Iam the product of a quintessential American immigrant saga.
At my age, my parents were plucked from the path to university by China's Cultural Revolution. The luxury of academia was delayed by years of peasant labor in Communist reeducation camps. The slightest whisper of capitalist doctrine, Western literature, cultural and artistic expression was perilous.
But here I am: devotee to the English language, three-and-a-half years mixed up in classic texts, textual postmodernism, postmodern cinema at a premium pricey American university (thanks, Mom and Dad). Here I am editorializing and poeticizing overseas-because I can.
For me, that is America. And every overused, Texas-drawled noun that falls along the lines of "opportunity" and "freedom" still sucker-punches me with feeling every time I think how awfully lucky I am to be an American.
But something happens abroad that muffles the Lee Greenwood swell. It is an influx of self-consciousness that comes from being associated with that American-that loud ignoramus with the Dixieland t-shirt/fanny pack/supersize combo meal.
It is an unspoken external pressure to muffle whatever patriotism you might have and offer criticisms of your people, your president, your culture because any pride or pretentiousness on your part could be taken as a whiff of imperialism.
Blame news media, blame generalizations, blame inarticulateness; it's a commonly known fact that we Americans are internationally regarded with distaste. When every U.S. market shudder or foreign policy slip is a blast felt round the world, there's no mystery behind the low global esteem.
But I'm only now discovering the more secreted source behind our lack of citizenly legitimacy.
Of course we're appraised for our election and reelection of President Bush. It's the sheepish elephant in the room come conversations abroad. But the real embedded perceptions of us-non-Bush Americans that is-derive from the media distributed by our very own Hollywood moneymakers.
We are "American Pie" and Joey Tribbiani; we are "Laguna Beach" and Meredith Grey. We the people are every regrettable teen movie ever made-with a hint of New York City mafia tossed in.
Every numbing chick flick or phallic-doting, coming-of-age summer hit is a methodology of understanding. Every jock-dates-cheerleader, beats-up-band-geek yarn is a road map to Americanism.
(Then again, it's a two way street, since I pictured New Zealand as a Hobbiton inhabited by Jermaine Clements and Bret McKenzies.)
Thanks to the accessibility and popular appeal of genre-specific (read: often bad) American film and television shipped abroad, America has morphed beyond its power-hungry, money-hungry, just plain hungry image into a nation of loud, whiny, awkward idiots.
Each of those adjectives was in fact used at some point these past few weeks in polite description of my American brethren. It doesn't help that the cinematic stupids sometimes skirt uneasily close to truth.
But it's never fun and giggles to be the object of stereotyping, polite and forgiving though it may be. As an Asian who can't do calculus in her head, I've parried a few prejudices in my time. But as a cultured environmentalist liberal, the sting of foreign generalization feels something new.
The film student in me laments the possibility that an effort to become acquainted with American "culture" now requires a three-day rental involving Will Ferrell. The film student in me prays to the movie Gods after hearing a Swedish friend grunt, "Let's get wasted!" and explaining she acquired it from "some American movie."
(The nerd in me wonders whether it would be better to be known for Middle Earth than Middle America.)
Good or bad or blockbuster, Hollywood & Co. remains the shiny colossus founded by American immigrants as a common language when the spoken type fell short. Ours is a history of diverse and momentous filmmaking that, if now lacking the chic and avant garde of France or spark and jiggle of Bollywood, is nevertheless boldly and distinctly American.
So what do you do if you can't make the world believe that America still has good ol' honest everymen waging idealism against political corruption for the sake of our democracy?
Well, I suppose the best you can do is make your Swedish friend watch "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."
Janet Wu is a Trinity junior and former film editor of The Chronicle. Her column runs every other Friday.
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