The Climate in Spain Mary E. Farrell
The November 17th Wednesday edition begins International news pages three and four with Bush and Rice, and world nervousness over "The consolidation of the 'hawks'.'" Rice is subject of a third-page bio, and Bush appears again in an editorial by a Spanish political analyst Pedro Schwartz, who fears the financing of the Iraqi war based on public debt in certain measure financed by Chinese and Japanese banks might eventually be converted into, not only lowering the price of the dollar, but into a worldwide disaster. Society brings notice of the NASA as well as the adaptation of a therapy initiated at the University of California by Ivar Lovaas. The Imaginary Planet Foundation is said to be: "one of the few centers in Europe that applies this method imported from the United States to better the social and pedagogical integration of autistic children." Unfortunately, this sort of news does not seem to seep out into the collections of impressions people have of the Americans.
But everyone seems to know that Renee Zellweger is as much of an old maid as her character Bridget Jones, and most people are familiar enough with Marilyn Monroe to appreciate the news that the not-exactly-next-door Brooklyn Museum of Art has prepared I wanna be loved by you, an exhibition of 200 photos of the many faces of Marilyn. This we find in a section called Live. Economy brings the information that laying hens that produce eggs all over the planet come from four basic pedigrees, all "raised by the US firm Hy-line" and that they are "very tranquil hens that have few casualties and that lay eggs with the best color and size." The last page brings us a heart-rending interview with Daniel Pearl's wife, widow of the New York reporter whose throat was slit by Islamic fundamentalists in 2002. Mariane Pearl speculates that perhaps that those who killed her husband wanted to deal a blow "to a symbol of American capitalism such as the Wall Street Journal" for which he worked.
As for our last Wednesday issue of La Vanguardia, we could say that nothing really significant is highlighted. We will briefly call attention to an ad for a Full Time MBA at ESADE Business School (in English in the original) which boasts of being 3rd in the Wall Street Journal ranking in September 2004, and 4th in the Business Week ranking in October 2004. We could mention again the diplomatic maneuvering of the Spanish Monarchs' visit to the Bushes for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner on their way to The Museum of Art in Seattle, which, according to Mariangel Alcazar, is the US government's way of implying that: "We don't have problems with the Spanish people, only with Zapatero's government, and what he said about the war." And to finish we note of the comics in Vivir, all three are American ones translated into Spanish. Might Fred Basset, Calvin and Hobbes, and Peanuts have any influence on the Spanish Weltanschauung? And do people know theirs is somehow American humor?
Given the 2004 presidential election, the front-section coverage on international politics is largely related to Bush and Kerry, yet throughout the newspapers and their supplements, there is ample coverage of American science and technology, discoveries and inventions. It seems not to be the press that reaches out to the general public. Rather, it is the television, with its special channels dedicated to news, sports and music, that has the greatest influence on the Spanish viewers and their opinions. And the prime-time television with American influence seems to be The Simpsons, sitcoms with their Spanish calques, and the crime series.
Besides the Spanish television talk shows with the false pundits looking for an at-hand scapegoat for general problems, the radio abounds in heavy-handed anti-American commentaries. This blaming technique is easier than providing hands-on solutions to internal Spanish issues. The Americans themselves do not help the situation, for they are constantly bent on self criticism, which the world does not read as a positive corrective measure, but as negative publicity. Films such as John Sayles Silver City, which criticizes Bush and the American government, as well as Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me are not understood in the light of an examination of conscience. Instead they are seen to be the portrait of a nation without nuances.
Of the two-hundred-nineteen questionnaires returned, surprisingly, in the section regarding any trace of American influence on the person's own life sixty-nine responded "absolutely none." And those who admitted to an influence, seven denounced it as an outright imposition. Others implied "that they want to change our traditional life style", and at times even an underlying rage could be detected. Only one person said she is master of accepting or rejecting influences of any sort. In other words, within the offer available, she could always refuse to eat sushi or a McDonald's meal.
Conclusion
Thus, knowing what is in the air, we must join the clouds as pedagogues in order to provide the shades within the "chiaroscuro, the bright-dark" interpretations that many students bring to American Studies. It seems, that as pedagogues, it is our commitment to our subject to examine and provide guidance for students to check into "the sweeping meanings that we add". From this study of the climate of notions and ideas that the Spanish, in general, seem to hold about the Americans, it is obvious that our approach to teaching should lean on (1) discourse and text analysis of the media to foment more rigorous thinking, (2) an emphasis on history, that of the country studied and that of the country studying within a world context, and (3) naturally, on the excitement and joy of delving into literature as Susan Sontag encourages us to do, criss-crossing excellencies in all possible cultures with the languages that the students can manage as well as others in translation.
In my own approach, I have compared Emily Dickinson with Vincent van Gogh, and Maxine Hong Kingston with Geroges Perec. A graduate student of mine has done an extraordinary piece of work comparing T. S. Eliot and the Catalan poet Salvador 's sources of inspiration in Dante, the Bible and Mediterranean mythology.
A reasonable syllabus, that is one that does not mean whole libraries read in record time, should thus include some of the traditional favorites laced with new itineraries of literature in English produced in America or by Americans. These, in turn, should be measured against what is and has been occurring in other places on the globe, and in this case, Spain. To illustrate how influences intertwine, we could finish with these words uttered by Huckleberry Finn regarding Tom Sawyer's exaggerated fancies: "He said if I warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking."
Mary E. Farrell is Associate Professor of American Literature at the University Jaume I, Castellon, Spain. She is the author of From Cha to Tea: A Study of the Influence of Tea on British Culture (2002).