Letter from Thessaloniki
Last week the 5th (I must have missed the previous four) Annual American Studies Seminar, organized by the University of Macedonia – in cooperation with the American Consulate-General – took place in Thessaloniki. «Discovering Our New World» was the main subject that engaged university students and professors for the better part of the week. Yet the supposedly most interesting panel on the highly provocative and thoughtful subject, «The Americanization of Greek Culture,» sadly lost itself in insignificant generalities, with panelists stating the very obvious. Some thoughts from the seminar: This much we know about our New World: There is a distinct internationalization of popular culture in the air. (Professor of American Civilization, Stephen Whitfield, of Brandeis University, spoke on «The Case of Walt Disney.») Furthermore, in a world which tends to economic centralization, there is what we have often observed recently, not just turmoil in the markets but a sharp recession as well. («America and the Global Economy» was the subject spoken on by Professor William McKinley Rodgers, Frances L. and Edwin L. Cummings, from College William and Mary. Later, Professor Nikos Apergis, from the Department of Economics, University of Ioannina, gave the particulars of «The Economic Transformation of Greece in a Global Era.») Also, transgression is no longer what it used to be in the good old days. (A panel of Greek scholars discussed «Translational Crime: Terrorism, Drugs, Trafficking, Money-Laundering.») All in all, the dominance of American popular culture in Greece, and the adaptation to the role of world leadership to which the USA aspires seem full of questions, which remained unanswered at this American Studies Seminar. Personally, I wonder whether even the most diligent students understood the nature and the effects of popular culture or the role it plays in modern democratic life. «Hollywood is an international export platform. I walk down the street here in Thessaloniki and I pass shops with all sorts of noisy disco music. It’s a cultural assault. It’s a degradation of culture.Yet even the most degraded parts have a certain appeal that has to be understood, because, after all, it’s your own people,» said Todd Gitlin, a professor at New York University, the author of «The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked By Cultural Wars» and «The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.» (His interesting views need another, future column for elaboration.) He added: «Well, if one is well educated in American literature and film, they might possibly understand that there is more to American culture than action movies. But unfortunately, the part which is most easily exploited are the action movies.» «Professor Gitlin, during the 1960s, you were president of Students for a Democratic Society. As an American Jew, what would you say of the present situation in Israel?» I ventured. «For many years, I thought that the solution is land for peace. Which is also the view of the Israeli left.» «Yes, but this represents just some 5 or 10 percent of the voters.» «It is so now. It was 60 percent before September 2000. Sooner or later, and after many people are killed by lunatics, in the end that’s still the only solution.» This is wise. This is subtle. Following the conspicuous victory of the democratic idea in world politics, in the last decade or two, we have also seen the rise of a renewed pessimism about the cultural possibilities of democratic life in the West and around the world. Are we, as critic Neil Postman put it in the title of his best-selling book, amusing ourselves to death? Personally I was bored to death at the opening night of «Aging Successfully» last Friday in Thessaloniki. Written by a local novelist-journalist, this production, directed by Sotiris Hadzakis, was intended to honor the 40th anniversary of the well-funded State Theater of Northern Greece (KTBE). The original novel published two years ago told the family saga of three generations of wandering Greeks. The plot was a history of surrenders, loves, and redemption. It was shaped like an uneven polyptych, whose parts leapt across 60 years of Greek history. The book was a work of fiction that captured the essential truths about the way we live now. Yet the contrivances in the play version could easily be called hokum. In the sphere of entertainment, at least, vice is more interesting than virtue. Therefore, the gleefully nihilistic musical «Irma La Douce» – a tale of lust, greed, love and murder, where poules (hookers) earn grisbee (money) with which they pay off their mecs (pimps) – with old star Anna Fonsou in the title role (she is also playing at the KTBE) will surely be attracting more spectators than the gloomy Skabardonis piece. However, if you happen to be a Billy Wilder fan, and if you enjoyed his 1963 movie with Jack Lemon and Shirley McLaine, it’s better not to see this production. Nonetheless, «Aging Successfully» can serve as a little reminder to modern Greeks: When our grandparents came to Greece from Turkey and Bulgaria where they were living before World War II, they faced worse conditions than we do now. The country was incredibly poor, they lived in tents, and most of them had left behind all their possessions, relatives, friends, to build a new home in northern Greece. In actual fact, with the «Americanization» of Greece over the past decades, with the rise of a so-called mass or pop culture – popular films and music, comic books, then television – we’ve become, thank God, spoiled. Nowadays, Greek intellectuals find themselves divided over just what this development toward Americanization meant for our state of culture generally, and what it reflects about the nature of Greek life in the 21st century. What is certain is that we like to have more time. «Americans desire more money, where Europeans want more time,» Professor Gitlin said («The Role of the Media in Our Lives). And Professor Stephen Whitfield («Technology and American Culture») disclosed that, after all, «Americanization» was a European invention. French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) coined the term to describe consumerism and business organization.
