The only things that "every community in the world from Zanzibar to Hamburg recognizes in common" are American cultural artifacts--the jeans and the colas, the movies and the TV sitcoms, the music, and the rhetoric of freedom. That observation was made 65 years ago by Henry Luce in his essay "The American Century," but--to paraphrase President Reagan--Luce hadn't seen anything yet. We have lived through an astounding acceleration in the dissemination of American cultural values with profound implications for the rest of the world. As Plato is widely quoted as having said, "Those who tell the stories rule society."

Our storytellers--encapsulated in the one word Hollywood--make up a significant piece of America's "soft power." Through the media's projection of the American narrative, the world gets some pretty good insight into America's ideals. Most of the time, since World War II, we have reflected the rule of law, individual freedom, defense of human rights, and the just use of American power against fascism and communism. The American narrative, as portrayed, say, by Jimmy ("aw shucks") Stewart in the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life, enchanted the world.

The message from American pop culture has long been antiauthoritarian, challenging power in ways unthinkable in many countries. The hero, going up against the odds, projected a populist narrative that celebrated the common decencies against the wicked authorities or the excesses of capitalism. Millions who saw such films around the globe derived a sense of phantom citizenship in America, an appetite for the life that only liberty can bring.

The universality of the commercial appeal was due in part to Hollywood's munificent creative and marketing skills, but also fundamentally in the fact that we are such a richly heterogeneous society that our exports had been pretested at home. Hollywood supplies over 70 percent of the European film markets and 90 percent of those of the rest of the world, with the possible exception of India. To reach the younger populations under the age of 25, who constitute the bulk of the moviegoing audience, Hollywood has been offering more dumbed-down blockbusters based on action, violence, sex, and special effects like Jurassic Park. Such films travel more easily than movies with subtle dialogue or predominantly American references, like Forrest Gump. For similar reasons, comedy was structured to hinge on crude slapstick rather than situational wit and wordplay.

The underside of this commercial success is the cultural deficit of associating America with crime, vacuity, moral decay, promiscuity, and pornography--a trend that also worries American parents; Asian and Muslim worlds are already in revolt against it, but also against the libertarian and secular messages of American media. Our media project defiance and ridicule not just of illegitimate authority but of any authority at all--parents, teachers, and political leaders. Even in the West this elicits as much loathing as love. Abroad, it may make dictatorship more difficult, but it also makes democracy less attractive. These images have contributed to make Americanization a dirty word, with the American lifestyle and American capitalism widely viewed as an anarchic revolutionary force. It is perceived as trampling social order in the ruthless pursuit of profits, creating a new class system, based on money, combined with an uninhibited pursuit of pleasure and a disordered sense of priorities in which the needs of the less successful are neglected. What's more, America is increasingly seen as certain of its own righteousness, justifying the use of force to impose American views and values.