What is the influence of American popular culture around the world? Today 85% of all “screen time” (the total number of minutes films are shown in theaters) worldwide is occupied by Hollywood movies. Audiences and consumers from Tokyo to Timbuktu are familiar with American television programs, fashion, music, and advertising. For hundreds of millions of people around the world, their understanding of the American people and America as a nation has been profoundly shaped by representations of the United States in American popular culture. Ironically, Americans are seldom aware of the influence of their popular culture worldwide until or unless they leave the U.S.

What happens when popular culture products which are designed and produced (in the first instance, at least) for one culture are circulated to many other, quite different cultures around the world? What are the cultural and social implications of the worldwide reach of U.S. popular culture? How do the meanings of popular culture products change when those products are experienced in different cultures? [Or, related to this, how might popular culture considerations prevail when an artifact from one cultural medium is 'adapted' to appeal to a much larger audience? See Neea Paatero's paper on Forrest Gump's Journey From a Mediocre Novel to a Six-Oscar Movie for an example.]

(see also an interview with Robert C. Allen in Americana: the Journal of American Popular Culture).