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(Hand over heart, standing) “I pledge allegiance (pause) to the flag (pause) of the United States of America (pause) and to the Republic (pause) for which it stands; one nation (pause) under God (pause), indivisible (pause), with liberty and justice for all.” This statement, repeated daily in schools, assemblies and the swearing in of new US citizens, evokes both verbal rhythms and behaviors in many Americans. Written by Francis Bellamy for the magazine Youth’s Companion (1892), it restates fundamental ideological values of citizenship. Yet, as an apothegmatic credo, it has both chartered radical social change (“liberty and justice for all”) and evoked protests in classrooms, especially in the Vietnam era and with regards to separation of church and state.
Industry:Culture
“Bisexual” is an adjective describing individuals who do not identify as only heterosexual or only homosexual. The prefix “bi-” indicates that these individuals are drawn to both sexes, although certain scientists have argued about the existence of more than two sexes.
“Bisexual” is perhaps best understood as an umbrella term that means different things to the people who use it to describe themselves. Some people who identify as “bisexual” experience their sexuality differently from other “bisexuals.” For instance, certain individuals who identify themselves as bisexual are attracted to others regardless of biological sex, but only have sexual relations with one sex.
Bisexuality is nothing new. However, through media visibility it has gained widespread recognition as a social category only in the latter part of the twentieth century. Before the term “bisexual” was coined in the 1890s, there were people who were attracted to others regardless of biological sex. However, they did not perceive themselves as “bisexual,” because the group “bisexuals” could not have been said to exist.
Bisexuals traditionally have been and today still are widely regarded with suspicion by both heterosexual and homosexual individuals. One common stereotype states that bisexuals are sexually indecisive fence-sitters. The biphobic also see bisexuals as sexually promiscuous individuals. To counter these beliefs, the young bisexual community has fought for recognition as a legitimate sexual option, and has worked to discredit the myth of sexual excess.
Industry:Culture
“Environmental racism” refers, generally to environmental problems or decisions that have a disproportionate adverse effect on racial minorities. A classic example of “environmental racism” would be deciding to locate a hazardous waste dump in a minority neighborhood solely or largely on the basis of race.
The notion of “environmental racism”—and the environmental justice movement that sprang up to combat it—came of age in the 1980s. While isolated battles over environmental racism were fought earlier, the issue became a matter of broader concern to environmentalists, government officials and the general public in 1982 when rural African Americans in Warren County NC bitterly protested the state’s decision to locate a dump for soil contaminated with toxic chemicals in their area.
The protest led to a congressionally mandated study by the US General Accounting Office in 1983 that found that hazardous waste sites in the South tend to be located near African American neighborhoods. Other landmarks in the environmental justice movement include a study by the United Church of Christ in 1987 that expanded on the GAO study; the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, which was held in Washington, DC in 1991; a report by the National Law Journal in 1992 that found that under the Superfund program, the Environmental Protection Agency was likely to clean up toxic-waste sites in minority neighborhoods more slowly and to seek smaller penalties against polluters there; and Executive Order 12898, issued by President Clinton in 1994, which, for the first time, charged federal agencies with making environmental justice concerns a priority Until the advent of the environmental justice movement, the environmental movement tended to be seen as white and middle class, and increasingly dominated by large, national environmental organizations. The environmental justice movement, with its grassroots, poor minority appeal may change that.
The movement continues to bring up additional, more complex issues, such as the unexplained fact that poor blacks and Latinos have high rates of asthma and that those rates are rising.
As a movement that combines two politically charged issues—environmental protection and civil rights—the environmental justice movement has been enormously controversial. Its detractors charge, among other things, that it will make it more difficult to locate job-producing facilities in minority neighborhoods where the jobs are most needed. In addition, legal battles have arisen over how and whether Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be used to bring environmental justice claims.
Industry:Culture
“Everybody talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it,” according to Mark Twain. But weather provides more than chatter—the experience and interpretation of the American climate has deeply shaped national growth and culture.
By Twain’s day the United States already spanned a continent. Hence, storm systems swept across the Plains to the East Coast, while droughts and floods affected not only local agriculture, but also national business and population. Better forecasting today makes it possible to envision these systems on a national scale. At the same time, weather reports remain extremely local, geared to activities like vacations, school closings, celebrations and commuting.
The US also has unique weather phenomena that have shaped its sense of the power of nature. Three-quarters of all tornadoes occur here; the Eastern and Gulf Coasts, like Hawai’i, lie in major hurricane routes. “Blizzard” is an American word as well, capturing the strength of Arctic snows blanketing the Midwest. The Great Depression’s Dustbowl, Midwestern floods, fire seasons in California and Florida and other dramatic phenomena also influence markets, families and the national experience.
Moreover, variations in perceptions of weather, from the sultry South to Southwestern deserts to the rainy Pacific Northwest, shape regional meaning and identity. These pervade images of rugged New Englanders or in Tennessee William’s steamy evocations of the South. Although urbanites may seem more immune to natural phenomena than farmers, Chicago, IL is still the Windy City while a climatic inversion of sunny Los Angeles set a futuristic stage in Blade Runner (1980).
Does anyone do anything about it? Knowledge of the weather and attempts to control its effects were envisioned as a national research project by President Thomas Jefferson, whose legacy was developed by both the Smithsonian Institution and military research.
New technology like the telegraph allowed simultaneous measurements and early reports of climactic changes. Since the Second World War, radar, satellites and computers have all changed manipulation of weather data and the reliability of predictions, centralized and distributed through the National Weather Service.
Technology has also changed the ways in which Americans learn about weather, as newspaper forecasts have given way to the immediacy of radio and television. Five minutes for weather is a staple of local news. In television’s early days, weather reports became notorious for their lack of journalistic or scientific prowess—whether relying on attractive “weather girls” or “characters” with make-up and props. Subsequently more accurate prediction has coincided with computer imaging of storm movements, while reports on snows, floods, tornadoes and hurricanes have become staples of news as well; the impact of the El Niño current off California received frequent coverage. The Weather Channel, begun in 1982, reaches 90 percent of cable users with 24-hour reports.
Weather reports may also underpin environmental concerns, whether local issues of farming/gardening, pollution, water supplies or more general concerns of global warming.
Industry:Culture
“Folk music” is a general, and often rather vague, term used to describe the oral musical traditions of rurally based communities in Europe and America. Since the 1960s, with the growth of the music industry “folk” has also come to mean a genre within popular music: it usually designates a type of music which aspires to certain perceived virtues in the tradition, such as singers who can perform in communal situations without a great deal of technical equipment, songs with a social message, and so on. More recently the term “roots music” has begun to replace “folk,” reflecting the marketing of ethnic musics, which began in the 1980s, from around the world.
Broadly speaking, until the middle of the twentieth century there were isolated farming communities in Europe and America that continued to sing and play a more or less fixed repertoire of ballads, songs and tunes handed down orally over generations. The advent of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century fragmented these communities, first in Britain and later in the US. As agricultural workers migrated to the cities to find work in factories, other forms of entertainment, such as (in Britain) the music hall, superseded the old songs, stories and ritual celebrations of the countryside.
At the turn of the nineteenth century enterprising scholars, musicologists and collectors like Cecil Sharp, Percy Grainger and Francis J. Child traveled to areas such as the Scottish highlands and the Appalachian mountains, where the old ways of life still persisted, writing down and recording the last remnants of this rich musical culture. However, the “revivalists,” as they were called, tended to romanticize certain aspects of the culture, seeing it somewhat mystically as the collective art of the “folk,” instead of what it was: a hybrid music, some of it brought in by gypsies from other parts of the world, some of it composed as early as the fifteenth century by hack writers and sold as broadside ballads (the equivalent of tabloids) in the streets and markets of cities and towns.
During the 1930s and 1940s, collectors like Alan Lomax traveled across America, visiting singers in Pentecostal churches, penitentiaries and cotton fields, and recording them for the Library of Congress. Some singers, such as Leadbelly, had a vast repertoire, and Lomax gradually pieced together a collection of core songs like “Barbara Allan” and “Lord Randall,” together with hundreds of variants, which now form the basis of American folk music.
As the recording industry gathered momentum, promoters like John Hammond put out records of blues and Negro spirituals by early stars of the vaudeville circuit such as Bessie Smith. In the wake of the Depression, Woody Guthrie initiated a politically conscious form of folk music, singing at union meetings and labor camps around the country His songs told of the hardship and poverty he encountered; “This Land is Your Land” became a rallying call for activists, and was regarded by many as America’s “alternative” national anthem. Guthrie was joined by Pete Seeger and others in a group called the Almanac Singers, who performed at strikers’ demonstrations. In 1948 Seeger was blacklisted by McCarthy’s un-American Activities Committee, but continued to sell out concerts abroad.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the civil-rights movement brought black singers such as Leadbelly to the attention of a white public for the first time. The movement also produced its own stars, the greatest being Bob Dylan, who infused the folk tradition with new vigor and passion, rediscovering old folk songs and writing new ones in the context of America’s political struggle.
By the end of the 1960s, a new breed of popular singers was emerging. The popularity of artists like Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell meant that any singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar and/or a social message was now dubbed a “folk singer,” whether or not they had any connection with the folk tradition—a situation that persists to the present day.
Folk music as a commercial style has waxed and waned. The success of the Greenwich Village scene songwriters like Fred Neil and Tim Hardin was short-lived and the troubadour tradition appeared to die out in the 1970s and 1980s, kept alive only by the efforts of mostly Texan boho songwriters like Townes Van Zandt and Butch Hancock. In the 1990s, however, a new generation once more rejected the commercial mainstream of the music business and returned to neo-folk styles. In the US, Ani DiFranco and Dar Williams have followed pioneers like Michelle Shocked, while in Britain, Billy Bragg, Kate Rusby and Eliza Carthy continue to revive the folk tradition kept alive since the 1960s by folk artists like Martin Carthy, The Watersons and June Tabor.
Industry:Culture
“For the European, even today, America represents something akin to exile, a phantasy of emigration, and therefore a form of interiorization of his or her own culture,” wrote Jean Baudrillard in America (1988:78). Americans abroad in the early twenty-first century face profoundly dichotomized, contradictory images in which they participate and through which they are interpreted as myths, nation and individual actors. One image is the Ugly American (from Eugene Burdick and William Lederer’s influential 1958 novel), aggressive and destructive, whether through ignorance, malevolence, intervention or neglect. A second image is that of America and Americans as bearers of liberty, technology, progress and prosperity as broadcast over international airwaves by Voice of America. Most Americans prefer the latter, which underpins the rhetoric of business, missionaries, development aid, mass media and even tourism. While propagandistic, this ideology often imbues individual actors, including expatriate rebels, and ironically reaffirms an image of close-mindedness abroad. The first image is also polemic—thrown against the US by enemies, allies/ competitors and leftist critics at home. While both images are transmitted through multiple media—Hollywood, news, music videos, world fairs—at home and abroad, both are also grounded in actions, policies and events intensified by American economic, political and military expansion in the early twentyfirst century.
These images, of course, take shape in concrete local contexts. Arkush and Lee’s Land of Ghosts splendidly analyzes and anthologizes changing Chinese readings of America since the nineteenth century. Unlike many of the European elite, for example, who characterized America as young and uncouth (albeit energetic and rich), Chinese leaders saw America as an example of modernity and its discontents. Chinese immigrants—like generations from every country on earth—dealt with the promise and disillusion of an American dream rent by class and racial discrimination. America has been read as a friend to democratic reformers and the nationalist regime it propped up after 1949, and bitter enemy to the communist regime it sought to isolate on the mainland. Renewed ties of trade and immigration with this mainland have produced deeply ambivalent relations in the 1980s and 1990s, including the polemic attacks of the China that Can Say No, as well as the Goddess of Liberty in Tienanmen Square. Moreover, friends and enemies have expressed perplexity at differences in family, gender, absence of hierarchy and food.
The postwar French, by contrast, soon found that liberating allies could be overbearing friends. The success of American mass culture (abetted by the Marshall plan) has pitted those who protect the purity of French language, culture, markets and difference against those who adopt rock, Coca-Cola, film noir, blue jeans and Brando. Meanwhile, in third-world nations, the image of a rich nation as a goal for emigration or emulation continually crashes against military intervention or exploitation in which American business and policy participate.
Commentators worldwide have underscored the contradictions between American public ideals and the realities of racism, poverty, crime, guns, social breakdown and unbalanced consumption that accompany world power. As racial tensions have boiled over in Europe since the 1980s, for example, more than one national analyst has exclaimed “This is not America!” In these complex realms of imagery, one may try to distinguish the United States as a myth and a political and cultural agent from its citizens. The wealth and mass consumption of international travel and the globalization of business has opened an American presence beyond the wealthy expatriate, dedicated missionary and eccentric exile. Scholars, students, the military tourists, artists, minorities, revolutionaries, Peace Corps workers, medical workers and evangelists can provide more varied experiences and attitudes to nuance stereotypes. Moreover, immigration reforms since the 1960s have created increasing transnational families and citizens who balance American and other identities. Nevertheless, many people know America through media before they meet a living American.
Yet, public discourses of individual freedom, democracy, hegemonic Western values and independence, coupled with economic and political power, have become global policies. Part of the tragedies of Hungary, Vietnam, Cuba, Somalia, Iran and Rwanda is not only American action (or inaction), but American justification in the name of “freedom,” “democracy” and American interests. American mass media may explore this painful paradox, especially with regard to Vietnam, but it should be balanced with the recurrent scenario of Star Trek, in which “galactic” rules of non-intervention invariably are broken to end racism, promote democracy impose peace or facilitate trade.
While a student, tourist or diplomat abroad may insist America “is not like that,” actions and interpretations underscore the contradictions at the center of the nation’s dilemmas in the twenty-first century.
Industry:Culture
“GE,” founded in 1892, focused for decades on appliances and electrical products, from refrigerators to jet turbines, that ushered in modernity with slogans like “Progress is Our Most Important Product” and “We Bring Good Things to Life.” The company which employs 276,000 people worldwide in the 1990s after downsizing, has diversified to include the NBC television network and financial services.
Industry:Culture
“In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” So wrote Benjamin Franklin, American statesman, in 1789. To this day the rhetoric regarding taxes often overshadows the reality of an immensely complex system of federal, state and local taxation. Taxes, the nearly inevitable result of civilized society, support numerous purposes. They raise revenue for government expenditures, redistribute wealth, and provide economic stability. Taxes play a predominant role in American political dialogue through their creation, implementation and impact. Strong disagreement exists over the role that taxes, and the governments that levy them, should play in the US.
As a percentage of national income, personal income taxes are 12.3 percent. The percentages for social insurance taxes, sales/excise taxes, corporate taxes and property taxes, are 10.4 percent, 4.9 percent, 3.6 percent and 3.3 percent respectively. At the federal level 67.4 percent of taxes are collected, with the remainder going to state and local authorities. Social-insurance taxes finance retirement and health benefits. Benefits are distributed in proportion to the taxes paid during one’s working years. Financial difficulties confronting the system aside, it is essentially a forced savings plan. Sales and property taxes are collected at the state (or local) level as an alternative to income taxes.
In 1994 such taxes accounted for over half of state and local revenues. Delaware, the “Home of Tax-Free Shopping,” is one of five states without a sales tax. These states compensate with higher income taxes, use taxes or reduced services. Just 9 percent of US businesses are subject to corporate income tax, normally at a rate of 35 percent. The effective rate is significantly lower due to numerous credits, deductions and depreciation allowances.
When Americans speak of taxes, however, they typically refer to personal income taxes. First imposed during the Civil War, income tax became permanent in 1913, after ratification of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. Income tax was an appealing alternative to tariffs, excise taxes and property taxes that were regressive in nature. The first income tax was aimed at the very rich. Fewer than one percent of citizens filed returns. Personal income taxation played a small role until just before the Second World War, when exemptions were reduced and tax rates increased to finance wartime production. By this time, one-third of the population was responsible for some tax.
The progressive spirit of the tax code burdens the wealthy with additional responsibilities to pay for the services that contributed to their wealth. Marginal tax rates provided for low rates at low-income levels. As income increases, tax rates increase as well, with each additional dollar of income taxed at one’s highest rate. The post-Second World War period saw the top marginal rate slide from a growth-impeding 94 percent in 1944–5 to 70 percent through the 1970s. Tax reform focusing on the Laffer Curve and supplyside economics, which argued that low tax rates increase tax revenues by increasing total economic output, led to a top rate of 28 percent by 1988.
While progressive in spirit, loopholes have developed over the life of the tax code to the point that wealthy families deduct significant portions of income. Charitable exclusions, exclusions for government-bond interest and generation-skipping trusts are common tax-avoidance techniques. Middle-class taxpayers, often the most vocal taxreform advocates, benefit from the largest deduction of all—the ability to exclude mortgage interest paid from taxes.
Income taxes are collected by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Tax returns are filed annually but paid primarily from paycheck withholding. As the deadline, April 15 approaches, media depictions of Americans rushing to complete complicated paperwork and figure out how to afford the bill grow abundant. The IRS uses the fear of audits (fewer than 2 percent of returns are audited), information reporting from employers and tax withholding to enforce tax laws. Even so, $150 billion in revenue is lost to noncompliance.
The IRS has developed a reputation for poor service and predatory collection practices, which it addressed in the 1990s with customer-service initiatives.
Americans tend to share a general antipathy for taxes. There are two primary explanations for anti-tax sentiment. The attitude of “everybody wants everything and nobody wants to pay for it” provides an explanation for tax hatred without theoretical basis. On the other hand, general opposition to the size, motivation and goals of government provide a strong base of support for tax reform.
There are numerous advocacy groups that support tax cuts and reforms. The Tax Foundation annually calculates a “Tax Freedom Day.” In 1998, “Tax Freedom Day” was May 10, meaning that Americans spent 35.4 percent of the year earning money to pay various taxes. In general, taxes have risen with “Tax Freedom Day” occurring on February 12 (1930), April 15 (1960) and May 1 (1990). Tax is also a strong feature of Republican political rhetoric.
The implication from the above is that Americans pay too much in taxes. In fact, the US has lower taxes than the majority of economically developed countries. A 1993 study indicates that US taxes are equal to 29.7 percent of GDP. Only Japan had a lower rate, with the United Kingdom (33.6), Germany (39.0) and Sweden (49.9) shouldering significantly higher burdens (Slemrod and Bakija 1996:20). While personal and corporate income taxes are similar across countries, the US has far lower sales and value-added taxes than other nations.
Industry:Culture
“Queer” emerged as a politically charged term around the time that AIDS politics gathered urgent momentum. With the advent of such groups as ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, 1987) and Queer Nation (1990), issues of homophobia and gender and sexuality were soon recognized as key political concerns. While Stonewall (1969) served as the historical marker for gay and lesbian politics and identity many younger activists saw this version of identity as too assimilated in and abject to heterosexual culture. Strategies for AIDS activism, on the other hand, demanded a radical term that announced the fact that the disease was particularly affecting those whose sexual desire was very different from the heterosexual norm. “Queer” fit the bill.
From the streets to the radical possibilities of the ivory tower the notion of queer found its way into departments of English Literature, Film Studies and even Architecture. In 1990 Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet (1990) arguably set the stage for queer theory. Scholars such as these and Michael Warner rethought the essentializing propositions of identity politics that most often attended traditional gay, lesbian and feminist politics. Merging especially the works of Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser and Jacques Derrida, American queer theorists queered poststructural itself. After all, Althusser and Derrida make strange bedfellows.
The vitality and importance of the term “queer” (although often perceived as recapitulating a historically pejorative adjective) is its suggestive refusal of cultural conditions that insist on an identity as such. The dilemma “queers” once again face, as does any radical social movement, is the solidification of meaning for this once radical word. Under the aegis of capitalism, it is no surprise that “Queer Theory” has become a cottage industry.
Industry:Culture
“See the USA in your Chevrolet!” Mass tourism in the postwar era has been mediated by the hegemony of the automobile that had emerged earlier in the century and by cheap mass transport via train, bus and aviation. Together, these opportunities for an affluent society to spend leisure time away from the home have transformed an American infrastructure of services as well as the imagery and even identity of places within a burgeoning national and international tourist economy.
Tourism at the end of the century is the second-largest retail operation in the US, employing 7 million people in addition to indirect profits and jobs. Domestic travel expenditures in the US topped $350 billion in 1995; American travelers also spent $57 billion abroad, while foreign travelers spent $68 billion in the US. Some view it as the postmodern successor to industrial capitalism. Certainly, with growing deindustrialization, tourism is avidly promoted as an economic solution by federal, state and local offices through information centers, advertising and professional outreach. Tourism and service courses are offered in colleges, while places seek to transform themselves in terms of salient images (historical landmarks, museums, consumption, slogans), as well as services (convention centers, hotels, restaurants, airports, etc.).
The most common tourist destinations in the US as states are California (25.7 percent), Florida (25 percent), New York (21 percent) and Hawai’i (14 percent)— showing the impact of both Disneyland/Disneyworld as the number-one single attraction and the more general development of resort culture. Among cities, New York City, NY remains the most popular destination, followed by Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco, though African Americans are drawn to Philadelphia, PA, home of the Liberty Bell, Mother Bethel and important underground railroad sites. Santa Fe and New Orleans have developed especially distinctive images that foster regular visits, while events from the Superbowl or Olympics to horse races, business conventions and celebrity fads all influence choices of destinations. The tourism industry includes magazines, newspaper features, advertisements and Internet sites that shape the choices and the tourist experience; offers from transportation and lodging providers compete nationally and globally.
Tourism and travel may embody many individual and collective goals—an expression of leisure, pursuit of knowledge, consumption, status, family bonding or simple escape— or some meshing of all these. Moreover, “tourism” may be combined with business or other pursuits. Goals, in turn, mean different destinations and travel. The station wagon crammed with tents, children and pets for camping differs from a rented villa in Florence or Maui, a honeymoon in Niagara Falls or eco-trekking in Nepal. Budget, time, social relations and cultural capital shape the tourist venture as does acceptance—African Americans in the postwar period experienced difficulties in finding lodging and even bathrooms in the South; interstate travel was an early target of civil-rights activism.
Differing goals and foundations also influence how tourism will be recalled later through photography (slides in the 1950s and 1960s giving way to video), social narrative and souvenirs. The latter range from kitsch reproductions of the Statue of Liberty or gaudy “Mexican” hats to works of art, high fashion and web-site chronicles.
Tourism also demands adjustments among hosts, depending on attractions and specializations. Services must converge with historic or natural landscapes, collections of particular patrimonies or cultural diversity and even quaintness and isolation in defining an attraction. This leads to a paradox of success that Rothman calls “devil’s bargains,” when tourism alters the life and authenticity of the visited place and people. Hence the Hawai’ian hula becomes a female “show” rather than a male religious event; Amish farms are replaced by motels and malls for those who want to see a simple life in comfort; and national parks are clogged with cars and pollution.
Not all American tourism stays in America. While in the past, trips to Europe or Latin America represented elite privilege or bohemian escape, in the 1990s, more than 50 million Americans travel abroad annually with Canada (13 million) and Mexico (18 million) primary destinations; roughly 8 million go to Europe. In the postwar period of American economic dominance, mass tourism created the image of an “Ugly American” abroad—crass, untutored and unresponsive to places and cultures. Mass tourism has grown to serve multiple niches from academic travelers to special packages based on race and ethnic heritage, age, sexuality or environmental and political issues.
More than 40 million foreign tourists also arrive in the US annually with Canada the largest single source (14 million), 8.7 million from Europe and 6.6 million from Asia.
Many of these visitors see the US through the prism of Disneyworld or other packaged attractions. Yet their experiences of poverty, divisions and antagonisms in the US also challenge American representations of success abroad.
Tourism and tourists tend to figure in mass media as subjects of ridicule, although travel writing itself has been a long-established and evocative genre in American literature (Mark Twain, Henry James, John Steinbeck, etc.). While road movies may evoke an American quest, tourism as a theme often focused movies on differences, confusions and adjustments. Neil Simon’s The Out-of Towners (originally filmed 1970) chronicles the mishaps of travel to New York City that are refracted in films as distinctive as Brother from Another Planet (1984) or Home Alone 2 (1992). More sinister images are evoked by dislocation and vulnerability in the sci-fi resort of Westworld (1973) or the vulnerability of Sandra Bullock as a woman whose identity is stolen in The Net (1995). Tourism abroad is even more torn between the ludicrous (If It’s Tuesday, This Must be Belgium, 1969; National Lampoon films or many sitcom travel episodes), the romantic (many films set in Paris, including Funny Face, 1957 and French Kïss, 1995) or more personal crises and quests (Havana, 1990; Beyond Rangoon, 1998; Men with Guns, 1998). Among depictions of American tourists abroad by non-Americans, one might note Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) or Jacques Tati’s remarkable Playtime (1967).
Industry:Culture
