Abstract
In her book America, As Seen on TV, sociologist Clara E Rodríguez conducts a comparative study of how international and American students studying and living in the American North-East viewed America based on what they had seen on American television. In her attempt to fill in the gaps in the literature on the experience of international students at a time when the number of international students to the United States is growing, she weaves together a number of threads from the history of American media exports as soft power to examine the impact of American television in terms of ‘globalization, the second generation of transnationalism, and diasporic communities’ (p. 5). In doing so, she maps the incongruity of the expectations of American life developed while watching American television from afar when set against the experience of actually living in the United States as a student.
Rodríguez argues that television affects the global viewers’ impressions of America and American culture on many levels, from the kinds of people they expect to interact with in the United States to more complex issues of the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities and of gender equalities and disparities. She demonstrates not simply that impressions of America are largely affected by television’s fictionalised representations but also that those who are new to the United States often feel more cynical about television representations after living in the States for a short while and seeing the incongruity of representation of American life versus their reality.
Rodríguez begins with a discussion of the research which has been conducted since the 1980s, which examines the nuance of interpretation of American television by different groups, including the interpretations of Dallas (1978–1991) by a variety of cultural groups observed by Liebes and Katz (1990). She also acknowledges the various facets of globalisation which play out on international television, from direct imports of American television to imports of transnational formats adapted for local audiences. Her incorporation of this variety of details about the export of ‘brand America’ demonstrates a deep understanding of the complexities and lack of uniformity which she addresses in the core of her study.
Unlike previous studies which have mainly focused on international audiences viewing in their home countries, Rodríguez focuses on how depictions of American life on television can have an impact on immigrants’ perceptions and expectations of America before and after arrival. In research conducted between 2013 and 2015, Rodríguez conducted interviews with young adults who had recently moved to the North-Eastern United States from 37 different countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and to a lesser extent, Africa, North America and Australia (p. 173). For comparison, she emailed questionnaires to American undergraduate students who also lived in the North-East. The book is largely laid out in two sections: Part II on ‘the foreign born’ and Part III offering a comparison of them with ‘US Millennials’. Both groups were made up of self-selected participants who had responded to flyers looking for students who watched American television. Certainly some responses – such as the desire to visit the United States and the belief that the high production values of American television are ‘cool’ in comparison to their home country’s programming – speak to the ongoing effectiveness of American soft power. But one of the most interesting set of responses concerned criticisms of representations of race, gender and class in American televisual media. Foreign respondents tended to get the impression that the United States – particularly the television microcosm of the United States, New York City – was primarily White and economically well-off, and that issues of race were a matter of history. This is unsurprising considering that most respondents claimed that their favourite category was comedy, followed by drama, then the crime and medical genre with some of the top responses in these categories being Friends (19994–2004), Sex and the City (1998–2004), Lost (2004–2010), Heroes (2006–2010), Grey’s Anatomy (2005–) and House (2004–2012). Upon arrival, this group found this not to be the case and they were surprised by the heterogeneity of the city’s population, its visible poverty and segregated neighbourhoods.
One of the most productive questions in Rodríguez’s research is ‘Did TV accurately depict racial and ethnic relations in the United States?’ (p. 107). This question is particularly poignant because of the difficulty many of the respondents seemed to have picking a side. Some answered ‘yes and no’ indicating that there were some television shows – such as The Wire (2002–2008) – that they felt depicted the power imbalances that occur in racially divided communities while one participant pointed out that shows such as Law & Order (1990–2010) glossed over questions of race in relation to power (p. 108). Most respondents said ‘no’, expressing the view that representations of minorities were limited and narrow. The most interesting response comes from those who responded ‘yes’, noting that, as in America, shows tended to be about one race or another, mimicking the distance between racial and ethnic groups in America, with one participant noting that programmes such as Family Matters (1989–1997) and Friends demonstrate this distance by portraying stories about African Americans and White Americans in separate programmes (pp. 108–109). These observations, though arrived at through different initial responses, all demonstrate an understanding that issues of representation in American television are problematic for a variety of reasons.
Rodríguez’s study comes at an interesting time: while her research was conducted towards the end of President Barak Obama’s last term – a period of international respect for America and lauded as ‘post-racial’ – the publication itself came out in the middle of Donald Trump’s presidency – a period marked by escalating racial tensions, anti-immigrant sentiment and growing international tension as America attempts to adopt more isolationist policies. It would be interesting to revisit these questions of immigrant expectations in the next few years to see if enthusiasm for American television and the subsequent desire to visit the United States has changed at all. This book has valuable insights for those studying American soft power but offers even more to students and scholars interested in the impact of the representation of minority groups on television, as Rodríguez emphasises questions of race, class and gender diversity in American television. Unlike previous studies which have mainly focused on international audiences viewing in their home countries, Rodríguez focuses on how depictions of American life on television can impact immigrants’ perceptions and expectations of America before and after arrival.