Across the Waves: How the United States and France Shaped the International Age of Radio

摘要

In Across the Waves, Derek W. Vaillant introduces to readers a fascinating scenario of international radio broadcasting between the United States and France from the 1920s to the 1970s. He explores the crucial roles international radio played in shaping the cultural imagination of each nation. Rejecting the conventional static understanding of the imbalanced power relations between the two countries, Vaillant argues that the French radio not only was able to resist U.S. cultural hegemony but also invented its own techno-aesthetics. Together, the U.S and French radio broadcasters contributed to "the accelerating pace of the transatlantic circulation of information, ideas, and cultural expression, and to the aesthetic embodiments of such material" (p.3).