I Do Not Really Hate Americans

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Part Two

Of

I heard on the news a number of days ago that there is now scientific evidence that foreigners hate Americans, that that hate is fostered by our media institutions like motion pictures, television programs, and recorded music, and that that hate will eventually lead to terrorism against the United States. The news report further described the study “The Next Generation’s Image of Americans” by two professors in the School of Communication at Boston University as important research that will help Americans understand how they are viewed by others and might even allow us to become better prepared for terrorist attacks. I was intrigued by the conclusions that Margaret H. DeFleur and Melvin L. DeFleur had reached but little more was mentioned on the news report. On line I found numerous articles, a PDF document of the actual report and a website by the DeFleurs expounding the conclusions they had reached. Within the PDF, one can view the test that was given to 1,259 teenagers from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lebanon, South Korea, Mexico, China, Spain, Taiwan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Italy, and Argentina as well as look at numerous charts and graphs describing the data, read the terror predictions, and study the conclusions that the Doctors DeFleur have come to.

The website that the DeFleurs have created to highlight their findings is titled: “A survey in high schools in 12 countries helps reveal Why They Hate Us…” and has a photograph at the top of the page of Middle Easterners waving a banner that reads “AMERICANS, THINK! WHY YOU ARE HATED ALL OVER THE WORLD.”

“With rare exception, they hold uniformly negative perceptions not only of our government but of all Americans. We saw a mindset that is one of the parts of the requisite foundation for next-gen terrorism…”report the DeFleurs. From the beginning the research presentation and conclusions create and maintain an “us against them” attitude. If you are American you are at risk of “their” hatred. It is us against the world apparently; only one of the countries surveyed, Argentina, had favorable views of Americans. The conclusions of the report indicate that anyone not from the US is a foreigner, an “other,” which is an Ameri-centric view placing one country against all others and demonstrating an attitude that America is the center and that all other places are on the fringe or entirely outside. The “us-them” dichotomy is prevalent in all cultures and individual world views are cultural products that are learned in a process called enculturation. “Invariably, the issue of what we are is contrasted with that of what we are not. The boundary between “us” and “them” may have promoted survival when the world’s population was smaller and human groups were geographically distant from each other. With the rise of cities and the merging of previously distinct cultures, human survival may depend on the ability to transcend the “we-they” dichotomy.”

The DeFleurs maintain that “these youngsters think they know a lot about us” and that their opinions are that Americans are selfish, dominating, materialistic, un-respectful of diversity, not generous, not concerned about the poor, violent, criminal, and sexually immoral. The report places all foreigners into a category and informs us that they each hate us for the exact same reasons across the globe; it is said that if they hate us at all, which most of them do, they hate everything about us. The conclusions the authors of the study have reached are not that “teenagers in China believe that Americans do not respect those unlike themselves” or that “in Saudi Arabia, teenagers think that American women are sexually immoral.” Instead, the report states “they hate us” and because they hate us “Americans will be in danger for a long time into the future.” The research graphs demonstrate the particular results from each country and one can read exactly why the children dislike us categorized by country and reason for the hatred. Page 15 of “The Next Generation’s Image of Americans” provides the questionnaire that was given to the 1,259 students. Nowhere within are questions such as “Do you hate Americans?” or “Because of your negative beliefs about Americans will you commit overt acts of terror against them?” But these are exactly what the researchers have concluded based upon questions about the morality, generosity, and violent nature of Americans and this is precisely what has been reported on by the media.

So what is the effect of entertainment on those who watch it? The authors of the study “The Next Generation’s Image of America” assert that media influences life in major ways, and could lead eventually to terrorism due to the negative effects upon those who watch, listen, or otherwise absorb motion pictures, television, inter-net programming, or American music. They posit a “creeping cycle of desensitization” which describes the process of the evolution in US produced media “toward what appears to many to be increasing triviality, decreasing levels of taste, and, above all, ever lowering moral standards.”

As I write this, I am perched high in a booth behind hundreds of heads of movie-goers at the largest cineplex in New Mexico. I work part-time as a projectionist and I often wonder how the films that I show might influence those who watch. Media entertainment has been a major component of American culture for several generations and many of us have grown up making assumptions about the world based upon what is presented to us on screen, on-line, in print, and as music. Each individual constantly, often un-consciously, makes determinations about whether or not what one is presented with is fiction or non-fiction, whether data is credible or not, and by what degree we will be affected by what we see. Somewhere in the modules of the mind, human beings sort and classify everything their senses are presented with. For example, one of the previews attached to some of the films at this particular movie-house for the next big blockbuster depict the space shuttle glowing red as it enters the atmosphere and then spinning in a skidding crash into the earth. The untimely release of this preview coincided with the tragic explosion of the Columbia in February 2003 that resulted in the loss of life of seven astronauts. The saturation media coverage of the actual event, much like many other events where multitudes of cameras are present from police aggression to live footage of the American invasion of Iraq, resulted in a mass viewing of the tragedy and a reported psychological effect of near “shell shock” for people who had not actually been there but witnessed it via some sort of media (A similar affect of the September 11, 2001 events.). It might be impossible to know whether more people viewed the actual explosion of the Columbia on the news or the fictitious crash into the planet on the silver screen. Nevertheless, one instance causes pain, sadness, feelings of loss and intense emotion while the other is a multi-million dollar digital effect used to satisfy the need for entertainment for some and increase the profit for others. Do some who see the preview actually believe that they are witnessing an event of fiction or of non-fiction?

Most times, we can separate one from the other, our minds automatically switch from belief to suspended belief as the program on the television switches from news to a commercial. Cognition is developed from childhood to adulthood as a skill learned through processes of enculturation wherein humans become increasing better at interpreting sensory data their minds receive. The view that children have of the world is often quite different than that of the adults around them. “The Next Generation’s Image of Americans” places the teenagers of other countries into a sort of arrested development wherein they cannot separate fact from fiction and that they will be as influenced by media depictions of Americans as children are of things that go bump in the night.

The report published by the Doctors DeFleur establishes three factors that they believe will be present in the event of terrorism. The research centers on the factor of a “negative attitude” about Americans held by those polled in their research. The report finds that of twelve countries surveyed, only one had a positive view of Americans while the rest have negative views. A link is immediately drawn to media influences and the Doctors report that the military, economic, and political philosophies of America are not to blame for the low opinions others have of us. The fact that high-school age children dislike Americans, the report asserts, is because our media presents us to others as an immoral, violent, and inconsiderate culture. Further, because our media has fostered this negative opinion, those who hold these views are dangerous to Americans and are likely to commit acts of terrorism against us. The report draws the conclusion that negative attitudes will lead to dangerous behavior like smoking cigarettes will lead to cancer. While it might be a fair assumption to say that if others like us they will not try to do us harm, it is not as accurate to say that if others do not like us they will do us harm. Terrorism does not necessarily follow from negative views even though negative views are expectedly present where terrorism has occurred. Furthermore, is it really likely that young men would be willing to kamikaze commercial airliners into buildings in whole or in part because they got the wrong opinion of American values and sensibilities from watching Joe Millionaire?

The frame of media presentation, it should be remembered, always excludes a much greater portion of the world than it includes. It has been common for Americans to blame media influences for the ill wills of its youth ever since Charles Manson said that the song Helter Skelter by the Beatles influenced him to commit the heinous crimes that he has been accused of. Thirty years later, musician Marilyn Manson was banned for performing in parts of Colorado because it was thought that his music caused the students at Columbine High School to open fire on their classmates. A Clockwork Orange, a film banned in England because of the violence portrayed within, is more precisely about free will and the choices that humans make for themselves regarding “goodness” and the morality of violence. But the director of the film himself- Stanley Kubrick for those of you who might not be familiar- recognized the dangers after heinous copycat crimes were committed and made the decision to withhold it from public viewing. Certainly the media influences us in myriad ways: We wear a raincoat when the weatherman tells us that it will rain. Coca Cola, Disney, and McDonalds are recognized worldwide because of the saturation advertising techniques that they use. Adolescents change their “look” based on the newest styles and fads promoted by rock and rap bands. The report by the DeFleurs is quite right in drawing the conclusion that the media affects us in ways that we might not even be aware of and that sometimes the response is negative. But is it fair to leap, as Margaret and Melvin DeFleur have, from “negative attitude” to “next-gen terror?”

Being foreign does not necessarily mean that your image of Americans being immoral or violent comes from media presentation. My grandmother (who happens to be an American) might think that Americans are sexually looser than they should be, a minister will have a different view than a judge, bartender, drill-sergeant, or anthropologist. An unemployed father of five in New Mexico might think that Americans do not care enough about the poverty stricken while a wealthy retired man in Massachusetts might feel that plenty has already been done for the poor. If someone has a low opinion about something else, it does not necessarily follow that they must have arrived at that negative attitude from media presentations. The old axiom stands that “correlation is not causation.” They might in fact be right on about what they think of Americans but it is easier for us to think that the reason for the bad attitude is something as silly, un-realistic, and easily dismissed as motion pictures or rap music than it is to admit that our culture promotes many of the philosophies that others abhor. But is it possible that the opinions of foreigners about Americans, while informed partially by the media, might also be fostered by the same mechanisms that we Americans use to form opinions about others and ourselves? The DeFleurs mention that most of the teenagers who have negative opinions about Americans have never visited the States and that they might really know what they do about us by their “access to, a television, radio, CD player, VCR [or] even a DVD.” Though I have only ever traveled to Canada once and to Mexico once, my image of Canadians and Mexicans is informed by many more components than either my own single experiences or the depictions I have been presented with through the media.

As Jody Wheeler writes, “Its not the images that Islam hates, it’s the culture from which those images grow out of that is anathema to them… the mother from ‘Leave it to Beaver’ is ‘looser’ than most women in Saudi society. She is an affront to most anything their culture would allow.” Value systems are different all over the world, different from generation to generation, and from one individual to the next. Diversity and tolerance must coexist as a system in order for societies to survive their neighbors.

Americans are different than everyone else in the world it is true but it might be likely that there is more variation between individual Americans then between individual cultures around the world. Just as Americans do not form their beliefs about others simply because of what the media presents them with (Or do Americans actually think that every person of Asiatic descent is a master of kung fu?), people in other countries are equally as diverse in their formation of opinions.