History Main / CulturalPosturing

* Danisha Wood and company from ''Fanfic/BackToTheFrollo'' clearly believes in the superiority of their native Indiana culture, to the point where they refuse to partake in native culture on their time-traveling trips to medieval Paris and repeatedly try to introduce their culture to native inhabitants. Many medieval Parisian characters end up speaking in Midwestern dialect.

** "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E2AfterThePhantomsOfYourFormerSelf ...After the Phantoms of Your Former Self]]": Lestat -- who is a great admirer of European classical music and opera -- has a mocking facial expression when he tells Florence (an African American) "I see you have a banjo band in your front yard," so he considers banjo music (the banjo was invented by African Americans) to be inferior.

*** Dukat once says of the occupation that it was obvious the Cardassians were the superior people in every way -- societally, technologically and culturally. All that conflict was [[InsaneTrollLogic clearly their fault for wanting to be equal]].

* The Kingdom of Clouds in ''Doraemon: Nobita and the Kingdom of Clouds'' prides themselves in having achieved a prosperous civilization without harming the planet while implicitly having a huge technological advantage (e.g by using flying vehicles to rescue animals before they got extinct for centuries). At the time the story takes place (~1992), human pollution is making their kingdom inhabitable, and they have no trouble getting in the high horse and blaming humanity for their thoughtlessness and selfishness. Meanwhile, at no point in the film they even consider lending some of their technology to humanity nor feel guilty for keeping all their advanced technology for themselves while humanity struggled through miserable periods in human story such as the dark and middle ages. Their plan was to flood the world while evacuating everyone beforehand and then putting all those 7 billion people back to Earth without their technology as a hard reset to civilization, ignoring that billions of people would die before and ''if'' things can be under control. Doraemon and his friends barely stop them, and they promise at the end of the film to do better and work harder at protecting nature while the cloud people leave for a [[PlantAliens Plant Alien]] planet.

* From ''Film/Transformers2007'' movie: Ironhide asks "Why are we fighting to save the humans, they're a primitive and violent race". This coming from the race of giant robots with weapons built into their bodies who have been engaged in a millennia-long war. Optimus Prime, however, does point out, [[NotSoDifferentRemark "Were we so different?"]]
* Subverted in the ''Film/MyFavoriteMartian'' movie, where Martin starts complaining about his spaceship's "electron accelerator" getting fried and then tells Tim "I'd tell you what it is, but you think E = mc[[superscript:2]]". [[spoiler:It then turns out that an "electron accelerator" is just flowery {{Technobabble}} for an alternator taken from Tim's sedan.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/ThunderCats2011'': While [[LectureAsExposition reciting an oral history]] during a RiteOfPassage, Thundera's King Claudus, monarch of a {{Proud Warrior Race|Guy}} of {{Cat|Folk}}s, styles his Thundercats as the great civilizers of Third Earth, who "brought law and order to a [[WorldOfFunnyAnimals world of warring Animals]]", a statement symptomatic of his people's belief that CatsAreSuperior and a cultural narrative WrittenByTheWinners.

-->-- '''[[https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Νίκος_Αθανασόπουλος Nikos Athanasopoulos]]''', Greek politician, hitting back at an EU investigation of corruption in the Greek Government under Belgian anti-corruption official [[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/crooks-milk-ec-for-all-it-is-worth-1457668.html Emile Mennens]]

* The British wizards from ''Literature/HarryPotter'' always act as though they're far better than muggles. At best they're slightly more advanced. At their very worst they are culturally stagnant, have a KangarooCourt for a justice system, a government as corrupt as any struggling Third World nation, and their education facilities have [[Main/NoOSHACompliance downright pathetic safety standards]] which seems to be par for the course, and the fact they are hiding their magical backwards world from muggle society -- making their purported superiority over the Muggles in every way a deliberate joke. Except for medicine since broken bones can be healed with a wave of a wand, entire ''missing'' bones can be grown overnight and definitely has a better track record (it still takes hard work to become a Healer, though in the same way for muggles to become doctors.)

*** In vanilla ''V'', the "Culture Bomb" is a unique ability of the Great Artists, unambiguously implying that neighbor civ's tiles will become your property due to how very cultured you are! In the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion, though, the Great Artists were deprived of this now nominally removed ability, the effect of which was instead given to the Great Generals to make their own "Construct a Citadel" ability even more useful, at the cost of abandoning the trope.

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGate3'': [[NobleDemon Lae'zel]] firmly believes that [[SpaceElves githyanki]] are simply ''better'' at doing ''everything'' than all other races, from warfare to statecraft to child-rearing. It gets particularly silly in one moment where [[PlayerCharacter Tav]] can insult githyanki noses as "upturned bat snouts", prompting this [[TheComicallySerious completely earnest]] line:
-->'''Lae'zel''': That large, fleshy nose of yours looks like a mistake. [...] 'Better' is an opinion, but mine is certainly more economical. Disciplined. Dignified.

--->'''Lestat''': There's a column in here about the history of this lovely square. It says that the man who designed it did so after the Place de Vosges in Paris. I can see that. Used to be called the Place d'Armes. I prefer that. Don't you? The Louisiana Purchase was signed here. Penny-wise, franc-foolish.\\

'''Lestat''': I'm only half way through. Let's see.

*** In vanilla ''V'', the "Culture Bomb" is a unique ability of the Great Artists, unambiguously implying that neighbor civ's tiles will become your property due to how very cultured you are! In the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion, though, the Great Artists were deprived of this now nominally removed ability, the effect of which was instead given to the Great Generals to make their own "Construct a Citadel" even more useful, at the cost of abandoning the trope.

*** In vanilla ''V'', the "Culture Bomb" is a unique ability of the Great Artists, unambiguously implying that neighbor civ's tiles will become your property due to how very cultured you are! In the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion, though, the Great Artists were deprived of this ability, which was instead given to the Great Generals and renamed "Construct a Citadel", no longer having anything in common with the trope despite doing the same thing as before.

*** In vanilla ''V'', the "Culture Bomb" is a unique ability of the Great Artists, unambiguously implying that neighbor civ's tiles will become your property due to how very cultured you are! In the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion, though, the Great Artists were deprived of this ability, which was instead given to the Great Generals and renamed "Construct Citadel", no longer having anything in common with the trope despite doing the same thing as before.

*** In vanilla ''V'', the "Culture Bomb" is a unique ability of the Great Artists, unambiguously implying that neighbor civ's tiles will become your property due to how very cultured you are! In the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion, though, the Great Artists were deprived of this ability, which was instead given to the Great Generals and renamed "Construct Citadel", obviously no longer having anything in common with the trope despite doing the same thing as before.

* ''Literature/ImpracticalMagic'': Yam is the victim of FantasticRacism and as such overcompensates by being too proud of the Len's concept of a 'Virtue'. He frequently dismisses humans as being unaware bigots while referring to them as uncultured savages.

** "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E1InThroesOfIncreasingWonder In Throes of Increasing Wonder...]]": The Frenchman Lestat de Lioncourt outright calls America a "primitive country." He regards his homeland to be more cultured and sophisticated because (by European reckoning) it's far older than the New World. The Kingdom of France was founded in the year 987 [[note]]although one can go back even further to the establishment of West Francia in 843 as the birth of the French nation[[/note]], while the USA became an independent country in 1776, plus France was still a colonial power in 1910, whereas America wouldn't attain superpower status until after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
** "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E2AfterThePhantomsOfYourFormerSelf ...After the Phantoms of Your Former Self]]": Lestat (who is a great admirer of European classical music and opera) has a mocking facial expression when he tells Florence (an African American) "I see that you have a banjo band in your front yard," so he considers banjo music (the banjo was invented by African Americans) to be inferior.

** Being presented as the game mechanic in ''V'' and ''VI'', the "Culture Bomb" allows you to capture all tiles adjacent to the one on which it occurred, providing an unusual, non-violent way to take over nearby territory. Its uniqueness comes from the fact that it does so regardless of whether the territory is unowned or controlled by someone, and while the former seems to be a bit atypical example of SettlingTheFrontier, the latter apparently has some connection to this trope, albeit only when targeting land tiles (as obviously there cannot be any posturing without a populace to appreciate the splendor of your culture and succumb to its influence):

** The "Culture Bomb" game concept deserves some special attention in this regard:
*** In vanilla ''V'', you move a Great Artist up to the borders of a neighbor civ, select the "Culture Bomb" ability, and suddenly a ring of their tiles becomes your property because of how very cultured you are! In the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion, though, this ability was transferred to the Great Generals instead and renamed "Construct Citadel", which still does the same thing but with no relation to the trope anymore.
*** In ''VI'', the mechanic has several sources of triggering, the most notable of which are civilization-specific ones, which require you to build something (e.g., an Encampment or a Fort as Poland or a Pasture as Australia), thus presumably reflecting the superiority of the civilization's cultural way for everyone in the vicinity of the tile on which the required district/improvement was built.
** ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth'', a franchise spinoff, doesn't have a Cultural Victory as such at all but still has some elements of this trope, mostly from [[WomanOfWealthAndTaste Élodie]], the leader of the Franco-Iberia colonial sponsor - she is a firm believer that Western Europe has a superior culture to everyone else. Naturally, it is her faction that is the most culture-focused one.

* The British wizards from ''Literature/HarryPotter'' always act as though they're far better than muggles. At best they're slightly more advanced. At their very worst they are culturally stagnant, have a KangarooCourt for a justice system, a government as corrupt as any struggling Third World nation, WordOfGod puts their combat abilities as inferior to even basic firearms, much less trained military, and their education facilities have [[Main/NoOSHACompliance downright pathetic safety standards]] which seems to be par for the course, and the fact they are hiding their magical backwards world from muggle society -- making their purported superiority over the Muggles in every way a deliberate joke. Except for medicine since broken bones can be healed with a wave of a wand, entire ''missing'' bones can be grown overnight and definitely has a better track record (it still takes hard work to become a Healer, though in the same way for muggles to become doctors.)