The 'Fun House Mirror' and 'Moribund' Public Diplomacy.

AuthorBishop, Donald M.
PositionBook review

Title: The "Fun House Mirror" and "Moribund" Public Diplomacy

Author: Donald M. Bishop

Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America's Image Abroad, by Martha Bayles, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014, ISBN-13: 978-0300123388, 336 pp., $30.00 (Hardcover), $14.99 (Kindle)

Professor Martha Bayles of Boston College has written the freshest and most original treatment of U.S. Public Diplomacy in many years. Practitioners and advocates for Public Diplomacy may not shout "huzzah" on every page, but her book can open a robust professional debate--about programs, concepts and premises, and the characteristics of American society--more effectively than many acres of arid policy blather.

She opens her book with a question every Public Diplomacy officer will recognize. In the Foreign Service, I spoke to many individuals who had just returned from their first visits to the United States--a returning Fulbright scholar or an International Visitor, perhaps. I asked, "before you made your trip, you already knew a great deal about the U.S. from your studies, from the news, and from television and films. I'm guessing that some of the impressions you had before the trip proved accurate, but others did not. What about the United States was different from your expectation?"

Ninety percent of the returnees gave similar answers. They told me

they were surprised by the calm and safety of American cities and neighborhoods. They didn't witness any gunfights or car chases. The Americans they met were solid, welcoming, honest, and genuine. Many were religious. This was not the impression of America they had gained from the movies.

Discussing why so many people have "fun house mirror" views of the United States, then, is the framework for the first half of Through a Screen Darkly. Drawing on her long experience as a student, teacher, and critic of popular culture, art, television, and film, Professor Bayles examines how American culture is presented to other societies.

She spoke with dozens of foreign thinkers in locations as distant as Cairo, Mumbai, Jakarta, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, and Beijing. She logged hundreds of hours watching Latin American and Bollywood films and foreign television fare. This immersion gave her a sympathetic ear for the social and religious environments where the rest of the world lives, helping her look at foreigners not as Americans think they ought to be, but as they are. I am confident American readers will gain...

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