The American Dream Is Best Export U.S. Has

Is Bill Cosby a one-man answer to the U.S. trade deficit? That’s an interesting, if half-serious, question that emerges from a Forbes magazine cover article this week on high-income entertainers.

Forbes reports that Cosby will make $57 million this year--leading such other box office favorites as Sylvester Stallone, $21 million; Madonna, $26 million; Eddie Murphy, $27 million, and others. But within five years, as “The Cosby Show” gets into widespread syndication, not only will the cigar-smoking comedian’s personal income rise dramatically but the foreign exchange earnings of the United States might grow by $100 million due to foreign syndication fees for his show.

Entertainment is already a major export. Films, TV shows, video recordings and musical records and tapes produce a $4.9-billion trade surplus--second only to Boeing jet planes as an export earner. And entertainment is on the verge of great growth as the television systems in developing countries become bigger markets for American programming.

Yes, we have a trade deficit in the hardware of entertainment--around $2.6 billion worth of TV sets and VCRs and such, that are listed under manufactured goods. But we have a growing surplus of twice that amount in the software--the work of Cosby and Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson and movie producer/director (“E.T.,” “Back to the Future”) Steven Spielberg that is listed on the service industries side of the Commerce Department’s ledger.

Exporting Culture

America has led as image-maker to the world for nearly a century, of course. When Charlie Chaplin became the world’s beloved Little Tramp, he did so from Hollywood. The American cowboy, from William S. Hart to John Wayne, rode movie screens from Buenos Aires to Bangkok, and was followed on the world’s televisions by “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza”--and “Star Trek.” It is said that at every hour in the day, “I Love Lucy” is on a television screen somewhere in the world.

What’s our competitive advantage? Other countries make movies and TV programs, after all. Brazil, in fact, might be the volume leader in television productions. India makes more films than any other country. And the films and videos, actors and comedians of other countries are at least comparable to the American variety. So why does the U.S. product sell more widely than any other?

The answer is American culture. The audience wants to see the American way of life, although some critics don’t understand what that means. A French Minister of Culture, named Jack Lang, criticized the United States a few years ago for exporting the TV show “Dallas,” and suggested--strangely, snobbily--that materialism was what American culture was all about.

But ordinary people the world over don’t see materialism. They see abundance--as in people in England who recall noticing that whenever Lucy opened her refrigerator, the shelves were full. As “The Cosby Show” goes into syndication, chances are the overseas audiences will be as fascinated by Clair and Cliff Huxtable’s Brooklyn, N.Y., home and furnishings as with each episode’s drama of the parents and the kids.

A Powerful Message

And they see the struggle of the individual--whether it’s for achievement as in Mary Tyler Moore’s TV producer or for justice with Clint Eastwood’s lawman or for power as in Al Pacino’s brooding “Godfather” and brutal “Scarface.”

For viewers the world over, America is the place where the individual has a chance to make a better life. And that’s a very powerful message for people in other countries, many of them newly coping with the social changes of this “century of the common man,” as the late U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace once called the 20th Century. What the world sees in American entertainment, says one producer, is political and economic freedom.

Can it be so easy to win export markets--selling stories based on what comes naturally to Americans? Not really. It’s no accident that the United States has led the world during most of the years that American entertainment has built up its global appeal. And it’s also true that the United States must continue to lead if its culture is to hold its appeal for the world’s people.

That means not only military leadership but the kind that fires the world’s imagination--leading the world in the exploration of space, for example. Nobody holds markets by default, but if America can keep its culture vibrant, it needn’t fear losing its audience for a long time.