将法国在艺术领域的最高荣誉颁发给伊丽莎白泰勒和西尔维斯特史泰龙。问题的关键不是纯粹简单的虚伪,而是更深层次的原因。由于人们一门心思盯着美国的实力,对此形成了一种依赖性，因此这个原因被掩盖了.美国流行文化是成百上千甚至数亿民众既爱又
26、恨无法抗拒的事物.这种敌意和依赖是分不开的,因为这种主要源自美国而实际上影响无限的媒体洪流代表了人们共同的心声，不管你喜欢与否。 4 我们该如何理解香港人 T 恤衫上写的“我喜欢可口可乐的感觉？又该如何理解天真无邪的日本小姑娘问一位美国游客“美国真有一个迪斯尼乐园吗”?（她知道的是在东京的那一个.)或者下面这位被派往西伯利亚的德国电视记者的经历？这位老兄去拍摄土著人的生活，他乘飞机离开莫斯科,然后连续数日舟车劳顿， 终于抵达居住在靠近北冰洋的通古斯人部落。文化人类学者熟悉他们是因为他们的熊皮仪式.在那里的社区商店里坐着一位老爷爷，他膝盖上坐着他的小孙子。爷爷穿着传统的通古斯服装，而孙子头上却反
27、戴着一顶棒球帽。 5 美国流行文化是今天最接近于全球通用语言的事物.具体来说,它将城市青年引入共同的文化区域,在这里他们分享对自由、财富、惬意、纯真和权力的梦想也许最重要的是年轻的心态。总之，虽然总把“身份”挂在嘴边年轻人并非生活在单一的文化中。他们并不片面狭隘。他们既有本地性，又有世界性。文化双语制已经习以为常。正如他们的“文化既非与生俱来，又非整齐划一，所以他们不是以简单方式“美国化了的，尽管他们的经历已经打上了美国标签那就是与地位和乐趣的低成本链接。无论什么地方，喜欢寻欢作乐的人、重视效率的人、亲美人士、恐美人士都穿着李维斯牌牛仔裤、盖璞牌夹克衫，往来穿梭于迪斯尼乐园的入口和麦当劳的金色
28、拱门之下。米老鼠和唐老鸭、约翰韦恩、玛丽莲梦露、詹姆斯迪安、鲍勃迪伦、迈克尔杰克逊、麦当娜、克林特伊斯特伍德、布鲁斯威利斯、可口可乐广告中不同肤色演员的合唱， 以及这个月或这个宇宙的下一种风情都是某种稀奇的世界大同情感的偶像，一种世界性的亚文化.美国人为全球一体化所作出的努力，其影响范围超过罗马人、英国人、天主教或伊斯兰教所作出的努力;虽然既不动用军队，也不依靠神明，这种努力所需付出的代价更小。 那个头上反戴棒球帽的通古斯小男孩并不会自然而然地觉得这个帽子是美国的象征，更别提他会和美国军队站在同一立场上。 6 美国的各种形象和声音怎么会变得无处不在？一个信手拈来的误导性答案是:这都归结于美帝国主义.然而这些形象都完全不由美国政治、经济、军事力量所主导。这个帝国对观众的冲击力从外到内双管齐下。 如果我们要弄明白为什么在世界各个角落人们都知道米老鼠和可口可乐，而且还常常赞赏有加,我们就要审慎地对待这样一个大难题。在这遍及全球、大行其道的特殊融合中,当然有输出方的存在，但不仅仅只有输出方的存在。即便是跨国公司这样宣称，有些事情的确是真实的：即确实存在需求方。
