TV Reviews : ‘Whole World’ Looks at Hollywood’s Impact

The burgeoning E! Entertainment Television network, not heretofore renowned for its searing insight into issues of values and ethics in culture, actually takes a probing look into the impact that the kind of Hollywood fluff it perpetuates has on a global level in the surprisingly savvy special “The Whole World Is Watching” (Sunday at 6 and 9 p.m.).

This excellent hourlong documentary, ably hosted by Ron Reagan, asks the pertinent question: “Viewers around the world think they know you and other Americans from our entertainment products. But is the image they’re receiving anything like the real you?” In other words, do they think we all wear black leather jackets, carry shotguns in the streets, speak with thick Austrian accents, own Lear jets and have sex with Sharon Stone?

Some of the above, perhaps, even if foreign filmgoers aren’t all that naive. “I think the world sees us really pretty much as we are,” says “Terminator” producer Gail Anne Hurd. “I mean, we’ve created a violent, consumeristic culture where the emphasis is on what you have and how you keep it. . . . “ (And they said that Capra-esque spirit was dead!)

Less cynically, ex-Fox chief Barry Diller posits that foreigners are inundated with enough American pop culture to get “kind of a blended coffee” that eventually adds up to some sort of balanced portrait.

Another apt Reagan question: “Why do people from far away seem so curious about us when we seem so indifferent toward them?” While our national reluctance to read subtitles pretty much sums up the uneven U.S. end of the exchange, journalist P.J. O’Rourke suggests for the rest of the world “a strong Robin Leach element. . . . They are amazed at how well we live.”

Elsewhere in the hour, sociologist Todd Gitlin thoughtfully weighs in on violent movies as “training in not caring too much about what the world is really like”; we see “a tale of two Arnolds”--Schwarzenegger and Palmer--shilling themselves in Japan; TV syndicators vie for a foothold in Eastern Europe; and curmudgeon O’Rourke counters the litany of French complaints about Euro-Disney destroying the neighborhood, saying: “If a plastic mouse can destroy your culture, what is your culture worth?”

All together: It’s a small world after all . . . and Mickeys Rourke and Mouse are among its kings.