Are there two different definitions here?: Cultural Cringe

I am terribly confused as to how this trope works. (Courtesy link: Cultural Cringe)

As an Australian, I hear the term cultural cringe a lot, and it always basically refers to cringing due to your inferiority towards another country. In contrast, according to the laconic wiki this is a nationalist form of Boomerang Bigot - basically, someone who hates people from their own country. The trope examples (particularly for the US and UK) seem to imply that any phenomenon of hating one's own countrymen belongs on the list. Perhaps TV Tropes uses a different riff on the general usage?

However, this directly contradicts the trope description, which stipulates that such feelings must involve the people of one country seeing "their own culture as inferior to the cultures of other countries". So the cringe must be towards another country/countries. Does the trope description need to be redone? Or is the laconic definition what's misleading?

What is the right definition of Cultural Cringe on TV Tropes?

I think the definition in the article itself is correct as it stands, given that it follows what this expression has always meant IRL. I don't think we should depart too far from that.

The laconic would probably be improved if it read - "When people consider their own country and its culture inferior to other countries and their culture." The rest of the article probably needs some re-writing to make sure it's correctly focused. I suspect some of the examples are, as you say, just general instances of people not liking their own country.

EDIT: Reading it again, I agree the US and British sections are definitely more the latter than the correct version, and whilst there may well have been a cultural cringe in Canada the joke doesn't illustrate that - it's more like an example of compulsive modesty.

edited 15th May '11 5:15:23 AM by captainbrass2

I changed the Laconic to the one captainbrass suggested.

@Madrugada

Thanks :)

@ captainbrass 2

Now that you mention it, Canada's example is pretty weak. Calling on Canadians to elaborate?

So under the proper definition, seems that everything for the UK bit might be irrelevant except "food has always been better if it is French". I'm not sure if the US counts at all - ignoring the completely irrelevant stuff, it seems more True Art Is Foreign + fictional portrayal of Americans as screwing up where other countries succeed (no real mention of national culture here). Should the US example be nuked, or just reduced? Or if there's anyone who knows a lot about CC in those countries maybe they should just be rewritten?

I just remembered this is a Useful Notes page rather than an ordinary tropes page, so it certainly should be revised so people don't go off misinformed. Suggestion for fixing the trope comparison bit, which seemed very unclear:

Maybe mention could also be added of how A. A. Philips original essay related specifically to Australians' inferiority complex towards Britain, or maybe that's overkill.

(edited for clarity)

edited 15th May '11 5:43:40 PM by Ckuckoo

@Ckuckoo - Most of the section about Britain is irrelevant, I agree. There has been a British cultural cringe towards continental Europe for centuries though, in the sense that many people have felt that Europe had a more sophisticated level of high culture than we did. That's the reason 18th century English aristocrats went off on the Grand Tour to France and Italy. The "foreign food is better" thing is related to that, and it too has been there for a long time. It's been joined in more modern times by a belief in some quarters that the US "does" pop culture like TV better.

The US certainly did have a cultural cringe towards Britain when it first became independent. I'm sure I have in a book somewhere a really cringeworthy quote from Ben Franklin apologising to some British worthy for his Americanisms. I doubt it really exists now though - that whole section reads more like a Take That! to those awful foreign-loving liberals. However, I think I'd rather have an American confirm my suspicions before I tell them they haven't actually got a cultural cringe.

Likewise on Canada, although I wouldn't be surprised to find out that English-speaking Canadians had something similar to the Australian cultural cringe at one time. Same issue of "The Mother Country" and so on.

I think that there's a definite American Cultural Cringe about art, and probably one about automobiles as well — Japanese cars are better in terms of efficiency and European cars are better in terms of quality — to the point that Chrysler is now running ads with a tagline "The Chrysler 200 has arrived. Imported From Detroit".

Probably chocolate as well.

edited 16th May '11 12:46:58 PM by Madrugada

Hmm interesting, I didn't know any of this stuff about Britain and the US. Since there doesn't seem to be any defence for the current US/UK articles I've replaced most of the stuff with a tweaked-to-fit version of the stuff from this thread.

@ captainbrass 2

Yeah, I'm sure English-speaking Canada (and New Zealand too) once had the same kind of symptoms Australians did. I don't know how to fix up the current example to reflect this in a knowledgeable way though.

I'm sure most countries have this particular cringe. Continental chocolate... I dream about that stuff...

I've dug up the details of my Ben Franklin story and added it to the American section and also added some detail to the British section. I think this is a much more coherent article now.

Ckuckoo had earlier attempted to remove a lot of the U.S. example and claim it was "natter" before he started this Trope Repair Shop thread. He had also attempted to remove the Reputation Institute's findings on national self-image in the past, as well.

I disagree with the removal of anything relating to national self-image, which Ckuckoo claims here to be incongruous with the rest of the article. I also think he and captainbrass2 were wrong to suggest that the U.S. section was "irrelevant" and more like "True Art Is Foreign," or that it was a Take That! toward "foreign-loving liberals."

It dealt only with the perception Americans had of themselves and their own culture. Just how does a person who staunchly believes his culture is inferior and thinks his countrymen conform to every negative stereotype a "liberal?"

It's interesting captainbrass2 would claim it has an anti-liberal bias at all. There's a person in Cultural Cringe's discussion page who claimed the "How to Recognize That You're American" link in the opening description had a "conservative bias." Perhaps the two of them are reading national politics into something that doesn't deal at all with that subject, only self-perception.

Cultural cringe ultimately deals with national and cultural identity, and it has been identified as a type of inferiority complex by other social commentators (Merrill Dennison for example). Self-loathing and other self-esteem issues are all part of problems arising from a poor self-image, of which cultural cringe is one.

Therefore I think the parts involving national self-image that were removed should be added back, with emphasis that it is a facet of having a cultural cringe.

edited 21st May '11 7:24:06 AM by TrevMUN

Liberal and conservative are political positions, and have no direct relationship with whether someone thinks that their country is inferior to another country.

Exactly. None of what I described is political in nature.

Having cultural or national self-loathing does not automatically make you a "foreign-loving liberal." Nor does asserting your cultural or national identity make you a conservative.

edited 21st May '11 7:38:02 AM by TrevMUN

The tacked on bit about the survey is irrelevant to the trope. And the trope is what the page should be about.

How is it irrelevant to the trope when cultural cringe is an issue of national and cultural identity?

As I noted in my initial post, cultural and national self-loathing are a part of this phenomenon, just as self-loathing is a part of any other inferiority complex.

edited 21st May '11 8:00:41 AM by TrevMUN

It's about the concept. Not how it's used in fiction or other entertainment media.

Madrugada, this is a Useful Notes page we're talking about. We aren't talking about a trope article here.

I thought Useful Notes pages were there to inform people, not to strictly discuss how a trope is used in media, as the index for Useful Notes pages explains.

edited 21st May '11 8:50:40 AM by TrevMUN

Then it should be in the Useful Notes namespace, not Main, and the examples should be pruned.

Right now, there's nothing to indicate it's a Useful Notes page. It's in the wrong namespace for Useful Notes, it's written like a trope page, it cites both a Trope Namer and a Trope Codifier, It's got a Compare to: and See Also: section, And it's got a huge list of examples in fiction. Those are all things that mark a trope page rather than a Useful Notes page.

edited 21st May '11 9:04:27 AM by Madrugada

It's listed under the Useful Notes/Australia index. I don't know how to handle moving Cultural Cringe to the Useful Notes namespace, though.

Also, it does not have a list of examples. If you read the article, you'll notice the folders are there to categorize cases of the cultural cringe by country.

edited 21st May '11 9:11:55 AM by TrevMUN

Then the big

Examples

header needs to go away.

And as it stood, it was misinforming them by tacking on examples of people who were perceived as not liking their own country generally to a page that's about people who think their country is inferior to another/others. That, to me, is the real core of the problem.

I mentioned "foreign-loving liberals" only because the tone of that section came across as a Take That! against somebody and the Strawman version of someone on the left may well include the idea of them thinking that other countries do things better. In the UK, you might have the sort of person who goes on endlessly about the wonderful Scandinavian welfare state as opposed to the awful British one. However, it was only a guess and I don't claim mind-reading powers. If I was wrong on that point, fine, but I still think the examples (or descriptions of the cringe in a particular country, if you prefer) weren't accurate to what they were seeking to illustrate.

edited 21st May '11 9:21:09 AM by captainbrass2

Madrugada: I've edited the "Examples" statement to instead read "Cultural Cringe by country."

I'm not sure what to do about the Trope Namer and Trope Codifier instances, though. As a concept, A. A. Phillips was the one who gave the concept a name and described it in his essay, and that's still important information.

captainbrass 2: The problem with the claim that it was a "Take That! against foreign-loving liberals" is that there was no one specific culture or country named, neither as a country which Americans hold up on a pedestal as being better, nor as a country praised for having better policies.

In fact, there were absolutely no statements made about the national policies of any country.

If either case were true, it would have been better to have moved that stuff to True Art Is Foreign or (for anything political) Cultural Posturing. However, the portion on the United States pointedly did not make any such claims. It focused entirely on American self-image, and that was it.

edited 21st May '11 11:02:10 AM by TrevMUN

Well, for me that was exactly the problem with those sections. They didn't say "Many Americans consider their country is inferior to X or Y country in A or B", and for me that's what is meant by "cultural cringe", not just a general view that " some people think we're no good and foreigners in some general sense are better", with an implication of "and how could they think that!"

As you say, the term was invented by an Australian and originally related to Australians feeling their culture was inferior to Britain's because Australia had been a British colony, something which persisted after independence. It was based in what had been a specific relationship between the two. I think that's what this is about - a feeling that another specific country is better in some area because of a specific historical relationship. So you can have 18th/19th century Americans who felt British culture was superior because they were coming out of being a colony or Americans in the 80s/90s who felt Japan was economically superior, but just general comments about people thinking anywhere's better than America is just too vague.

Just to reassure anyone, I'm not trying to bash the US or any other country here. I don't want to be the Lord Cornwallis of TV Tropes.

captainbrass 2, what you're describing isn't Cultural Cringe as a whole, but something closer to Colonial Mentality. That's when a colonized culture has an inferiority complex toward the culture that colonized them.

edited 21st May '11 2:19:55 PM by TrevMUN

No, I think a colonial mentality is a sub-set of a cultural cringe. In practice, it's quite a big sub-set, but there are other examples like the America - Japan one I mentioned, or the British view of the French and Italians as being more cultured, that don't originate in being a colony of the other country.

The point is, though, that the cringe is specific to a particular country and a particular area of human activity, even if that's quite broad. "X has better cuisine than us" or "Y's political system is fairer." It's not just the feeling that "my country sucks and abroad is cool" in general.

captainbrass 2, that's why I said "what you're describing isn't Cultural Cringe as a whole."

Furthermore, cases of "X has better cuisine than us" or "Y's political system is fairer" is better served by True Art Is Foreign, where people hold a specific foreign source as being superior. Political cases (when they aren't flamebait) would probably fit under Cultural Posturing instead.

No, True Art Is Foreign is specifically about art, not "anything foreign".