American culture
Wow Thunderbirds is British! Fancy that - and thanks to those who pointed it out. Our gain is America's loss. I seem to remember an episode at Heathrow airport, come to think of it, which would never have been made by an American company. Don't tell me now that the Clangers were American... Meanwhile,
On another subject, and without wanting to get into the whole anti-Americanism thing again, I think David Wearing raises an important point, and I agree, of course, that opposition to US policy is not anti-American. Anti-Americanism is something visceral and incapable of being altered by the facts - an example was the suggestion I read somewhere (it is in the book Why People Hate America) that American culture was to be compared to HIV! Of course, the person making this bright and sensitive suggestion lived in Los Angeles and doubtless enjoyed the beach...
If Barack Obama prospers in Pennsylvania - gets to within a few percentage points of Hillary Clinton - then the argument the Clinton campaign is making about his ultimate unelectability surely goes up in smoke. He has a few days to put the
Hope my Thunderbirds clanger (as it were) doesnβt reach the ears of Gordon Brown this week: I see he has hit a with the candidates travelling to see him, rather than Mr Brown having to make humiliating journeys to small towns (whoops) in Pennsylvania. Quite a coup for the new British Ambassador to Washington, Nigel Sheinwald, to have organised. No audience with the Pope though...
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Maybe you can be forgiven this 'clanger' when you consider that Lady Penelope and her butler, Parker, were stereotypes of how outsiders view the British, but with a grain of truth of how Brits would like to live. I think also of 'Higgins' in that wonderful example of American TV 'Magnum'. If this is 'American cultural imperialism', then 'bring it on' - it is certainly better than a lot of shows now.
But I guess the show was typically '70s Britain ' in another way - in its struggle to turn a profit. The 'puppets' were actually expensive near-life-size marionettes with quite complex electronics inside. This made the very popular show very expensive.
So despite the huge success of the show, I don't think Gerry Anderson made a great deal of money, as after a couple of series they had to 'cut their losses' and the show pulled.
So at least it never to got to reach that stateside milestone of 'jumping the shark...'
Is the Gordon Brown visit to the states aimed at drumming up some positive headlines at home? It can't really fulfill any usefull aim apart from a photo op. It is also a risky strategy for Brown. As much as president Sarkozy's visit to London gave him a boost at home after being in the political doldrums he would be best to remember Jacques Chirac made a grand state visit to London in 1996 which left him open to the charge of swaning around the globe when there was a crisis at home. His party lost it's majority in the following year's election.
Somehow I don't think photos of the prime minister with Billary, Obama and McCain will play too well to voters nervous about the economy.
Oh, for shame. I thought you knew Thunderbirds was British, and were making a subtle point about how British shows had to take on an American veneer to be successful - hence, the cultural imperialism. I was waiting for you to put all those gotcha commenters in their place.
But it turns out you just didn't know.
Re Thunderbirds
Hang on a second ... Thunderbirds may indeed have been British, but to call them American was actually not really unreasonable. After all, the Tracey clan all spoke with American accents and Tracey Island was a tropical paradise set, presumably, somewhere in the Pacific. Only Lady Penelope, Parker and FAB1 were self-evidently British.
Oh, and the recent film remake was undoubtedly American!
So, don't beat yourself up too much about the error. It's far from a clanger.
Anti-Americanism goes back to the time of the American Revolution. American culture, government, society, and at its root its basic outlook on life is the anti-thesis of Europe's, a rejection of everything Europe is and stands for. At the time of the American Revolution less than 2 1/2 centuries ago, America was a remote backwater of isolated villages, dismissed as a flash in the pan, a sure to be shortly extinct or at least failed society. In less than 200 years, you had to put almost all of Europe together to equal it in size of economy alone. But in all other meaningful ways, America dwarfs all of Europe and is unprecendented in the history of the world. So unprecedented, that ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's program "America, Age of Empire fumbled for an understandable term which could describe it, a precedent to compare it to...and failed miserably. The gap continues to widen. America's short term problems of the moment are insignificant compared to those it faced in prior eras and it will survive them and continue to prosper again in a time when the rest of the world is very troubled. In the 20th century, America came out of its isolation and loaned a helping hand to all of those desperately in need of it and willing to accept help. That hand has been spit on, slapped, and rebuffed to the point where many Americans are ready to tell the world to go solve its own problems from now on. Much of the world has literally bit the hand that fed it.
Global warming, trade policy, the Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, the war against terror are only the areas of conflict between the US and Europe most obvious. That the universal embrace of American pop culture, what has to be the most superficial aspect of American society can be called "cultural imperialism" is in itself a full confession of the intense jealousy and rage Europe in particular feels towards American success. It brushes aside the real meaning of the word imperialism which are the imperial empires Europeans imposed on those around the world for centuries. The sun never set on Britain's hundreds of millions of slaves whose lives were dedicated to making the British aristocricy and monarchy rich. Left to its own devices, deluded into thinking it actually gained any measure of succes by its own efforts in the last 60 years, Europe's Titanic has hit the iceberg of reality and is sinking to the bottom. That the bow is pointed skyward as it sinks is only one more final delusion that it isn't going down.
How fortunate that Mr. Brown doesn't have to visit the little people to win office but can remain the prime minister of an entire country by staying in his own local constituency to be re-elected and then annointed by his party's elites. The last American candidate who made that mistake (in the context of American politics) was Governor Dewey whose campaign never left the confines of Washington DC. He of course lost to Truman in a surprising upset in 1948. Truman had made his "whistlestop" campaign across the US talking to local people about their concerns everywhere and who can forget the famous photo of Truman holding up a newspaper printed pre-maturely on the day after election day with bold headlines reading "Dewey Wins."
Europe does not like seeing America use its raw power to defend itself. It doesn not like seeing the fruits of America's technological achievements, its cultural innovations, its perpetual inventiveness and renewal, it vast economic wealth, in short its meteoric rise to unprecedented success. That is only a reminder of Europe's own perpetual shortcomings. Its own recent short term gains only the product of American policy and sacrifice during the cold war which is over now. Europe faced with the unavoidable prospect of decline into obscurity and irrelevance can squawk all it likes. Few on this side of the pond pay it much heed anymore, its vitriolic rantings falling on deaf ears, its vicissitudes of attitude between choleric anger and supplication laughable, pathetic, and like so much of Europe today utterly impotent to influence American policy.
I flew on a Boeing 757 three weeks ago which was about 2/3 empty. It can carry close to 200 passengers. What will Europe say about energy efficiency when an A380 capable of holding 500 to 800 passengers flies 2/3 to 3/4 empty? What will they say then? Gotten any "Postcards for Mars" from the Beagle II lately? The Europeans were going to show NASA how it could be done...on the cheap. What a bunch of losers.
I do not remember the Thunderbirds, but I put it down to playing outside too much. I do, however, remember Speed Racer and that was delightfully Manga-esque. David calls her Billary but I think Shrillary is closer to the mark.
a propos of not a lot really, but as your blog has veered into cultural differences ...
Is anyone able, please, to explain whether the woord "sophomore" carries any meaning that is not conveyed by the adjective "second". I do of course understand that one does not say that in the Democrat "race" Hillary is presently sophomre.
Talking of animation...
On Saturday I took my 4 year old to see Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! - I'm sorry but that Kangaroo IS Senator Clinton, if you've seen the film you'll understand. I had a look on the web and I see that I'm not alone in this conclusion.
I think the above very long post was half right,although not expressed with much charity. So in the past century, America trumped Europe in certain material or technological elements, including GDP. But Americans, myself included, still look across 'the pond' for philosophy, art, literature and so forth. We love to import French theories, German philosophy, English logic and so forth. Our colleges are full of this stuff, and happily too. To say nothing of art and architecture. This love for things European is counter-balanced by a distaste for actual Europeans who are assumed to have a snobbish attitude towards the US. (Although I don't think we have gotten to thinking of the English, Irish, Welsh or Scottish as European yet.) But this distaste is also directed at the west coast and north east of the US by other states, so we shouldn't make too much of it.
It is a complicated story. Too much attention is placed on figuring out European attitudes towards the US, and not vice versa.
Reply to Mark's comment. What I hope most Europeans understand is Mark's view is not shared by most Americans I have met. To say that Europe did not suffer during the cold war is pretty ignorant. I think he gets mixed up with being Anti American and not supporting some of the American policy.
I would say the average European would not notice any different in living between the USA and most European states, both have their good and bad points, healthcare is not perfect on eitherside of the pond but after 6 years of living in the US I am thankful for the NHS (something I bitched about before I went to a country with the private healthcare). Both have poverty, both have rich both have those that get by. From my experience though both Europe and the USA are great full of great understanding people and I think on the whole we are all friends. But sometimes friends disagree with each other does not mean they dislike or hate them.
"I seem to remember an episode at Heathrow
Airport, come to think of it, which would never have been made by an American company."
To you Justin, and also to Robert Morgan (#4): I must say all this talk of "British and American shows, humer, suspense etc etc etc" is starting to get on my nerves. While there is no denying that their are monumental differences in especially humer in our respective entertainment industries, to suggest that not one element of one program (The Thunderbirds for example being discussed now) could be viewed in the same light in America as it is in another country is a bit far fetched I think Justin. Are you actually suggesting that "American" producers could not have possibly have the whits, sense of humer, educational skills, intuitiveness, insight into what people in other countries would want to see in an entertainment show-take your pick, to even be able to think of creating a show which might be seen, say humerous for the same reasons that it is in America in the UK? Are you suggesting that this "chasm" brings to light that not one person in the UK may enjoy the same thing about a tellevision program as an American and for the same reasons? Because if you are, well that is just very sad indeed. I realise there are obvius and huge differences between our entertainment and that of other countries,but entertainment is supposed to be one of those few things in life that is truely universal (with, perhaps countries swopping ideas from others on how to be more humerous, grip their audience more, etc) and this seems to prove that it truely is not. I dearly hope I'm rong, though, as I especially enjoy those "American" shows/movies that mix in aspects from other countries's entertainment processes into ours (I.E. Friends, Frasier, etc). O and if people abroad don't like our entertainment (my conclusion being drawn from the overwelming amount of Britains calling our entertainment "cultural imperialism" in this blog alone) All they have to do is say so-I'm sure our studios would understand and respect their wishes-after all this isn't foreign policy!!
I agree with your stance on antie-Americanism hole-heartidly, as I am one who, to put it mildly, strongly disagrees with many of our current domestic and foreign policies!!! However, I think that the way in which some foreigners fashon their disagreement with our policies is insensitive, to say the least! For example Steeven's post on the 'April 11 entry on the original "cultural chasm" between the US and UK was, I would say, anti-American in the sense that the discussion was on differences between US and UK TV programing, and he brought up "Mission impossible" as an example of US programming that more offten than not contained fictional, offten overblown, cinarios about the US having to overthrow an evil dictator in South America. I think his point would've been much more well recieved if he had said something to the affect of '"I know that these scinarios in this show are dellibritly over dramatised to get viewers and rateings, but nevertheless, they are far too shockingly similar to the US's foreign policy with regards to South America over the last half century, and perhaps it would do the American people some good to compare the fictional cinarios of the TV show with what has really happened in real life, and vote for a candidate who'll reverse, or end this mistreatment of South America and its people-because no one likes a war mongering bully!!!", instead of his, and I'm paraphraseing here-take a look at the quote to see what I mean, "The US has done X, Y, Z, and then some over the past 50 years or so, and perhaps if the American people had been smart enough to spot the connection between life and fiction in the show '"Mission Impossible" program, they would've seen the error of their ways, and perhaps voted to end it. But no, not in Justin Web's America!! Where the biggest problem America faces is apparently their "children's programming"!!". Tone and fairness are everything!! Both the Republican party in this country, and foreigners need to realise this, if they hope to come to a common consensis with others to achieve a common goal!! Criticize to your hearts' content!!! But don't be unfairly rude!
I must say, I found myself somewhat torn to learn of all three presidential candidates takeing time off of campaigning for the right before a huge, crutial primareey that could make or break Hillary Clinton's career, to meet with Gordan Brown. I mean on the one hand, its great that he holds that much sway here, and I hope very dearly that this will surve to help eliminate the view/perception of the UK being the US's pootle!!!! But on the other hand, the candidates are, at the end of the day, this may sound selfish, but regardless, running for the wants and needs of the American people and not the British!! Of course our international reputation is, in my opinion at least, second only to the health of our economy!!!! And once someone wins the presidency, the first thing I think they should do is completely irrase the notion that any nation-especially the UK is subserviant to us!!!! But they are first answerable to the American people, and I guess I just feel that the people of the nation of which someone wishes to lead should take president over the people of another. I would feel this exact same way if whomsoever wins the presidency next year decided to meet with the prime ministerial candidates in the UK when they were in the throws of a general election, and were campaigning feverishly to garontee the primeirship, so I would urge people not to take this personally!!!!
After England took over Scotland and Ireland, it tried to take over the world. Killing indigenous and native peoples in more than a dozen countries doesn't constitute imperialism? Taking over lands and forcing English values upon the world was the goal for more than 200 years. The US is the oldest living democracy, and still offers the true freedom and opportunity that it always did. There are no classes, no royalty, no nobility, and no confining factors to individual success in the US.
Europeans are jealous over the rewards that the US has gained. Honest, hard work is the way of the American people. Without any bonus payments and handouts from the government, American people have earned everything they have the hard way. If you want a free ride - the US is not for you.
And what's wrong with enjoying the beach? The beaches were here long before the America nation and all its acculumated moral turpitude was. America didn't create beaches and mountains and streams, nature did and it's only 'natural' to enjoy them. Linking beaches to alleged "anti-Americanism" is as senseless as linking it to HIV. Both are visceral reactions that avoid coming to grips with the cold political realities of America's destructiveness at home and especially abroad and doing something to change it. Belaboring the obvious in reiterating that opposition to America's destructiveness is not something vaguely called "anti-Americanism" may be helpful for anyone who's never given it any thought; but the point, of course, is to do something about it. The beaches, at least some of them, may survive America's destructiveness, if they're not swamped by the effects of global warming that the U.S. has been deliberately and pig-headedly dragging its feet on. Many other species and parts of the American natural landscape may not. Despite much publicity over enviornmental concerns, the enviornment is a very mixed record that leaves alot to be desired; and hasn't featured much in the current elections as economic imperatives always take first place in America. In a rare moment of truth, Obama alluded to the destuctive effects of those economic imperatives on a "bitter working class", but then cravenly retreated in the face of domestic "anti-American" style rebukes. But the worst wholesale destructiveness of America is to be found, of course outside our borders, where American hegemonists have been raining down bombs on the heads of innocents for decades. People in the Middle East and Central America and Southeast Asia and many, many others don't need to read a book on Why People Hate America. Unfortunately, anti-anti-Americanism is "something visceral and incapable of being altered by the facts."
" `anti-Americanism`. It implies racism "
I'm "a typical American".
Therefore, could someone please 'splain this logic to my poor sapness?
The posting of "Mark" about the history of anti-Americanism was brilliant. If only more people read history and understood the source of their negativity and that it is not a new phenomenon at all. Same with the history of American elections which today, despite the sniping, are a whole lot "cleaner" than past campaigns. Read about the election campaigns of Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln, et. al--would they have been electable today if they employed the same "tactics" and mudslinging of the 19th century? Imagine the CNN or FOX News talking heads if they had to "analyze" those campaigns!
The βunelectabilityβ argument has already been dismantled by Obama, he has won more states (30-14), has an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, leading in the popular voter, and has consistently out raised and outspent the Clinton campβ(he has raised nearly 240 million dollars from 1.4 million donors.)
Clinton will eek out a victory in Pennsylvania (5-8pts) and Obama will sweep Indiana and North Carolinaβthe superdelegates will flock to Obama forcing Clinton out of the race by June 4th
Ian #10
Most Americans do not speak frankly to most Europeans when it comes to politics for fear of offending them or out of sheer ignorance of history. I have neither such inhibitions nor such limitations. I've spent about 95% of my life living in the US and the rest in Europe so I know something about Europe first hand and I know what Americans say to each other when they are out of European earshot.
The facts are plain. Europe was totally shattered after WWII. The Marshall Plan was a US government directly financed emergency measure but was not nearly sufficient to rebuild Europe. The risk was that Western Europe would fall prey to becoming part of the Soviet Union's slave empire just the way most of it had become captive of Hitler's slave empire during WWII. (Britain lost WWII even far more decisively than the way it lost WWI in what was a universally exhausting standoff.) America's approach to rebuilding Europe effectively was therefore threefold; tax incentives for large American corporations to invest in Western Europe creating jobs and wealth, giving very favorable one way import duty advantages to Western European nations to sell their products in the US with little or no duty while allowing them to protect their own economies with high import tax barriers, and paying for the overwhelming majority of the cost in both equipment and manpower to defend Western Europe against the threat of Soviet invasion. NATO was really an American organization without which it would be as impotent as Europe even in a small local conflict like Kosovo. It was only by the sheerest of luck that Greece and Austria were not taken into the Soviet Empire at the start of the Cold War. A strong US dollar also gave Americans incentives to buy European goods at home and travel to Europe to spend their dollars there directly. Even so, there were large Communist parties in Western Europe who would have been just as happy to be allied with the USSR.
After the Cold war was over but BEFORE the invasion of Iraq, Gerhard Schroeder cynically whipped up anti-American sentiment in Germany to rescue his failing political campaign and it caught on like wild fire. Jacques Chirac seeing how well it worked for Schroeder did the same in France. These politicians exploited the seething rage against America that was always there. Had the US not spent trillions of dollars on Western Europe's defense, it could easily have afforded its own vast social safety network including national health insurance. Even so, there are no throngs of millions of poor people dying in the US because they don't get medical care for lack of insurance or money, the system of equitable payment is broken, not the actual delivery of medical care and even that too will eventually be fixed.
Is life in America different from that in Europe? If it isn't, how do you explain that when Europeans come to live in the US, most of them don't ever want to go back except for an occasional vist to their families or vacation? You could write a thousand books about the differences and barely scratch the surface. Eastern Europeans know far better than Western Europeans what the differences and recent history are about, they were the ones who suffered in living memory under Soviet tyranny and they also know that it wasn't Pope Paul II but the vast US military which ended the USSR without which they'd still all be slaves to it.
The US is at war with Western Europe in every way except direct military conflict. It is largely being waged as an economic war and the outcome is not in doubt. The weak US dollar which will get far weaker and the coming US recession are very effective weapons. Ironically, Europe's refusal to share the burden of the war in Iraq equitably helped create them. Blunting their effect is beyond the US government's control even if it wanted to. The near future looks a little tough for Americans but they are used to it, they've seen and survived far worse before. Byt it looks ominious for Europe and I think for them, it is part of the process of their repositioning towards societies whose relative strength, standards of living, and importance will finally be commensurate with their efficiency in economic competition with the rest of the world, that is to say not very high. The EU will not save it.
Mark's comment is a perfect example of the attitudes that stimulate anti-Americanism. It contains the underlying beliefs that (1) America is different, (2) America is better, (3) Anyone who doesn't think so is jealous. Does it not occur to you that not everyone, particularly the 95% of the world's population who don't live in your country, might not be willing to subscribe to that belief? You are so focussed on yourselves that you seem to forget how big the world is beyond your borders.
Most British people are pretty open and critical of their country's imperial history, as are other Europeans. Americans by contrast (of course not all, but it is a strong cultural trend) are unable to see their country and its actions as anything other than benign. (Even when you make mistakes they must have been made with good intentions.) This collective self-delusion, which is built into your national self-identity and reinforced by your mass media, blinds you to your own very real flaws and makes you incapable of seeing anything from others' (and especially your victims') point of view. Do you not think that there might be legitimate grievances among, say, Nicaraguans, Vietnamese or Iraqis for not being too keen on America, which aren't based purely on jealousy?
What you also forget is that there is a structured one-way flow of information between the US and the rest of the world. We grow up watching your films and television and listening to your music, and you see almost nothing of ours. This means that we actually know more about you than you think and certainly more than you know about us. If American culture opened up to hearing other people's opinions on their own terms they might be able to win back some legitimacy in world public opinion, but then the whole edifice of American cultural superiority would come tumbling down.
Just a comment on first Mark and Brian2's posts. All points taken but I'm wondering - given the repeated assertions we hear over on this side of the pond about 'American' diversity (I'm assuming of course that when you say American you really mean US citizens and are automatically - indeed unthinkingly - excluding Canada and Mexico from your generalisations?) - how useful it is to think of 'European' attitudes at all? Certainly my frequent travels all over mainland Europe suggest attitudes to the USA are incredibly diverse and not at all accurately reflected by the popular press. Surely we should ALL start by questioning the stereotypes?
Oh yes, surely 'Thunderbirds' is a British take on US culture? It certainly wasn't inspired by the British input to the space race...
I find people like Mark quite scary in this day and age. The view that Europeans are jealous is stupid. Ian has it spot on. I have lived in the USA for a number of years before coming home (healthcare reasons) and I think the USA is a great country full of great people, but it is no different than us. To also say there are no class problems is wrong. Many people are based on how much they earn, or do not in everyday life. Inner city kids are behind from the start, many can never afford college, many have poor schools with great teachers but lack of money within the school means their education is not the best. I think the main problem with these problems is that they are ignored or the poor are labeled lazy which is often not true atall. You can have a great life if you work hard, study in the US you just need that bit of luck from the start. The cost of education has rocketed over the past few years and many people simply cannot afford this.
Reply to Mary, I agree with you up to a point, thunderbirds is watched in the states when i lived there a number of friends mentioned it as well as Dr Who. But one thing that strikes me as odd is that very few British shows are on the US screens. Many are remade into American versions (which I normally enjoy) which leads me to assume that they do not think American people would enjoy something that is non american. I think this is more to do with humor differences though and many jokes in our comedies would not be understood in another country. But still, examples would be coupling and the office. Many of the gags are universal in those but both had been re made. You do not see this in drama shows but still not many of our shows are on US mainstream TV. Yet over here you can watch pretty much any US show. I think many Brits love US shows, 24, law and order are all great shows. I just think it is a shame that Americans are not able to watch our shows unless they pay extra for ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ america, or shows from other countries. Its a great way to learn about people. But saying all this the US movie and TV industry is very much bigger. But still, why not have some shows from overseas rather than always re-making them.
To M Condon, you are right, my country tried to impose its will on millions of people around the world, did many terrible things to other countries and many of those countries are paying the price for it. I am thankful that our school system such as it is as least teaches us about our wrongs, and our history so people can learn from it in the future. You say "no confining factors to individual success in the US" I beg to differ. As someone that taught inner city kids in the states for several years you are very wrong. Kids coming from poor backgrounds do not have the same chances in life as those coming from middle class or richer families. For a start the schools are very underfunded, i.e. naperville IL kids have everything and for the most part come from well off families, yet inner city chicago kids often come from poor families and the schools have what the teacher is able to buy from his.her wages. Without this start in life it is hard to get the education you need to go onto college, but even if you do it still can be hard for many because of the costs. Social backgrounds play a big part in who becomes a success in the US like most countries. I cannot pretend my country is much better either.
I see no jealousy here in Europe towards the USA. I personally after living in the US think its a wonderful country, my wife is American, and most people I have met have been so nice. But I do think that the US like Europe has its problems, healthcare is such a problem for millions of people over there, and education. Many Europeans want to move to the US for that American dream, and I am sure some do get jealous, but I just have never seen that. I find too many people get mixed up with Anti Americanism and disagreements with US policies. Not supporting a govenment it not the same as hating a country.