As American culture spreads around the world, American emblems, from Marlboro Country ads to McDonald's franchises, tend to be found more places. They testify to Americanization while at the same time providing the targets for protest and resistance against Americanization. Many are the explanations of the worldwide dissemination of American mass culture. There are those who see it as a case of cultural imperialism, as a consequence of America's worldwide projection of political, economic, and military power. Others, broadly within the same critical frame of mind, see it as a tool rather than a consequence of this imperial expansion. Behind the globalization of American culture they see an orchestrating hand, whetting foreign appetites for the pleasures of a culture of consumption. Undeniably, though, part of the explanation of the worldwide appeal of American mass culture will have to be sought in its intrinsic qualities, in its blend of democratic and commercial vigor. In individual cases the particular mix of these two elements may differ. At one extreme the commercial component may be well-nigh absent, as in the worldwide dissemination of jazz and blues music. At the other extreme the commercial rationale may be the central carrying force, as in American advertisements. While trying to make a sales pitch for particular products, advertising envelops these in cultural messages that draw on repertoires of American myths and symbols that find recognition across the globe.

In a series of posters made by a Dutch advertising agency solely for the Dutch market, a particular brand of cigarette produced by a large Anglo-American tobacco company is being promoted. The posters combine visual and linguistic messages without apparent coherence, each a disjoint marker of larger semiotic repertoires. The only direct reference to the product being advertised is the picture of a packet of cigarettes, its flip-top open, with two cigarettes protruding as if offered to the viewer. Otherwise, there are no signs of a hard sell in the classic manner, no references to taste, to tar content, or other qualities of the product. The jumble of other messages on the poster all serve to illustrate its central slogan: ''There are no borders.'' Remarkably, although the market addressed is Dutch, the slogan is in English, as if to illustrate its message of internationalism. That message, apparently, is the subtext of the entire poster. It is meant to evoke a world culture of leisure and pleasure, mentioning the names of places and hotels where the jet set congregates, and graphically showing the sensual pleasures they indulge in.

Yet this is only one way to read the slogan. It does evoke a global culture of consumption, assembling its attractions for the creation of an image attached to this particular brand of cigarette. A second way to read the message is in terms of the echoes it contains of more narrowly American dreams and images. In spite of the relative absence of patently American markers that, for example, characterize the worldwide advertising campaign for Marlboro cigarettes, the Stuyvesant posters do evoke repertoires of American images, known the world over, where ''America,'' and more particularly the American West, symbolizes a world without borders. The established imagery of America as open space, a land that knows no limits, sets no constraints, allowing all individuals to break free and be the agents of their own destinies, has a venerable pedigree as an ingredient for the construction of commercial images.

Some of the oldest traceable examples go back to the early 1860s. Two tobacco brands, the Washoe brand and a brand called ''Westward Ho,'' already used images of the West, in addition to more general American imagery, embodied in representations of the Goddess Columbia. We see vast stretches of open country, a pot of gold brimming over, an American eagle, a bare-breasted Columbia, loosely enveloped in an American flag, galloping forth on elk-back. Westward Ho, indeed. This is not Europa being abducted by Jupiter; this is a modern mythology of Columbia riding her American elk. At the time, clearly, an abundance of mythical markers was needed to tie Virginia tobacco to the beckoning call of the West. Today we no longer need such explicit reference to trigger our store of images concerning America as a dream and a fantasy. A simple slogan, ''There are no borders,'' is all it takes. It is no longer the cryptic message it may seem at first glance. We know the code and have learned how to crack it. . . .

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