People using this to complain about shows they don't like. (new crowner 02/24/12): Americanitis

For one, am I the only who thinks it's silly to include ForeignRemakes in this? I mean, by definition they are going to remove all the cultural elements of the original country; it wouldn't make sense for characters in Elite Beat Agents to wear kimonos and eat rice balls when they live in America. Seems like this should only be about translations.

Secondly, people are using this trope to refer to any adaptation they think is bad, regardless of the actual trope. For example, the Fawlty Towers example talks about how stupid it is that the adaptations try to make Basil sympathetic. That may be so, but it has nothing to do with the trope. Tropes Are Not Bad; Ace Attorney is a large example of this trope, but that translation is considered very good by most people.

edited 15th Jan '11 5:46:23 AM by zanbolt

Minor nitpick, but:

This part is not always true. I've noticed it becoming less true year by year in my time as a fan of Japanese media.

But soft! What rock through yonder window breaks? It is a brick! And Juliet is out cold.

Can you give me an example? I'm finding it hard to picture a Foreign Remake that would include elements of another countries culture.

Argh, I completely misread your post. No, in 99.99999999(repeating, of course)% of Foreign Remakes, you're right.

But soft! What rock through yonder window breaks? It is a brick! And Juliet is out cold.

I'd add that the name should probably changed to its current alternate. Americanitis makes it sound inherently bad, so many of the entries treat the trope as inherently bad. It would even things out if it went by the much more neutral Americanization.

edited 15th Jan '11 3:11:50 PM by Westrim

I rarely visit the forums to avoid the cynicism ooze.

@Black Wolfe:

That's the same thing as 100%.

I guess it is.

"Americanitis makes it sound inherently bad, so many of the entries treat the trope as inherently bad. It would even things out if it went by the much more neutral Americanization."

It's not neutral, though. It's the very real phenomenon that occurs when meddling executives assume that Americans can't understand a thing unless it takes place in America and/or features American actors. It's insulting to everyone, Americans included, and I'm not entirely sure how to portray such a thing as neutral when it really is sort of cynical and irritating.

Pretty much wholeheartedly agree with gfrequency  ^*

. This is not neutral, nor it has to be, let alone in this wiki. The fact is, shows/books/whatever are "Americanized" the way they are... for a reason.

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

If a trope ends with "-itis" I doubt it was ever intended to be nutreal. But I don't think it's a good idea to have it in the first place. It is possible to make a few reasonable changes to make sense to a culture. It can be done badly, but not inherently bad.

edited 26th Jan '11 8:31:15 PM by DrStarky

Put me in motion, drink the potion, use the lotion, drain the ocean, cause commotion, fake devotion, entertain a notion, be Nova Scotian

Just rename it to Americanization, kill the bad examples, and make it clear in the description that it's not meant to be used for complaining.

When I started this trope, it was about Foreign Remakes. It has been taken over by something else entirely, apparently to the point of unrecognizability, since the Foreign Remake article wasn't considered a duplicate when it was launched. The page's description is a half-formed mess. For instance, "If this is done with care and with attention to the strengths and weaknesses of both versions, the result can rival or surpass the original" worked when the page was about people making entire shows, but doesn't work at all now that the page is apparently about removing cultural influences.

Please establish what the trope is now about, rewrite it to match that topic, and remove inapplicable examples.

edited 27th Jan '11 3:30:36 AM by Kizor

The way I see it, Foreign Remake is when something is remade by and for a different populace, while Americanitis is when you take an existing work and either remove or replace all traces of foreign culture.

(Things have changed a bit in my absence, apologies if this isn't in the right locale...)

Just wanted to point out that the suffix "-itis" indicates an inflammation. So, if I take a game like Shenmue, change the setting to California, turn the main guy into a totally radical surfer dude, and put him on a quest to avenge the death of the guy who ran the local skate shop and title it "Billy Bad Ass vs The Skatepunks of Hell", then clearly I have "inflammed" the American-ness of the title.

On the other hand, if I change the setting to California, and appropriately redesign the game to eliminate the dense layers and layers of Japanese culture (and subcultre) present and replace them with appropriate American analogues, all I've really done is localize the game for a US audience. I haven't really "inflammed" anything.

So "-itis" may or may not be the best term.

Please view my contributor page for an Open Letter to TV Tropes.

Yeah, this is just useless complaining. We've already got Foreign Remake, cut this one.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

There is a valid trope that would fall under this name and/or Americanisation that would not be Foriegn Remake, but a subtrope of Cultural Translation: In a localisation of a foreign show, acting as if it took place in America, with script and perhaps visual edits to that end. Common one would be calling Japanese rice balls cupcakes or doughnuts in a dub, claiming to take place in California instead of Tokyo, etc. Whether it's actually split-able from Cultural Translation probably depends on your lumper/splitter persuasion, but it would be an important distinction if the change was done without the reason of making something understandable to the audience, in the way that adapting a foreign idiom would.

edited 27th Jan '11 2:35:34 PM by Elle

Ah, so then Americanitis is basically a duplicate of Cultural Translation. In that case, cut it.

edited 27th Jan '11 4:42:40 PM by RocketScience

I smell The Same But More Specific.

edited 27th Jan '11 6:58:03 PM by SpellBlade

Would it be ok to redirect Americanization to Cultural Translation?

I would, but let's wait for consensus before taking action.

Agreed with Elle on merging this with Cultural Translation.

I'm in favor of zapping Americanitis and moving its examples to whichever ones would fit other tropes better (Cultural Translation, Foreign Remake, Bowdlerise, Macekre).

Americanitis itself is fairly insulting (especially when you see the kind of glee people like Silent Reverence take from it). It goes farther than simply saying "companies change cultural references because they don't think local audiences will relate." "Americanitis" insinuates that Americans (and only Americans) import media just to create second-rate knockoffs, and that Americans never create compelling, original media. The several times I'd seen this article in the past, I'd seen where tropers would leave snarky little opening statements like "The swelling of the American" and other Take Thats.

We have enough examples here and elsewhere to blatantly state that this sort of thing is hardly an American phenomenon, and there are other tropes which describe it more effectively.

edited 11th Feb '11 3:25:30 PM by TrevMUN

There's an Unfortunate Implications aspect here that you're missing, which is that this can be a symptom of a superior attitude, a tendency of Americans to be dismissive of other nations and cultures. This needs to be called out where it's spotted, and an "insulting" title is perfectly appropriate for these examples. Here, changes are made that don't even really have anything to do with cultural differences, but as though there's something second-rate about their being foreign. Of course, not all Americans think this way, but be honest- you don't go a day without seeing an example of it. And a couple of examples of this trope that come quickly to mind are films that have been remade, sometimes identically or near-identically, sometimes even by the same director. The Vanishing and Nightwatch, for example. What was even the point? On the other hand, Ju-On was remade nearly identically as The Grudge, but kept the Japanese setting, and was a hit. Clearly, Americans are more open to this kind of thing than marketers give us credit for.

I'm really not getting an impression of "American product is weak, recycled versions of foreign countries' works" from this trope, I think that may just be a personal perception. Besides, certain countries' film industries...(cough cough Italy) would have no business at all making that accusation. Yeah, it sucks when some international bigot uses it an opportunity to gloat, but we Americans have to take our lumps just like everybody else. We're supposed to be strong enough to be able to handle that kind of thing. Leave it as "Americanitis".

On the other hand, the Unfortunate Implications that I mentioned is by no means something that's exclusive to Americans. If there are some good foreign examples, I'd support a change to a more-inclusive name.

edited 23rd Feb '11 12:20:50 PM by dementia13

Check out the various Spanish dubs of The Simpsons.

Or better yet, don't.

Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.

But, see, you're making assumptions about why the changes were made, which, unless there's Word of God to back those assumptions, is just speculation, and therefore Natter according to this wiki's policies.

Exactly. Even then, Cultural Translation fits intentional cases of it much better, and it does it without inviting a sneerfest from tropers who would be so inclined.

edited 24th Feb '11 2:04:57 PM by TrevMUN