History Main / CulturalPosturing

** "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E1InThroesOfIncreasingWonder In Throes of Increasing Wonder...]]": The Frenchman Lestat de Lioncourt outright calls America a "primitive country."

* Cultural Victory in any game of the ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'' series boils down to this - being the most cultured civilization in the world. In vanilla ''V'', for example, it's earned by accumulating enough Culture points over the course of the game to complete five Social Policy trees and then build the Utopia Project before another civilization does the same thing or fulfills any other victory condition. However, the Cultural Victory got an overhaul in the ''Brave New World'' expansion; while you still cannot really be a contender for this victory type without producing huge amounts of Culture per turn and constructing a lot of Wonders, instead of building the Utopia Project, you need to make sure that your total Tourism per each civilization is higher than their total Culture, which essentially means that in case of success your culture displaces all other civilizations' cultures ''within their own habitats of origin and development''. In both vanilla and expansion cases, if you manage to do the condition required, [[InstantWinCondition it's game over no matter how puny you might be in terms of military or occupied land area compared to the other civs]].

*** In ''VI'', the mechanic has several ways 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.

* The Cultural Victory in the ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'' series of games essentially boils down to this - being the most cultured civilization in the world. In vanilla ''V'', for example, it's earned by accumulating enough Culture points over the course of the game to build the Utopia Project wonder before any other civilization is able to do the same thing or fulfill any other victory condition. However, the Cultural Victory got an overhaul in the ''Brave New World'' expansion; while you still cannot really be a contender for this type of Victory without producing huge amounts of Culture per turn and constructing a lot of Wonders, instead of building the Utopia Project, you need to make sure that your total Tourism per each civilization is higher than their total Culture, which essentially means that in case of success your culture displaces all other civilizations' cultures ''within their own habitats of origin and development''. In both vanilla and expansion cases, if you manage to do the condition required, [[InstantWinCondition it's game over no matter how puny you might be in terms of military or occupied land area compared to the other civs]].
** There's also the "Culture Bomb" mechanic: in vanilla ''V'', you move a Great Artist unit 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, this ability was transferred to the Great Generals instead and renamed "Construct Citadel", which still does the same thing but without any relation to the trope anymore. In ''VI'', the mechanic appears again, and this time it has several ways 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 a Poland, or a Pasture as an Australia), thus presumably reflecting the superiority of civilization's cultural ways 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. No points for guessing which Sponsor is the Culture focused one.

* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'':
** "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E1InThroesOfIncreasingWonder In Throes of Increasing Wonder...]]": The Frenchman Lestat de Lioncourt outright calls America a "primitive country."
** "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E3IsMyVeryNatureThatOfADevil Is My Very Nature That of a Devil]]": While reading a newspaper article at Jackson Square, Lestat idealizes New Orleans when it was under French rule, but Louis de Pointe du Lac, a black Creole, points out to his boyfriend that France was just as terrible as the United States in terms of how slaves were treated.
--->'''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.\\
'''Louis''': Say anything about how they used to take runaway slaves, cut their heads off, and pike 'em on the iron gates as a warning?\\
''(DramaticPause)''\\
'''Lestat''': I'm only half way through. Let's see.

* The Cultural Victory in the ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'' series of games essentially boils down to this - being the most cultured civilization in the world. In vanilla ''V'', for example, it's earned by accumulating enough Culture points over the course of the game to build the Utopia Project wonder before any other civilization is able to do the same thing or fulfill other victory conditions. However, the Cultural Victory got an overhaul in the ''Brave New World'' expansion; while you still cannot really be a contender for this type of Victory without producing huge amounts of Culture per turn and constructing a lot of Wonders, instead of building the Utopia Project, you need to make sure that your total Tourism per each civilization is higher than their total Culture, which essentially means that in case of success your culture displaces all other civilizations' cultures ''within their own habitats of origin and development''. In both vanilla and expansion cases, if you manage to do the condition required, [[InstantWinCondition it's game over no matter how puny you might be in terms of military or occupied land area compared to the other civs]].

* Creator/HPLovecraft, an avowed Anglophile, did this in RealLife and fiction.
** Although this is certainly present in many of his works, it's sometimes averted as well. As in "Literature/TheRatsInTheWalls", a story where an elitist anglophile discovers that his highly esteemed ancestral line is actually directly related to monstrous, cannibalistic sub-humans.

* ''The Silver Skates'' does a more light-handed version of this for the country of Holland, although written by an American. Enormous chunks of the book, including a lengthy side-story only slightly related to the main plot, are devoted to describing the [[AuthorAppeal history, culture, and geography of Holland]] in very favorable terms. However, American CulturalCringe is avoided.

When a character holds up one culture (often but not necessarily their own) as a shining example of development and progression, by uttering something along the lines of "my people/they were putting the finishing touches on quantum chromodynamics while yours were still figuring out how to wipe their bottoms without getting dirty hands".

Expect the alien who has the opinion that HumansAreTheRealMonsters (or humans who believe that HumanityIsSuperior) to trot out a similar argument. Compare CantArgueWithElves - that's when humans or other peoples for some reason don't mind insults at all. ScrewYouElves happens when they ''do'' mind. If this happens between nations, it's UsefulNotes/MisplacedNationalism. These four references to other tropes might be actually broader examples of this trope... what other culture do humans (as in ''you'', reader) know but their own human culture? How very meta.

* The Cultural Victory in the ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'' series of games essentially boils down to this - being the most cultured civilization in the world. In vanilla ''V'', for example, it's earned by accumulating enough Culture points over the course of the game to build the Utopia Project wonder before any other civilization has a chance to do the same thing or fulfill other victory conditions. However, the Cultural Victory got an overhaul in the ''Brave New World'' expansion; while you still cannot really be a contender for this type of Victory without producing huge amounts of Culture per turn and constructing a lot of Wonders, instead of building the Utopia Project, you need to make sure that your total Tourism per each civilization is higher than their total Culture, which essentially means that in case of success your culture displaces all other civilizations' cultures ''within their own habitats of origin and development''. In both vanilla and expansion cases, if you manage to do the condition required, [[InstantWinCondition it's game over no matter how puny you might be in terms of military or occupied land area compared to the other civs]].

** There's also a "Culture Bomb" mechanic: in vanilla ''V'', you move a Great Artist unit 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, this ability was transferred to the Great Generals instead and renamed "Construct Citadel", which still does the same thing but without any relation to the trope anymore. In ''VI'', the mechanic appears again, and this time it has several ways of triggering, the most notable of which are civilization-specific ones, which require you to build something (e.g., Encampment or Fort as a Poland, or Pasture as an Australia), thus presumably reflecting the superiority of civilization's cultural ways for everyone in the vicinity of the tile on which the required district/improvement was built.

* The Cultural Victory in the ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'' series of games essentially boils down to this. To win you need to produce more Culture per turn than your opponents, build more Wonders, acquire more Great Persons and Great Works, and (with Civ V's ''Brave New World'' DLC) use Tourism win over the populations of the other civs to your culture. There's some overlap with the Diplomatic Victory too, which is just winning the U.N. vote or winning the vote enough times.

* The "Cultural victory" condition in the ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'' series is all about winning the game by being more cultured than everyone else. In Civ V for example, it's earned by accumulating enough Culture points over the course of the game to build the Utopia Project wonder before anyone else. If you manage this, it's game over no matter how puny you might be in terms of military or occupied land area compared to the other Civs.
** And then there's Culture Bombing: You move a Great Artist unit up to the borders of an enemy civ, select the Culture Bomb action, and suddenly a ring of their tiles become your property because of how very cultured you are!
*** Culture Bombing is the AscendedMeme version of a trick used in previous games, where you sent a Great Artist to one of your cities and had them create a Great Work. Suddenly your city's Culture shot up, and because that controlled how much territory that city controlled, its influence leaped as well.
** The space colony spinoff ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth'' has a few elements of this, 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. No points for guessing which Sponsor is the Culture focused one.

* ''VideoGame/StarControl II'': "Just over twenty thousand years ago - when your ancestors were learning to chart the course of the moon and stars on animal horns -- the Sentient Milieu spanned five hundred light-years and included the membership of a hundred worlds." [[TheGreys The Arilou]] like to remind you of their antiquity too, but they do it in a friendlier way.

* ''VideoGame/StarControlII'': "Just over twenty thousand years ago - when your ancestors were learning to chart the course of the moon and stars on animal horns - the Sentient Milieu spanned five hundred light-years and included the membership of a hundred worlds." [[TheGreys The Arilou]] like to remind you of their antiquity too, but they do it in a friendlier way.

* In the mid-1930s, the Austrian fascist movement actually was largely opposed to unification with UsefulNotes/NaziGermany. Not on the basis of any ideological opposition to Hitler's brutality and racism (they thought all of that was great), but purely because of cultural posturing. They believed that Austrians were "better Germans" and Austria was the "better Germany", and thus they'd be made less pure by uniting with Hitler's Germany.

* In one episode of ''Series/IDreamOfJeannie'', she criticizes a spaceship design, and when Tony asks her what she knows about it says, "My people were flying carpets when yours were hollowing out log canoes."

** Creator/HarryTurtledove has Benjamin make a similar comment in ''Literature/TheGunsOfTheSouth'' when, as Confederate Secretary of State, he's negotiating with his U.S. counterpart Ben Butler, who is not really a racist but uses anti-Semitic comments to try and rile Benjamin up. In this case, however, he rather more accurately refers to Hebrew civilization in contrast to ''Germanic hunter-gatherers in Europe'', what with the Anglo-Saxons not having reached Britain at that point.

** There's even a comment on this in ''Literature/SnowCrash'' to the effect that while the {{Yakuza}} are called the Japanese Mafia, no one ever calls TheMafia the Italian Yakuza (although some Japanese works ''do'' use "yakuza" as a catch-all term for organized crime).
** The 1989 Creator/DolphLundgren ''[[Film/ThePunisher1989 Punisher]]'' movie puts a reversal on that. When the female yakuza boss addresses the room full of mafioso, she says "While your ancestors were [[BestialityIsDepraved screwing sheep]] in the Mediterranean, mine were the crime lords of Asia." Which is inaccurate -- both the yakuza and the mafia date to the early 17th century.

*** In ''Series/{{Friends}}'', Ross's father does this while arguing with his fiancee Emily's parents.
*** That argument was [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] in a future episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. When Moe tells Lisa's English fiance that they bailed them out in World War 2, he responds by reminding him that the English bailed the Americans out in World War 3. Moe admits that this is true.
*** Exaggerated in another episode of ''The Simpsons'', where the family goes to Britain and [[TheFool Homer]] tries to shame a local telling him out of the blue that the Americans saved the Brits' ass ''[[ArtisticLicenseHistory in Vietnam]]''.
*** ''Film/AFishCalledWanda'' has Kevin Kline's [[JerkAss character]] randomly spouting this when annoyed. "If it wasn't for us, you'd all be speaking ''German!''". He says this ''right after'' claiming that Britain would be "the smallest fucking province in the Russian Empire."
*** On ''Series/That70sShow'', Red says to ConspiracyTheorist Hyde: "Damn US Government?! Without our government, you'd be stuck in Siberia now sucking the juice out of a rotten commie potato!"
*** Subverted by ComicBook/ThePunisher or all people during an argument with ComicBook/CaptainAmerica during ''ComicBook/CivilWar2006''.
--->'''Captain America:''' "My ways stopped Hitler, '''boy'''."\\
'''Punisher:''' "No, sir, the '''Russians''' stopped Hitler. But I see your point."

*** In an episode of ''Steptoe and Son'' where 'arold and his father into a fight on a plane; when an American tries to stop it/join in, dad pushes him away with a contemptuous "Late again!"
*** To quote the English comedian Creator/EddieIzzard: The Americans were apparently watching old cavalry movies because they came to the rescue in the nick of time. "Dun Dun Dun DUH! HERE COMES AMERICA! AHHH I Love the smell of Europe in the morning! Now, what's for brunch?" "WHAT? Where have you been! We're bloody knackered!"
*** In ''WesternAnimation/ChickenRun'', Fowler complains that Americans are "always showing up late for every war." At another point, he calls them "overpaid, oversexed, and over here", which was a derogatory phrase in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII-era Australia.
*** Series/NotTheNineOClockNews had a comment on the bellicose nature of the US under Reagan as "trying to make up for being late to the last two world wars by being really punctual this time".

** ''Series/TheWestWing'' is one of the rare examples of this: After trying (and failing) to get the support of Lord [[AssInAmbassador John Marbury]], the new British Ambassador to the United States, to support a new missile shield defense system that Leo is supporting, Leo takes him aside at a dinner party pretty much for the sole reason of snottily reminding him who kicked whose ass at the Battle of Yorktown in the American War of Independence.
*** In another episode, the same two characters memorably avert this, when Marbury concisely defines the "original sins" of their two nations: Ireland (UK) and slavery (US).

*** Example: ''{{Series/Due South}}'' Fraser mentions it to a class of schoolkids. "your country invaded our country and we sent you packing".

* An old joke features three people having an argument on which of their cultures is the superior one. The first is traditionally an American, who gives a list of all of America's achievements. The second is German, and he does the same. The third is Chinese, with this guy proceeding to list all of the things the Chinese achieved while Western culture was in its infancy. The American replies, "But what have you guys done lately?" As time passed, it got a secondary punchline to the tune of "[[ChinaTakesOverTheWorld Well... own you?]]"

** In ''Literature/NightWatch'', Anton's friend Las wears a t-shirt showing a Soviet soldier bayonetting an American GI and the text "Remember who really won World War II". Anton pretty much agrees with the sentiment (author Sergei Lukyanenko is no friend of the US), but given how heavily this series runs on GreyAndGreyMorality, it is never taken seriously by anyone.

** 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 [[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch point out the faults of his own kind]] and sing the praises of other cultures that impress him ([[IntriguedByHumanity especially humanity]])... even if some of the things he praises them for are rather trivial (jelly babies and edible ball bearings), but he's [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} a bit of a loon]]. However, in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild the pilot episode]] (when the Doctor is considerably ruder and snarkier), he claims 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'.

* Extremely ''violent'' posturing is the rule of the day in interspecies relations in ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'', 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:

** All characters in Hetalia have this to some extent. As embodiments of nations, they all think their country is better and more advanced than any else.
*** However, the one that does this the most has to be Korea, who uses the line "X was invented in Korea, da-ze~" as a CatchPhrase.

* ''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 - though it is at least somewhat explained by the fact that he's worried for his captain and crew, and (a touch ironically) offended by being compared to slavers. In general, he tends to get a bit touchy about his Chinese ancestry whenever his pride is offended.

* From the ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' movie: "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?"]]

** Ankh-Morpork also has a tendency to cultural posturing, but usually of a pointedly understated kind. As one upper-class soldier puts it in ''Literature/NightWatch'', other countries have to keep telling everyone they're the best; Morporkians just ''know''.

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