__Martha Bayles, a professor of humanities at Boston College, speaks to chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brow about her new book, 鈥淭hrough a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America鈥檚 Image Abroad.鈥漘_
According to Martha Bayles, a professor of humanities at Boston College, public diplomacy has disappeared. Her "new book": is 鈥淭hrough a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America鈥檚 Image Abroad.鈥�
Bayles defines public diplomacy as 鈥渁ny effort by a government to sway opinion or cultivate good will among a foreign public.鈥� She says that diplomatic efforts were much more active before the end of the Cold War.
鈥淒uring the Cold War, the government sponsored jazz tours and jazz broadcasts on (Voice of America),鈥� Bayles told chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown.
But at the end of the Cold War, something shifted.
鈥淚t was more or less decided that we didn鈥檛 need (public diplomacy) anymore.鈥�
American popular culture spread to places it hadn鈥檛 been before, including countries where the Soviet 鈥渋ron curtain鈥� had just lifted.
鈥淧opular culture is a commercial undertaking and it tends to go for the lowest common denominator. And since the media have been deregulated and with new technology, what happens is the lowest common denominator takes the form of, as any American can tell you, a lot of graphic sex, a lot of explicit violence, always trying to outdo the last generation of media.鈥�
It鈥檚 those cultural exports that Bayles believes have affected America鈥檚 image abroad. For example, the music the world hears isn鈥檛 having the same effect across the oceans as the jazz tours did during the Cold War or that of rock music at the end of the war.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think American popular music has the same cache that it used to have and its partially because we cranked up the sexual heat so much that it turns a lot of people off.鈥�