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It wasn’t until mass culture really emerged

in the early 1900s — first movies, then radio

and comic books and TV and finally grown-up

advertising — that most Americans started

hearing identical stories about their country,

even if those stories didn’t include them.

An alignment settled in — a potent national

culture that was promptly upended by a 1960s

“counterculture” that had a different story to

tell and no intention of being silenced. Still,

many 20th-century textbook notions, however

outdated and broad-brush, remain the baseline

for how many talk about America.

But now, four decades after 24-hour cable

news made Walter Cronkite’s reassuring

and avuncular “That’s the way it is” a quaint

memory, the media landscape has cracked

apart. A fragmented society is bursting at

its seams. And as this week reveals, there’s a

free-for-all to determine which version of the

American story wins the day.

“What tales or myths about America do we

cling to in the face of social upheaval? I think

that’s what we’re struggling with here,” says

Shilpa Davé, a media studies scholar at the

University of Virginia who teaches about

representations of race and gender in media

and popular culture.

“Who gets to pursue these ideals? That’s what’s

in contention,” she says.

American mythologies are powerful and

persuasive — and comfortingly aspirational.

After all, the world’s largest economy became

that way in part by selling narratives about

itself back to its people across a dizzying array

of platforms.

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