Fabricating the Absolute Fake: 'America' in Contemporary Pop Culture

182 Pages·2008·1.24 MB·English

by  Jaap Kooijman

American pop culture – Hollywood cinema, television, pop music – F
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dominates the rest of the world through its hegemonic presence. b
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Does that make everyone a hybridized American, or do these
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elements find mediation within the other cultures that consume
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them? Fabricating the Absolute Fake applies concepts of postmodern t
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theory – Baudrillard’s hyperreality and Eco’s “absolute fake,” among n
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others – to this globally mediated American pop culture in order to

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examine both the phenomenon itself and its appropriation in the h
Netherlands, as evidenced by such diverse cultural icons as the e

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Elvis-inspired crooner Lee Towers, the Moroccan-Dutch rapper Ali B,
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musical tributes to an assassinated politician, and the Dutch reality s
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soap opera scene. Fabricating the Absolute Fake is a fascinating
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exploration of how global cultures struggle to create their own u
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“America” within a post-9/11 media culture. e

F
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Jaap Kooijman is Associate Professor in Media & Culture and k
American Studies at the University of Amsterdam. e
“A brilliant, thoroughly enjoyable work of cultural critique, Fabricating the Absolute
Fake takes seemingly exhausted concepts like ‘Americanization’ and turns them on
their head. Refusing simple binaries between the fake and the authentic, or between
cultural imperialism and native resistance, Kooijman demonstrates just how flexible
the signifiers of Americanness can be when they circulate globally.”
Anna McCarthy, Cinema Studies, New York University
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“Most daring and persuasive is Kooijman’s ability to move between and connect the a
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most delicious pop and the most searing political events (9/11, the murder of Pim

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Fortuyn), never evading the seriousness of entertainment nor the spectacle of politics. o
A book that is a pleasure for what it conveys of its subject and for its intellectual rigor, o
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managing to be at once subtle and straightforward, complex and lucid.” jm Fabricating
Richard Dyer, Film Studies, King’s College London a
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“Fabricating the Absolute Fake shows that pop culture is more the absolute Fake
than ephemeral entertainment. When looked at with Kooijman’s
cosmopolitan eye, pop culture can be seen as a continuing ritual
in celebration of national identities, America’s identity for sure, America in Contemporary Pop Culture
but also, intriguingly, a Dutch or even European sense of self.”
Rob Kroes, American Studies, University of Amsterdam
Jaap Kooijman
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AUP_fabricating_def.indd 1 26-05-2008 13:48:31
fabricating the absolute fake
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Fabricating

the Absolute Fake
America in Contemporary Pop Culture
Jaap Kooijman

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Cover photo: ‘Ice Cream Parlor’, 2004 © Erwin Olaf
Cover: Neon, design and communications, Sabina Mannel, Amsterdam
Lay-out: Prografi ci, Goes
ISBN 9789053564929
E-ISBN 9789048506125
NUR 757
© Jaap Kooijman / Amsterdam University Press, 2008
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this
book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without
the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments 7
Introduction
Fabricating the Absolute Fake 9
Chapter one
We Are the World: 21
America’s Dominance in Global Pop Culture
Chapter two
The Oprahifi cation of 9/11: 41
America as Imagined Community
Chapter three
The Desert of the Real: 67
America as Hyperreality
Chapter four
Americans We Never Were: 93
Dutch Pop Culture as Karaoke Americanism
Chapter fi ve
The Dutch Dream: 119
Americanization, Pop Culture, and National Identity
Conclusion
Let’s Make Things Better 141
Notes 147
Bibliography 163
Index 171
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Acknowledgments
In his stand-up comedy show Delirious (HBO, 1983), Eddie Murphy does an
amazing imitation of Stevie Wonder giving his acceptance speech after win-
ning a Grammy Award. Stevie just cannot “shut the f*ck up” and is still saying
“I want to thank…” when the credits of the televised Grammy Awards show
are rolling. As a Dutch teenager, back in 1983, I loved Eddie Murphy and Stevie
Wonder, not yet realizing that these American entertainers (and many others)
helped to make “America” an integral part of my own culture. Now twenty-fi ve
years later, as I write these acknowledgments, the image of Eddie Murphy “do-
ing Stevie at the Grammy’s” keeps popping up in my mind.
I want to thank the students who participated in the courses that I have
taught on this subject. Since 2001, I teach the MA courses America in Global
Media Culture and Images of America at the Media & Culture Department of
the University of Amsterdam. In 2003, I taught the graduate course America
in Media Abroad at the Cinema Studies Department of New York University.
In 2006, I taught the MA course American Pop Culture as Hyperreality at the
American Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam. Discussing the
subject with the students has been invaluable for the writing of this book.
I want to thank the organizers and the fellows of the two sessions of the
Salzburg Seminar in American Studies that I attended: The Politics of American
Popular Culture: Here, There, and Everywhere (October 2002) and American
Culture in the U.S. and Abroad (September 2005). I want to thank Marty Gecek,
Tilly de Groot, and the American Embassy in the Hague, the Netherlands, for
making my participation possible. I want to thank Linda Berg-Cross, Jude
Davies, Bart Eeckhout, Milena Katsarska, Carol Smith, and Reinhold Wagn-
leitner for continuing our discussions at other occasions, including the confer-
ences of the European Association for American Studies.
I want to thank Kate Delaney and Ruud Janssens for commenting on
parts of the manuscript that were published before in different form: “Bombs
Bursting in Air: The Gulf War, 9/11, and the Super Bowl Performances of ‘The
Star-Spangled Banner’ by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey,” in Post-Cold
War Europe, Post-Cold War America (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2004),
edited by Ruud Janssens and Rob Kroes, and “Let’s Make Things Better: Hyper-
Americanness in Dutch Pop Culture,” in Over (T)here: Transatlantic Essays in
Honor of Rob Kroes (Amsterdam, VU University Press, 2005), edited by Kate
Delaney and Ruud Janssens.
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I want to thank my colleagues at the Amsterdam School for Cultural
Analysis, the Media & Culture Department, and the American Studies Depart-
ment of the University of Amsterdam for the inspiring intellectual environ-
ment. I want to thank Eloe Kingma for helping me to make research projects
possible. I want to thank the members of The 9/11 Effect research group of the
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis and the Institute for Culture and His-
tory, and in particular my fellow initiators Marieke de Goede, Joyce Goggin,
and Margriet Schavemaker. I want to thank Joke Hermes, Jeroen de Kloet, Tarja
Laine, Ruth Oldenziel, Maarten Reesink, Marja Roholl, and Jan Teurlings for
commenting on parts of the manuscript. I want to thank Sudeep Dasgupta and
Wanda Strauven for their feedback at crucial moments. I want to thank José
van Dijck, Richard Dyer, Rob Kroes, Giselinde Kuipers, Anna McCarthy, and
the anonymous reviewers for reading the entire manuscript.
I want to thank Thomas Elsaesser for letting me imitate his concept of
karaoke Americanism and Chris Keulemans for letting me appropriate his con-
cept of “the American I never was.” I want to thank Erwin Olaf and his team
for granting me permission to use the “Ice Cream Parlor” photograph on the
book’s cover. I want to thank Jeroen Sondervan, Christine Waslander, and the
staff of Amsterdam University Press for turning the manuscript into a book. I
want to thank Anniek Meinders for initiating this book project.
I want to thank some of my friends who actively kept me from writing,
either in Amsterdam, Berlin, New York, or Minneapolis: Christopher Clark,
Rob van Duijn, José Freire, Daniel Gerdes and Tesseltje de Lange, Richard Gon-
lag, Esther van der Hoeven, Theresa Kimm, Kenneth McRooy, Laura Minder-
houd, Timon Moll, Donato Montanari, Francine Parling and John Stueland,
Gus Reuchlin and Katinka Schreuder, Nelly Voorhuis and Sara van der Heide,
my fellow players of the Amsterdam Tigers basketball team, and my fellow
deejays of the Re-Disco-Very crew. I want to thank my (extended) family: my
parents Aat Kooijman and Sonja Langeveld, my sister Annelies Kooijman, and
my best friends Laura Copier and Maarten Vervaat.
I want to thank Stevie, Michael, Diana, Tina, Bruce, Ray, and all the other
stars of USA for Africa for introducing me to “America” – and Eddie Murphy
for making fun of them.
Jaap Kooijman
Amsterdam, June 2008
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Introduction
Fabricating
the Absolute Fake
In 2006, Hasted Hunt Gallery in New York City hosted the exhibition R ain
(2004), a series of six photographs by the Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf.
Ken J ohnson, art critic of The New York T imes, described the photographs as
“mysterious and touching,” suggesting that the pictures present “scenes that
Norman R ockwell’s mordantly depressed cousin might have painted.” Yet,
Johnson singled out Olaf’s photograph of a young Boy Scout with his dog
in a 1950s ice cream parlor (which is also featured on the cover of this book)
as an example in which “psychological resonance is sacrifi ced for the cheaper
rewards of satiric faux-Rockwellism,” adding that, if the photographer “intends
a social or political commentary on American culture, it is unclear what he is
trying to say.”1 In several interviews, Erwin O laf has explained that he made the
Rain series in response to the terrorist attacks of September 1 1, 2001. With his
photographs, Olaf wants to return to an innocent pre-9/ 11 America, thereby
making a political statement recognizing the importance of America as a sym-
bol of the f reedom of expression.2 That the Dutch photographer chose to evoke
the style of Norman R ockwell is fi tting, as the painter is best known for his
nostalgic and romanticized pictures of American everyday life, many of them
published as covers of The Saturday Evening P ost, and often has been recog-
nized as “the most popular American artist of the twentieth century.”3 More-
over, Rockwell’s depictions of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms
in 1943, including the freedom of expression, have become iconic representa-
tions of American idealism.
What strikes me in the ice cream parlor photograph is not only the return
to an innocent America, but also its artifi ciality or fakeness, which Ken J ohnson
aptly identifi ed as “faux-Rockwellism,” although, unlike Johnson, I would not
call it “satiric” but rather a form of p astiche.4 Erwin O laf “borrows” from Nor-
man R ockwell by photographing in the same realist style as R ockwell’s paint-
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