History Main / CulturalPosturing

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Thundercats 2011}}'': While [[LectureAsExposition reciting an oral history]] during a RiteOfPassage, Thundera's King Claudus, monarch of a ProudWarriorRace 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 cultural narrative that's WrittenByTheWinners.

Compare WhileYouWereInDiapers. NoTrueScotsman fallacies may often occur. When people do this to other cultures it's a ForeignCultureFetish. Contrast CulturalCringe and CulturalPersonalityMakeover.

*** Apparently, the Romulans like to do this -- according to O'Brien, there is "not a single piece of technology that they don't claim [[InTheOriginalKlingon they had before anyone else did]]."

** Whenever the Time Lords appear (in the classic series, at least), they generally have this kind of attitude to non-Time Lords; in one story, a Time Lord dismisses 160th-century Earth technology as the kind of thing his people had mastered "when the Universe was less than half its present size". It's gradually but persistently undercut, however, by increasing revelations that they're stagnant and over-sheltered as a civilization, incompetent at anything that falls outside their protected little bubble, corrupt and hypocritical, and altogether not nearly as high-and-mighty as they'd like others to believe. Later, they prove to be exponentially more dangerous than anyone had previously realised, and are as feared as the Daleks - if not more so. However, if anything, this undercuts the cultural superiority aspect even more, as the Time Lords are depicted as being led by an arrogant elite that will literally burn the entire universe down to save themselves.
** The Doctor himself occasionally displays this kind of attitude but is equally quick to point out the faults of his own kind and sing the praises of other cultures that impress him (especially humanity). Even if some of the things he praises them for are rather trivial (Jelly Babies and Edible Ball Bearings), but he's a bit of a [[CloudCuckooLander Loon]]. Though in the pilot episode, when William Hartnell's Doctor was considerably ruder and snarkier, he claimed to Ian that before human beings turned the first wheel, the people of his world had reduced free movements through the farthest reaches of space 'to a game for children'.

* ''Series/StargateSG1''

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' had that the Bajorans had a beautiful and advanced civilization and culture--not warp-drive advanced, but still, advanced--back when human beings were still learning to walk upright. Of course, that was before the Cardassians took over. They were also apparently [[MedievalStasis culturally stagnant]] for millennia.
** 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]].
** Garak talked a lot about how great Cardassian culture was, mostly to Bashir. Of note, Cardassia ''exiled'' Garak, [[MultipleChoicePast possibly]] because he refused to torture children to satisfy the pointless whims of a bureaucracy.
** Spock and [=McCoy=] loved to posture their respective Vulcan and human cultures to each other.
** A minor running gag with Chekov (most prominent in "The Trouble With Tribbles") is where he claims that many things, such as Scotch whiskey, are a "Russian [[FunetikAksent inwention]]" or were located in Russia, such as the Garden of Eden. This pops up in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'', where he does this with the tale of Cinderella. However in the video game ''VideoGame/JudgmentRites'' an alcoholic beverage that Chekov said was first created in Russia actually turned out to have been first created ''in'' Russia.
** Apparently the Romulans like to do this - according to O'Brien on ''Deep Space Nine'', there is "not a single piece of technology that they don't claim they had before anyone else did."

** Picard enjoyed looking down on Q, even quoting Shakespeare to him until Q got disgusted and left. Q, of course, provoked this intentionally.
** The Founders, ye gods ''The Founders'' take this, combine it with FantasticRacism and ramp it up, although the only people who actually seem to buy it are the ones who are genetically programmed to do so. In fact, even some of the things that they posture ''about'' are {{Informed Attribute}}s at best, their much-vaunted curiosity really doesn't ring true, the only thing they seem to bother to learn about other races is how to infiltrate them.
* ''Series/WonderWoman'': Queen Hippolyte reigns at Paradise Island, a LadyLand HiddenElfVillage of immortals, and remembers that wmen were slaves for the Romans and the Greeks. After some thousands of years being an immortal, she is not fond of any culture in the outside world:
-->'''Queen Hippolyte:''' ''… We are stronger, wiser, and more advanced than all those people in their jungles out there. Our civilization is perfection!''

* Extremely ''violent'' posturing is the rule of the day in interspecies relations in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', where one side, or usually both, tout the superiority of their own culture and history as they blast their foes to bits. The Eldar are particularly guilty of this. It's made all the more stupid on their part because humanity didn't ''destroy their own civilization via a galaxy-wide orgy that birthed a god that feeds on souls.'' They also refuse to believe that they could be in the wrong at any point or that someone else might have a good plan for stopping something (they once tried to destroy an entire planet in an effort to safeguard a long-buried craft world from the Tyranids and apparently refused to believe that the Blood Ravens could fight it off). This is best illustrated (along with an epic ShutUpHannibal) in this quote:

---> '''Javik''': The Commander is a capable warrior as well. For a human. Who used to live in caves.

---> '''Javik:''' Commander, in my cycle, when we fled combat by falling through tanks filled with aquatic animals, we usually...oh, right, we never did! You are a trailblazer!

---> '''Shepard''': We will ''fight!'' We will ''sacrifice!'' And we ''find a way!'' That is what humans ''do!''

* In ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}'', Pavel Chekov claims that Scotch whiskey was inwented by a little old lady from Leningrad[[note]]He was probably {{troll}}ing Scotty with this one.[[/note]], the Garden of Eden was just outside Moscow, and "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" is an old Russian proverb. While such clownish national pride would be considered a little insulting in modern times, the show was written at the height of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar and was thus a [[FairForItsDay rather big step up]] in the depiction of the Russian character.

* 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, presumably to starve and die. 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.

* In ''Film/LawrenceofArabia'' King Faisal says to Lawrence "in the Arab city of Cordoba there were two miles of public lighting when London was a village."

* ''Anime/MacrossFrontier'': While she isn't a jerk about it, Klan Klan is extremely proud of her Zentraedi heritage and frequently makes comments about Zentraedi weapons being superior to human-designed ones.

** Spock and [=McCoy=] loved to posture their respective Vulcan and Human cultures to each other.

** Picard enjoyed looking down on Q, even quoting Shakespeare to him until Q got disgusted and left.
*** Q, of course, provoked this intentionally.
** The Founders, ye gods ''The Founders'' take this, combine it with FantasticRacism and ramp it up, although the only people who actually seem to buy it are the ones who are genetically programmed to do so. In fact, even some of the things that they posture ''about'' are {{Informed Attribute}}s at best, their much-vaunted curiosity really doesn't ring true, the only things they seem to bother to learn about other races is how to infiltrate them.
* ''Series/WonderWoman'': Queen Hippolyte reigns at Paradise Island, a LadyLand HiddenElfVillage of immortals, and remembers that Women were slaves for the Roman and the Greek. After some thousands of years being an immortal, she is not fond of any culture in the outside world:

** The Tollans refused to co-operate with the SGC because they viewed them as so primitive that the Tollans considered it a miracle they'd ever managed to get the Stargate working. Daniel calls them out on their rudeness by comparing their condescension with that of the Nox, commenting that the Nox at least had the manners to refer to the humans of Earth as 'children' instead of 'primitives'. He ends up introducing the Tollans and the Nox to each other in order to protect the Tollans from Earth politics. While it sets up a lasting alliance between Earth and Tollana, it inevitably creates such a one-sided, condescending relationship that Earth has to practically bully Tollana into defending itself when the Goa'uld threatens the existence of Tollana. [[spoiler:By that point, it's too late, and Tollana is believed to have been completely wiped out by Anubis's subordinates.]]
** Samantha's father (during his stint of being possessed by a Tok'Ra) told her that Earth humanity was an inexperienced race. It wasn't meant to be derisive, but a simple statement of fact, as Earth had barely begun fighting the Goa'uld a couple of years ago, while the Tok'Ra had been doing so for centuries (with a conspicuous lack of progress).

** The Goa'uld have also lapsed into this at times, whenever they feel the need to brag, such as Zipacna at the Tollan trial, who points out that Goa'uld have had advanced tech for thousands of years while humanity has barely landed on their Moon. Daniel tries to take the wind out of his sails by pointing out that the Goa'uld ''stole'' that technology from the Ancients rather than innovate it themselves. Zipacna doesn't see why that should matter: the point is they got the tech, and humanity did not.

** The Nox are a non-human race of pacifists who live a simple life because they are so technologically advanced that they can afford to be neutral pacifists who don't need to fight the Goa'uld; the Goa'uld are simply no threat to them and they can also cloak entire cities from detection and heal the recently dead. They call the humans of Earth 'children' and constantly refer to Earth humans doing things they disapprove of as 'children often do not do as they are told'. The condescending nature of this position does grate on the humans, but some of them also accept it as inevitable given the vast inequality in technological knowledge between the two species -- mainly because the Nox has given them no choice but to accept it.

** The Doctor himself occasionally displays this kind of attitude but is equally quick to point out the faults of his own kind and sing the praises of other cultures that impress him (especially humanity). Though in the pilot episode, when William Hartnell's Doctor was considerably ruder and snarkier, he claimed to Ian that before human beings turned the first wheel, the people of his world had reduced free movements through the farthest reaches of space 'to a game for children'. Even if some of the things he praises them for are rather trivial (Jelly Babies and Edible Ball Bearings), but he's a bit of a [[CloudCuckooLander Loon]].

* The ''Literature/{{Gate}}'' anime and manga franchise turns Japan into this, due to the author's right-wing sympathies; Japan is the best at everything, and other nations trying to have a say in how they believe the expedition to the other world should be run are just trying to take over from Japan and are obviously evil.

* Subverted in the cinematic adaptation of ''Film/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''. With the life of the last woman in the galaxy hanging in the balance and a monstrous bureaucracy keeping the heroes from rescuing her, Arthur Dent takes a deep breath and announces, "I'm British, I know how to queue." And then he quickly gives up after seeing that waiting in line is going to take too long.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Thundercats 2011}}'': While [[LectureAsExposition reciting an oral history]] during a RiteOfPassage, Thundera's King Claudus, monarch of a ProudWarriorRace of [[{{Catfolk}} Cats]], 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 cultural narrative that's WrittenByTheWinners.

** However, occasionally the Doctor's fondness for the British shines through, such as in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E9TheEmptyChild "The Empty Child"]], where he admits to greatly admiring their courage and continued [[DefiantToTheEnd defiance]] during the Second World War, even against all odds.

--> Captain America: "My ways stopped Hitler, '''boy'''."
--> Punisher: "No, sir, the '''Russians''' stopped Hitler. But I see your point."

''''Frenchman:''' But of course Monsieur, for we all fight for zat which we do not 'ave.

* ''Film/TheHammer'': When Nicaraguan-American Oswaldo and his family tout the superiority of Nicaraguan athletics, his friend Jerry pointedly notes that they seem to love talking about Nicaragua except for the part where they risked their lives to not have to live there anymore.

* The [[FantasyCounterpartCulture D'Angelines]] from ''Literature/KushielsLegacy'' love to wax poetic about how advanced, beautiful, and [[EternalSexualFreedom sexually liberated]] they are. This is a poorly JustifiedTrope, since Terre D'Ange is quite the MarySuetopia, for reasons already listed and because everyone else seems to be stuck in the Dark Ages while the D'Angelines are in the Renaissance.

* After Wrestling/{{Edge}} won the World Heavyweight Championship Wrestling/TripleH introduced, he started negatively comparing wherever he happened to be to Toronto in Canada. Wrestling/KevinSteen and Steve Corino likewise negatively compared Dearborn Michigan to Canadian cities. Steen and Corino didn't get much response though, because most of the Wrestling/RingOfHonor Gold Rush audience had driven in from somewhere else and thus didn't feel personally insulted.

* ''ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy:'' King J-Son of Spartax (or Spartoi) spends a lot of his time going on about how humans are dumb and stupid and ugly and etc. His son is half-human. Actually gets to a point in ''ComicBook/{{Infinity}}'' when J-Son starts getting angry about humans being brought into a war planning session, telling them they'll only be useful if they need cannon fodder. The Supreme Intelligence pipes up by comparing Earth's success rate against the Kree Empire to that of Spartax. Humanity's success rate is ''much'' higher - essentially as close as the Supreme Intelligence gets to "dude, just shut up."

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* The [[GenerationShips Exodan]] humans from ''[[Literature/TheLongWayToASmallAngryPlanet Wayfarers]]'' spent decades trying to get citizenship in TheFederation, and are quite aware of the low opinion many aliens (and even Solan humans) have of them. As such, they're very defensive of their culture, which often leads to touting its superiority and xenophobia. When Sawyer immigrates to the fleet, everyone around him treats him with disdain and any ignorance of their culture is taken as a sign of inferior morality. There's also repeated claims of how alien and Martian influences are "corrupting" the fleet. [[spoiler:When Sawyer's ignorance gets him killed, Eyas decides to set up a formal immigration office to challenge these attitudes.]]

** Whenever the Time Lords appear (in the classic series, at least), they generally have this kind of attitude to non-Time Lords; in one story, a Time Lord dismisses 160th-century Earth technology as the kind of thing his people had mastered "when the Universe was less than half its present size". It's gradually but persistently undercut, however, by increasing revelations that they're stagnant and over-sheltered as a civilization, incompetent at anything that falls outside their protected little bubble, corrupt and hypocritical, and altogether not nearly as high-and-mighty as they'd like others to believe.

* ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'', a Chinese-born dragon, to his Tswana captors: "My ancestors were scholars in China while yours were slaves in pits!" Something of an OutOfCharacterMoment for him, incidentally.

** The Founders, ye gods ''The Founders'' take this, combine it with FantasticRacism and ramp it UpToEleven, although the only people who actually seem to buy it are the ones who are genetically programmed to do so. In fact, even some of the things that they posture ''about'' are {{Informed Attribute}}s at best, their much-vaunted curiosity really doesn't ring true, the only things they seem to bother to learn about other races is how to infiltrate them.

** In Mexico, sometimes this is raised UpToEleven by Mexicans themselves, as besides U.S. and Canada, they also compare Mexico with '''Japan'''. In fact, for driving the point home, there's something in Mexico sometimes called ''The American Newspaper Box Syndrome'', which is the explanation for why in Mexico there are no newspaper boxes in the streets, completely ignoring the fact that in the U.S. those newspaper boxes are also problematic, regarding the existing laws.

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* The Mooninites in ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'' are quite fond of this, saying things like "Our race is hundreds of years beyond yours." and "Some would say that the Earth is our moon, but that would belittle the name of the moon... [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment which is the moon]]." This is rather bizarre, since there only appears to be three of them, who have no discernible culture to speak of (unless nonstop, unfocused {{jerkass}}ery counts as a culture).
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Thundercats 2011}}'' while [[LectureAsExposition reciting an oral history]] during a RiteOfPassage, Thundera's King Claudus, monarch of a ProudWarriorRace of [[{{Catfolk}} Cats]], 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 cultural narrative that's WrittenByTheWinners.