How do Americans feel about being imitated culturally?

In most countries, there have been significant cultural changes in the last six decades. And most of these changes can be neatly summarised as "America Takes Over the World".

T-shirts and jeans have become the standard informal wear across the globe. American Mega Corps like Nike, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds are raking in the billions from Buenos Aires to Beijing, slapping their logos on everything in the process. Ninety per cent of all commercially produced films are made in the United States. Just about every genre of popular music either originated in the US or was derived from one that did. Gratuitous English (emphasis on the "gratuitous") is spoken in every country on the planet except France.

This is quite significant: for anyone not living in the US (or Canada), "modern" culture is foreign culture, from that mysterious country far away where everything is bigger and faster and more exciting. In most countries, the reactions to this ever-increasing imitation of America have followed more or less the same pattern: some embrace it enthusiastically, others reject it in favour of their own "traditional" culture, and most just accept it without giving it much thought. And then there's a small group which embraces foreign culture and cosmopolitanism, but would prefer 'foreign' not to mean 'American' exclusively.

But that's not the debate I'm interested in here. Rather, I'd like to ask my American fellow tropers how it feels for them. How does it feel for the ones being copied, rather than the ones doing the copying? Do you take it for granted that American culture has spread across the globe? Do you think it's a good thing? Do you feel bad about it? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Any cultural that can be run over by American culture deserves it.

@Deboss,

Oh, go build yourself a robot and stop being absurd.

Um... to be honest, it really doesn't matter to me. If other countries want to import our culture, that's great. If not, well then I guess they'll have to work that out themselves, because there's nothing I can do about it...

It's fun to see the different cultures mix together.

If the only thing keeping a piece of local culture alive is tradition, it is obviously a failure of culture. That's pretty simple logic.

That sentence displays a total lack of understanding to what culture actually is and how it's supposed to function, given that traditions are an inherent part of culture.

Culture is everything that a people are. Tradition is merely one part of that. *shrug* I don't really care if American culture is getting imported over, as I don't think it can be imported wholesale without encountering a lot of alteration by the local population. Hell, American culture itself can't really reduced to one, because you're going to encounter something very different in Florida than you would in Vermont or Texas or California.

It's flattering. But if it goes too far, then all of out cultural stereotype jokes will disappear.

IS IT WORTH THAT COST, PEOPLE?

And tradition, as always, is something which should be destroyed. That's why it's tradition rather than logic or reason.

Aw hell nah. I haven't been to Europe yet so they can say I'm an ignorant jingoistic cowboy!

Yeehaw!

Oh go away. Come back when you have any kind of basic grasp of sociology.

edited 10th Feb '12 9:39:00 PM by Flyboy

Seeing the same logos, clothing and behaviors everywhere you go is very boring though. Everybody eats Mc Donald's, everybody wears Levi's/Mastermind Japan/edgy American punk stuff, everybody likes Taylor Swift/Justin Bieber (although frankly the Cantopop here is just as bad), everybody carries an iPhone/iPad/iWhatever.

It's pretty simple: tradition is bad, logic is good. People pursue what they enjoy, if something a foreigner came up with is superior to the local older stuff, it's being supplanted is obviously a good thing.

AS for the specifics of American culture: that other cultures are killing their traditions in order to pursue their own personal benefits is good. That they decided to gank American benefits is irrelevant. So, meh?

edited 10th Feb '12 9:45:13 PM by Deboss

Our basic system of laws are tradition, Deboss. Most people agree that it's good we have those. Language is a tradition. Holidays are a tradition. Culture isn't culture without tradition. Most traditions are, in fact, pretty neutral, and many are actively good things.

So this is the basis of your anti-art belief? Just asking. Wouldn't want such a derail.

I would say it's interesting seeing the cultures intermixed. I wouldn't say American culture would knock out native culture entirely. People are too stubborn to throw away everything in most cases. What's more likely is that the best parts of both worlds are combined to create something more interesting.

edited 10th Feb '12 9:49:36 PM by chihuahua0

If they're actively good, then they're not really something defended by tradition, they're defended by them being good. Tradition is "because we've always done that" otherwise it's just an action with actual logic behind it. If it has logic behind it, it's not a tradition.

1. the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation, especially by word of mouth or by practice: a story that has come down to us by popular tradition. 2. something that is handed down: the traditions of the Eskimos. 3. a long-established or inherited way of thinking or acting: The rebellious students wanted to break with tradition. 4. a continuing pattern of culture beliefs or practices. 5. a customary or characteristic method or manner: The winner took a victory lap in the usual track tradition.

Yeah, I see no reason why tradition doesn't have a kind of logic behind it. It's something people do; the logic is that it's part of their culture. You have an entirely different definition for some words than what they actually are. So much of any culture is tradition that even when adapting parts of another culture, you're likely to end up keeping things like the old fairytales to tell your children. Or the clothes of your culture even if you take on another language. Traditions, in large part, make a culture. And I don't consider what's happening to be taking on American culture wholesale; it's being adapted to for use in other cultures.

3 is the one I'm using. 5 possibly as well. Things that do not have a logical analysis of why you should do something are a tradition. Specifically, I'm referencing things like Appeal to Tradition.

Literally everything our culture is is tradition, Deboss. Being tradition alone does not make a thing bad. Our language is tradition. The fact that we even have computers is part of a relatively new tradition. Again, our laws are tradition. Any change to them goes through usually traditional methods to change them.

And I don't find appeal to tradition in itself a bad thing. Some people really do think doing things the old way (whatever that happens to be) is better. And sometimes they're right. The reason the appeal to tradition even works as well as it does is because people respond better to emotional persuasion than logical most of the time, so even when listing facts they do so in an emotional way.

And yeah, you really don't understand sociology.

I'm going to be totally honest here.

In some ways, part of me unthinkingly accepts it. And I suspect a lot of Americans share my view. It stands to reason (from our perspective) that our culture would triumph. It's the culture that we know and if not love, than at least understand.

So I don't even enjoy it. I see most of it, if I'm being totally honest, as the modernization of the rest of the world.

edited 10th Feb '12 10:16:00 PM by Ultrayellow

I believe I speak for my fellow Americans when I say we don't really care. It's the same with virtually everything else. We're so insulated from the rest of the world that we don't even notice if they're wearing American jeans or Nike shoes. We're totally apathetic.

Well, you don't speak for me. It actually bothers me a lot. Maybe it's no bad thing if the world adopts a monoculture to some degree, but why does it have to be this one? On the whole, American culture stands for greed, selfishness, shallowness, anti-intellectualism, and the most appallingly hypocritical classism. Why would anyone want to follow our example?

edited 10th Feb '12 10:42:18 PM by Karalora

Why do you only want to focus on the negative aspects? If you're doing that, you could call any culture bad?

Personally, I see the takeover of my "native culture" as disgusting. But it probably makes the tourists who assume other countries are americans who dress funny when we visit like a themepark happy.

A lot of people being flawed doesn't mean it's not a flaw. If it's worth doing because it has a benefit, that benefit is why it's worth doing, not the tradition that managed to worm its way into peoples minds.

Isn't Logic itself a Tradition?

edited 11th Feb '12 12:45:32 AM by Greenmantle