"Happy Birthday to You"
The main problem in discussing American popular culture is also one of its main characteristics: it won’t stay American. No matter what it is, whether it is films, food and fashion, music, casual sports or slang, it’s soon at home elsewhere in the world. There are several theories why American popular culture has had this appeal.
One theory is that it has been “advertised” and marketed through American films, popular music, and more recently, television. ________1____ They are ,after all, in competition with those produced by other countries.
Another theory, probably a more common one, is that American popular culture is internationally associated with something called “the spirit of America.” ____2____
The final theory is less complex: American popular culture is popular because a lot of people in the world like it.
Regardless of why it spreads, American popular culture is usually quite rapidly adopted and then adapted in many other countries. _______3______ “Happpy Birthday to You,” for instance , is such an everyday song that its source, its American copyright, so to speak, is not remembered. Black leather jackets worn by many heroes in American movies could be found , a generation later, on all those young men who wanted to make this manly-look their own.
Two areas where this continuing process is most clearly seen are clothing and music. Some people can still remember a time when T-shirts, jogging clothes, tennis shoes, denim jackets, and blue jeans were not common daily wear everywhere. Only twenty years ago, it was possible to spot an American in Paris by his or her clothes. No longer so: those bright colors, checkered jackets and trousers, hats and socks which were once made fun of in cartoons are back again in Paris as the latest fashion. ______4_______
The situation with American popular music is more complex because in the beginning, when it was still clearly American , it was often strongly resisted. Jazz was once thought to be a great danger to youth and their morals, and was actually outlawed in several countries. Today, while still showing its rather American roots, it has become so well established. Rock ‘n’ roll and all its variations, country & western music, all have more or less similar histories. They were first resisted, often in American as well, as being “low-class,” and then as “a danger to our nation’s youth.” _______5_______ And then the music became accepted and was extended and developed, and exported back to the U.S..
