America and Its Culture

[hectorberlioz]

I'd like to fire up this debate if possible. I resent it when people say that America has no particular [good] culture.

Let me point out that:

1) It doesn't necessarily take 5,000 years to gain a "cultural flavor"...

2) The South & North, going back, were very different from eachother, and why? Not just because of the people's accents, but because of the culture and traditions that had grown up.

Americans DO care about Culture and Heritage, at least most of us. It's a sad thing that it DOES get trampled on, things like Thanksgiving and Christmas, by the super commercial overkill, but it is there.

I've become a Christmas critic myself in recent years, because of all the bruhaha about shopping on time etc...
Of course when you scorn the lady with a full shopping basket because she's doing exactly what you expect, how are you sure she doesn't really care about Christmas for the right reasons same as you? People might be anxious looking and disraught when you see them in town, and it's probably Traffic that made them look like that. But does that mean they don't care about Tradition, only about shopping? I would hesitate to think so. Just because people enter the store that's overdecorated DOES NOT mean that they are going in there for the overcommercialization.

I know for a fact that military families almost always have special pictures in glass casing, along with cherished memorabilia.

Exactly how up close do you have to get to check and see if everyone is practicing their culture?
You certainly can't judge America by the present apathy of most of the youth.

Now for our culturalisms:

Firstly religion; feared by foreigners who read the polls about religion in America, our brands of christianity have stricken fear into the hearts of many people who fear the evangelical at their doorstep. Billy Graham! A nice guy, for a long time he was a hardcore evangelical, he went to Russia and made friends with many of the Orthodox leaders there.

Holidays of course: and the most important one because it is indigenous to our country: Thanksgiving (which sadly seems to have gone the way of the Christmas as far as commercialization).

Sports: Basketball is the only truely All-American sport, and even though it still is only popular here, we do have a number of foreig players in the NBA.

Music: lets get past the Jazz people, fastforward to where Aaron Copland wrote the first truely American ballets: Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, Billy the Kid.

Movies: I don't really have to say much, except: Star Wars anyone?

Our Heritage should never really be in question, and while the british may consider George Washington a traitor (and he was, as far as they are concerned-we have our differences!), to us he is the leading Founding Father (though I like Madison the best).
Whatever their faults, and there are plenty; they established a country and it's democratic system which, with it's fair amount of problems, has worked.

Let's not forget the BAD culturalisms: we've had our share of nasty (and unique) criminals, horrid music in abundance (which the french are imitating), and sometimes terrible movies.

Sure your average Joe here isn't related to the Duke of Mantua, but neither were the peasants in an older England (it's true!). No disrespect, but it's mostly the aristocracies of the world that have cared about heritage most, mostly because they could afford to hang on to everything.


Let's Discuss!

[Lief Erikson]

I think that the broad ethnic diversity in our country and the general lack of strife in modern times due to that mix is a significant part of our modern culture and a great success of our nation.

The idea of Indians and cowboys, of being the hero and such I think also are part of our culture. The imagery of the West, and all that.

There also is a strong trend toward materialism in our country's culture. We're very wealthy and we want more wealth.

[Nurvingiel]

Great thread Hector. I live a mere two hours away and I have yet to spend a significant amount of time in your fair country - the only member of my family who hasn't. I hope to remedy this sad state of affairs this year.

Anyway, I think you guys have a great culture. We Canadians get the whole "you have no real culture" thing sometimes too, when people remember us long enough to make fun of us anyway.

I think the USA has a rich history starting with the First Nations people who live there, and the 300 years of the nation we know and love today.

About Christmas, you guys didn't exactly invent that, except for Coke's contribution of the red-suited Santa Claus, but I love secular North American Christmas traditions (except for playing holiday music in stores in October, bah.)

Thanksgiving is a wonderful and awesome holiday, one of my personal favourites. Thank you for inventing that!

This year, I couldn't be with my family on Thanksgiving, but two weeks later my parents were in Vancouver, so we had our own Thanksgiving randomly at the beginning of November. It was awesome. I still have orange crepe paper and plastic pumpkins on my window (only because I'm too lazy to take them down).

The reason I like Thanksgiving so much is because it isn't very commercialised. Not up in Canada anyway. Maybe your trouble is it's too close to Christmas and related frenzies. I like that we stole your holiday and then moved it to a more convenient time.

Basketball (though we did help you invent it, at least) if a great American sport. But how can you forget American Football? It was blatantly stolen from rugby and is a little bit boring, but it's a good sport. Footballs are very fun to throw. Also, you invented professional wrestling (WWE). I don't know if you should be happy about that or not.

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

Music: lets get past the Jazz people, fastforward to where Aaron Copland wrote the first truely American ballets: Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, Billy the Kid.

Waddaya mean "let's get past the jazz"!? Jazz is brilliance! And it was invented right at home in your own New Orleans! You don't want to gloss that over. Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, and other greats will not be glossed!

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

Movies: I don't really have to say much, except: Star Wars anyone?

Star Wars is a cultural phenomenon. For movies, I'd like to add the wide selection of great American Indie movies like "Little Miss Sunshine" for one.

Lastly, your culture inspires other cultures, so you have to be doing something right. As I was typing this post, Rammstein's song "Amerika" came up on my randomized playlist. Sure, they're criticizing your culture in the song, but you did inspire them to write a song.

Edit: It's "America and Its Culture". Its is possessive. PM SGH to fix your title, she's pretty rad about stuff like that.

[hectorberlioz]

Thanks for the thoughts Lief and Nurvvy.

I'm such an idiot, I should have known, from reading the third book of A Series of Unfortunate Events that the apostrophe would have made my title "America it is culture" Foolish. Thanks for pointing it out, Veepy.

EDIT: I didn't know you guys celebrated Thanksgiving, but bravo for doing so! And you're right, people think of Canada as a rather 'bland' country. Sorry to say I thought so myself, until I met you. Spitfire!

[hectorberlioz]

and btw Jon, I posted this right after you, but it's not my reply to you, which is just beneath

When you try to say that "the french have a culture, wine and cheese, beautiful architecture, a rich history, traditions."

...Yes they do, but so do we. The Louvre is a great thing that the French can and should be proud of, but just because America does not have a Louvre, does it mean we're unsophisticated?

" Uh, Well, French people talk cool, and Americans don't. So there."

A book I read last year for my history class was written by this guy - and he made his good points too - who ranted on and on about this same thing, about how our architecture stinks...

Let me pose this question, is it fair to compare the best of Europe with the Regular American Home? How much fancier are the homes of regular french people?

"Villas, Hector, Villas."

Give me a break. Renee Fleming, and we know SHE isn't poor, rented some Hotel room in Paris, and it didn't even have window glass or curtains or anything. A square hole in the wall.

Was the Hotel too poor? I don't know, I don't care, but I can tell you that if I paid as much money as she had for that thing, I'd think somebody had some serious revisioning to do.

My point is that: Europeans have culture, but it wasn't because everyone cooperated and decided to come up with something really original.

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

...Yes they do, but so do we. The Louvre is a great thing that the French can and should be proud of, but just because America does not have a Louvre, does it mean we're unsophisticated?

How much does culture have to do with unsophisticated? You can have all the traditions and fancy food you like and still be a barbarian.

But seriously now, America has museums by the heaps: The Metropolitan, the whole Smithsonian, and then some. Why be jealous of the Louvre, however cool it is? Besides, how much in the Louvre is really French? Having such a marvelous museum does IMO not equate having a splendid, sparkling culture. A museum like Louvre collects different cultures, and displays an interest in them, it doesn't necessarily give one as well.

My point is that: Europeans have culture, but it wasn't because everyone cooperated and decided to come up with something really original.

Oi! Look, I don't mind you wanting to defend the American culture, heck I'd defend it with you, you have a lot of things going for it. Okay, so you can't go as far back as Europe in some areas, but who cares?

But if you're going to step on a few dozens of different European cultures just to make yours shinier, I'm out. Shame, you were doing so well.

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

EDIT: I didn't know you guys celebrated Thanksgiving, but bravo for doing so! And you're right, people think of Canada as a rather 'bland' country. Sorry to say I thought so myself, until I met you. Spitfire!

BLAND!? *splutters*

Good thing you've mended your erroneous ways.

Bland!? Bah. I can't even believe it. How can anyone think we're bland?

Veepy. Spitfire. Hehe.

Yeah, I can't believe I forgot about baseball too, I love baseball. Here, we have the Vancouver Canadians, and they are a great team. They're one step below the major leagues, so you get to see top notch baseball without any hype for $15.

I agree with Jonathan about the many great American movies. You guys really kicked off the commercial movie enterprise.

Also there's great American authors like John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Barbara Kingsolver, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Stephen King, and many others.

About sports, baseball's ancestor is, as far as I know, a British game called rounders. Rugby's ancestor is soccer, incidentally.

Let me side track with something about sports' names. Football (which we North Americans call soccer) is the ancestor of rugby, which was invented at Rugby college in England, and thus called Rugby Football (that is still its official name). American football came from rugby football, so it was called American football. Then, since Americans play football (soccer) as well, it got called something else.

Us Canadians play American football too, except we have slightly different rules (1 less down, for one) and a longer, narrower field.

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

My point is that: Europeans have culture, but it wasn't because everyone cooperated and decided to come up with something really original.

But they did get together and come up with something very original. Like, the outputs of the Rennaisance, for example. Or the works of your own beloved Hector Berlioz.

Don't worry, you don't have to put them down in order to be cool. You're cool all by yourselves. Though, one might argue that making fun of France is an American past-time.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

I agree with Jonathan about the many great American movies. You guys really kicked off the commercial movie enterprise.

I hardly think that movies equal culture. The American sports, you can make a case for; Thanksgiving, sure. But that's about it.

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

Sports: Basketball is the only truely All-American sport, and even though it still is only popular here, we do have a number of foreig players in the NBA.

I can't believe you forgot to mention baseball! The sport is truly an American culture icon and has historically been considered America's pasttime.
Baseball is popular in a few other countries, like Japan and I believe basketball is far more popular than baseball in the rest of the world (baseball will even be cut from the London 2012 Olympic Games).

And as Nurv pointed out, there's also American football

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

Movies: I don't really have to say much, except: Star Wars anyone?

What about movies like Casablanca? Gone with the Wind? The Wizard of Oz? King Kong? (not Peter Jackson's version )
Hollywood has generated many many classic movies.

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

I can't believe you forgot to mention baseball! The sport is truly an American culture icon and has historically been considered America's pasttime.
Baseball is popular in a few other countries, like Japan and I believe basketball is far more popular than baseball in the rest of the world (baseball will even be cut from the London 2012 Olympic Games).

And as Nurv pointed out, there's also American football

What about movies like Casablanca? Gone with the Wind? The Wizard of Oz? King Kong? (not Peter Jackson's version )
Hollywood has generated many many classic movies.

Good stuff, Jon. Though I think Baseball's ancestor was some british game, but I could be wrong.

As Nurv pointed out, Football came from Rugby, and of course we all know our soccer stuff.

Basketball was invented by some guy for a mens college gym, and he invented it for the winter months to play indoors so that the students didn't slack off. As far as I know, it doesn't have a predecessor, and if it does, it's accidental.

[sun-star]

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

Our Heritage should never really be in question, and while the british may consider George Washington a traitor (and he was, as far as they are concerned-we have our differences!)

For what it's worth, I don't think many British people would actually think that. Washington's obviously not as much of a hero here as in the US, but there's no bad feeling towards him. We're over it

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by sun-star

For what it's worth, I don't think many British people would actually think that. Washington's obviously not as much of a hero here as in the US, but there's no bad feeling towards him. We're over it

Well, thats good to know. So really no hard feelings? No war plans against us?

[sun-star]

Would I really tell you if there were?

[hectorberlioz]

Hmmm....no, but you would try to convince me otherwise, which you are now doing. *suspects*

[sun-star]

I'm tricksy like that...

[Anglorfin]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

My suspicion is that living inside our current time period makes it feel normal to you, and hence less romantic. Other time periods look less ordinary because you aren't in them, and they seem somewhat more romantic or epic as a consequence. I suspect that if anyone from 100 years ago could look forward into the future and see our society as it is now, the word "epic" would not come near to covering sufficiently the astonishing vista.

I agree with you, though, that many Americans tragically don't appreciate what they have.

Aye, I know that must be part of it. But it's hard to not think about culture without history; as I feel those two are inseparable. If culture is just remembering great moments in history then America is full of richness. But if we define culture by the remembering and practice of traditions then I can say that America's culture is still very weak. America still hasn't been around long enough fully gain it's own culture in this sense.

The difficult part is that historically speaking, not very many Americans have been Americans for too long. None of my ancestors lived in America 120 years ago; which is a long time by this country's standards; but even I can't help but think sometimes that my adopted culture is the American one. It must be 10 times harder for someone who is only 2nd generation American to think of America as their real home.

I think there is a very simple reason to why this happens too. It's a sort of racism but not the negative type in the way that most people would think about. We are so different here (not that there's anything wrong with that), that we look around and see that our neighbors are a different color or speak a different language. And no matter how much people want to pretend that we can all fit in together it just doesn't work sometimes. A Latin-American will never get too excited about St. Patrick's day same way as an Italian-American wouldn't get excited about Cinco de Mayo. Everyone still needs to look towards their own ethnic heritage in order to feel comfortable. That's not to say that all people can't enjoy Cinco de Mayo; but it will never hold the same significance to me as it does to a Mexican-American.

But the fact that people can and do celebrate whatever they want is great. Any festival or holiday holds the same basic meaning as any other holiday. If someone can't have a good time then there's something wrong with them.