My idea was that the war in Indochina hadn’t ended at the time of the ignominious U.S. withdrawal. They’d left a wooden horse standing at the gates, and when the Indochinese accepted the gift, the real warriors of America-the big corporations, the sports culture of basketball and baseball, and of course rock’n roll-came swinging out of its belly and overran the place. Now in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi too, America stood revealed as the real victor. Indochina became just another consumer-serf of (and supplier of cheap labour to) Americana International. Almost every young Indochinese person wanted to eat, dress, bop and profit in the good old American way: MTV, Nike, McWorld. Where had soldiers had failed, U.S. values-that is greenbacks set to music-had triumphed.
Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999
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