The Empire of the Fun, or Talkin' Soviet Union Blues: The Sound of Freedom and U.S. Cultural Hegemony in Europe

Abstract

Loosen up, don't be afraid, don't hold back! When he reaches the end of his pitch he just goes wild, the other salesmen at his side, hearty and true, their ringing voices making it plain that what they're really selling is America, because in America the fantasy of the country sells everything else and everything else on sale sells the country: ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS DREAM! Once upon a time, the Spanish Habsburgs and their Austrian siblings controlled the empire on which the sun never set. Looking back at the demise of so many European empires after the First World War, Edward G. Lowry laconically quipped in the Saturday Evening Post in 1925: “The sun, it now appears, never sets on the British Empire and the American motion picture industry.” After the Second World War the sun finally set on all European empires as well as on the Japanese Empire of the Sun. They were all replaced by a completely new kind of empire, Hollywood's Empire of the Fun. This Celluloid Empire produced the metatext of cultural power and hegemony of the American Century. The visual and acoustic repositories of this global culture have more and more been filled with messages from the imperial center to the accompaniment of the soundtrack of the twentieth century, the Sound of Freedom (jazz, and all its derivatives).