American Cultural Hegemony after 1945

The USA as a Cultural Superpower

After the Second World War, the USA became not only a military and economic, but also a cultural superpower. Hollywood, jazz, rock and roll, Coca-Cola, jeans, McDonalds—American cultural products penetrated all corners of the world. This is the “soft power” of Joseph Nye: influence through culture, not coercion.

This was not completely spontaneous. The CIA funded the Congress for Cultural Freedom—an organization that promoted Western art (abstract expressionism) as a symbol of freedom against Soviet socialist realism. Culture was a weapon of the Cold War.

American mass culture attracted people abroad—especially the youth in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Jeans and rock and roll as symbols of freedom. “Voice of America” as a cultural and political instrument.

The Frankfurt School and the “Culture Industry”

Adorno and Horkheimer introduced the term “culture industry” (Kulturindustrie) as a replacement for “mass culture”: the former sounds accusatory, the latter neutral. The culture industry is the standardized, commercially oriented production of cultural products which create the illusion of individuality and diversity amid real uniformity.

Pop music, film, television—this is a conveyor belt. The consumer thinks that he chooses, but he chooses from what has been predetermined. This is “pseudo-individualization” —marginal differences within standard structures.

Critique of the critique: Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies—mass culture does not only manipulate; audiences actively interpret, resist, create subcultures. “Encoding/decoding”: the producer encodes ideological meaning, the audience can decode in another way.

Question for reflection: What in your professional culture resembles the “culture industry”—standardized formats, pseudo-individualism? What is genuine cultural innovation?