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The Great Escapism

Ever since Huck Finn took his friends down the Mississippi River on a raft, American men have created and consumed fantasies of setting out with their males friends for parts unknown, or of traveling in an all-male group to have adventures closer to home. The male-escape scenario is hard to spot emerging from any other country, but the US version seems to have universal appeal.

NEW YORK – Barack Obama, however mixed his accomplishments to date as US president, has sought to rebrand America and reclaim its former signature asset: its ability to embody universally admired values.  As popular culture is usually the way those values are transmitted, it is worth considering what it is about American cinema, music, and popular literature that makes them so compelling to many other parts of the world.

After all, much of what America once monopolized in Hollywood movies and other pop-culture exports is now being reproduced locally. Bollywood competes with California in terms of glamorous stars and big production numbers; Japan and South Korea mint their own pop singers and fashion trends.

But consider Entourage, the American TV show that centers on a rising male film star and his posse of dudes. Or a recent article in The New Yorker about two scruffy young chefs who have set out across the country to start the great adventure of running their own crazy restaurant, called Animal. Or Swingers, the 1996 worldwide hit movie about a twenty-something guy in Hollywood and his band of male friends who drag him to Las Vegas to mend his broken heart.

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