When rich stockbrokers in London and Paris proudly retain their working-class accents, when audiences show up at La Scala in track suits and sneakers, when South Africans and Thais complain that the police don’t read suspects their rights as they do on Starsky & Hutch reruns, when anti-government protesters in Cairo sing “We Shall Overcome” in Egyptian accents—all these raspberries in the face of social and legal authority have a distinctly American tone, no matter where they take place.
