ANGLES Volume II

Trading Cultures. Nationalism and Globalization in American Studies

Edited by Clara Juncker & Russell Duncan

List of Contents

Editors' Preface

Paul Levine
Traditional Values and Global Culture

Justin D. Edwards
The Triumphal Golden Arches; or, McDonald's and the Globalization of Food Culture

Clara Juncker
Marketing Marilyn

Raili Põldsaar
With Barbie in Wonderland: American Consumer Culture and the Commodification of Estonian Motherhood

James J. Farrell
It's a Mall World, After All

Obododimma Oha
Marketing Goods and Services with/as Images of America

Morten Vest Hansen
"Some Happy Marriage of Speaking and Hearing": Negotiating National Narrative in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!

Øyunn Hestetun
The Land of Myth, Story, and History in Contemporary American Indian Writing: N. Scott Momaday and James Welch

Russell Duncan
"What The World Is Coming To!": Atlanta, the Proslavery Argument, and the 1996 Summer Olympics

Dag Blanck
"We Have A Lot To Learn From America": The Myrdals and the Question of American Influences in Sweden

Review:

Victor I. Stoichita:
Viktoria de Rijke, Lene Østermark-Johansen and Helen Thomas, editors, Nose Book: Representations of the Nose in Literature and the Arts

Review:

Robert Baehr:
Justin Edwards, Exotic ]ourneys: Exploring the Erotics of U.S. Travel Literature 1840-1930

Notes on Contributors

EDITORS' PREFACE

Perhaps the 1960s slogan advocated by Dr. Timothy Leary could be remade to express current world fears about American hubris and dominance at the start of a new millenium: "Tune In! (to the American idea), Turn On! (to American products), Drop Out! (of your own culture)." Critics worry that America is a dangerous mind-altering drug that is spreading moral decay and diseased style, fashion, food, films - everything imaginable - beyond its national borders.

This American cultural nationalism, or globalization "American-style," is blamed for everything from global warming to worldwide obesity. And yet, ironically, in the midst of these fears, the world seems in a full rush to accept, copy, or imitate. One thing is clear about American culture: it doesn't stay "American" very long. Reflecting the modern and postmodern world situation, a global culture is emerging that is full of shifting attitudes, lifestyle choices, technological transformations, and multiple identities. Whether that culture is American or not is debatable.

Most of the papers included in this volume of ANGLES were first presented at the Biennial Conference of the Nordic Association for American Studies (NAAS), held in Copenhagen, Denmark, on August 8-11, 2001. The essays reflect the conference theme of "Trading Cultures" and focus on the ways in which Americanization and globalization blend easily, conflict as they conform, or richochet wildly of one another. The editors also included a paper Paul Levine gave at the Eighth Annual American Studies Seminar in Athens, Greece, in April 2001, as an overview to current cultural controversies, updated to include 11 September and Enron.

We have selected essays based upon their explorations of hegemony versus particularism in targeting bodies for the marketing of images, in presenting subcultures within American culture that fear or want homogenization, and in portraying how Americanization and globalization claim universal values. The essays walk the streets of Dakar, shop cosmetics in Estonia, traverse Native American and Southern landscapes, gaze at Barbie and Marilyn, eat McKenya burgers at McDonald's, raise Confederate flags at the Olympic Games, bring the world into the neighborhood mall, and Americanize the Swedish welfare state. Globalization and Americanization seem to establish national borders as they continue to erase them.

Russell Duncan
Clara Juncker