Has Western popular culture become thoroughly Americanized?
Evaluate the arguments in the secondary literature on popular culture for and against the Americanness of contemporary popular culture, and devise criteria that might reasonably be used to arrive at an empirical judgment on this issue. Choose four appropriate and important works from different genres (literature, film, television, and music) that were created and produced outside the United States, and identify the elements in those works that are the most American, the most non-American, and the most universal in character. On the basis of these case studies, build an argument that Western popular culture outside the United States is one of the following: (a) primarily American in nature; (b) primarily British, European, or multicultural in nature; or (c) universal in nature.