The U.S. Culture(s) thread

, Anyone who would actually do this is taking the show way too seriously and is almost certainly projecting a lot.

Argh, page-topper.

edited 9th Dec '16 8:09:24 AM by M84

There's reading too much into something, but '' "Little kids pony show promotes fascism/communism" is taking things to Harry Potter-is-satanism levels . I don't think my little sister watched it for that message.

I don't see why a cartoon couldn't espouse monarchist, communist, fascist or even satanist values. And MLP: Fi M does show that everyone has a place, and that said place is fated/inate and can't be changed.

edited 9th Dec '16 8:20:33 AM by Antiteilchen

On the subject of cutie marks being fascist, I'd argue that it's shown from the first episode where they're explained (Call of the Cutie) that their meaning is subject to an individual pony's interpretation of their cutie mark, and that interpretation can change over time (as shown with Diamond Tiara and Troubleshoes). Cheerilee is an example of a pony with a more abstract interpretation of her cutie mark; a flower cutie mark doesn't necessarily mean she HAS to be a teacher, but that's how she interpreted it. Plus, they're not FORCED to be given a certain cutie mark or interpretation of it, getting one is the result of a process of self-discovery and realizing not only your special talent, but also your passion in life. The only times a cutie mark forced a pony to act in a certain way, they were being controlled by outside magic (Twilight's accidental spell in Magical Mystery Cure and Starlight Glimmer taking them away and replacing them with equal signs) or a pony had a disease (when Apple Bloom got the Cutie Pox). I don't ever remember cutie marks being "fated", though, aside from the theory that Twilight's cutie mark is predicted on the tree where the Elements of Harmony are put into in the first part of the 4th season, and that's just one pony.

I'd wonder myself at what point in the show that article/website that said "MLP is fascist" came about, because some things have changed over time in the show (the Elements of Harmony aren't even used anymore after the beginning of the 4th season, and more villains are reformed through kinder methods than just zapping them with magic, starting with Discord in the 3rd season). Plus, the Everfree Forest isn't portrayed as being as evil and unnatural as it was made out to be in the earliest episodes, with the ponies visiting it more casually later on.

On the other hand, I can see how some aspects of the show could be interpreted as positively portraying fascist or at least autocratic elements, since their society is ruled by two princesses who weren't elected democratically. But whether or not the show is promoting that as something that is superior to democracy in real life, is probably a matter of viewer interpretation, rather than something that the show writers were trying to push on purpose.

edited 9th Dec '16 9:14:28 AM by Rainbow

And saying Fi M is pro fascism is really ignoring all other values the show has. Like practically all lessons and aesops. I personally don't like the concept of Cutie Marks but their intention is to show off individuality and worth of every single person. Not very fascist.

On that I agree.

New question: Considering America breathes on anti-intellectualism, how is there the need for the Great American Novel then?

None any more, but not due to that.

In the early to mid 19th Century, the United States developed a certain desire to prove they were their "own country", with a distinct cultural identity separate from England or (to a lesser extent) other European and Asian powers. As our page says, the Great American Novel is one such fruit of that particular line of thought, based on the idea that the U.S. was hugely divorced from traditions of mythology that were present in those countries. (It didn't help they were willing to stomp over most Native mythologies instead of trying to integrate them with Christianity, but there were other issues at work there too.)

Most modern people don't care anymore, either because of general apathy or that we've realized that the true impact of said works takes several centuries to manifest, and the U.S. has not had those centuries. (And may not yet, the jury's still out on that.) Cultural imperialism is largely dead in the U.S., even among the most extreme extremists - most people focus on economic and social issues as metrics these days.

Whether or not something could be determined to be "The" Great American novel is only something that would be decided long after it was written, possibly after the author was dead. Hell, Shakespeare's popularity is probably greater now than when he was alive. The ambition towards such a thing was mostly rooted in a time when Americans were considered. and considered themselves, to not have as great or as deep a literary tradition. It was part of a cultural cringe which I don't think many Americans feel anymore in that particular way. So it's probably not part of anti-intellectualism, as it was a thing only felt by part of the American populace anyway, it's largely that we don't feel quite so inadequate in that way these days.

Of course, the fans of Shakespeare in his time (his plays were primarily written as performances for the general public) were not the fans of Shakespeare today (many in academia). That's the other aspect of this - because "lowbrow" art is made for a wider group of people, it has a higher chance of keeping its staying power.

So when searching for this "great" novel, I suspect a lot of people looked in the wrong places.

edited 9th Dec '16 2:46:49 PM by TotemicHero

I'm not sure I'd say America is anti-intellectual. I'd say the reason why we like Batman for example is because he usually wins using his intelligence.

That...doesn't really prove much, since Batman's intellectual qualities are pretty far removed from what's being pointed out.

The reason America is anti-intellectual is because large portions of it demonize the establishments of learning and the very institution of science, discrediting evolution, climate change, and historiography based on gut feelings, religious fundamentalism and Mc Carthyism rather than any actual serious intellectual inquiry into those matters.

One story that got posted in the US Politics thread a long while ago about the US's fundamentalism had the writer getting into an argument with a rural white, with the latter interjecting with "that's your education talking", as if having an education and wanting to learn stuff about the world is somehow a bad thing.

edited 9th Dec '16 6:40:59 PM by Draghinazzo

I still think that anti-intellectualism stems from envy of those deemed intellectual.

Protagonist, you can't say "We like Batman" as if that comprises most of the people in the country or claim that everyone who likes him likes him for the same reason. Also, liking one character doesn't actually prove anything one way or another about whether or not the larger culture is "anti-intellectual". This is an utter nonsense claim the way you've posited it. The concept itself and the cause of it are more complicated than people liking any fictional character.

Claims of anti-intellectualism comes from things like Santorum claiming Obama's statements about everyone should be able to go to college really means that everyone should go to college and that Obama is a snob. There's a large sector of our population that readily fosters that kind of thinking. This is where the phenomena comes from, and I'm willing to be that a large part of the population that agrees with Santorum also like Batman.

I've always sort of felt that there was a faint inferiority complex associated with it myself. After all, if they didn't consider them to be above them in some way, even if it's mostly economically, they wouldn't keep referring to them as the "liberal ELITE".

Anyways, one point I was going to make was that some people inherently distrust learning and various scientists on contentious subjects because they assume that they're all part of said "liberal elite" and that they're conspiring to undermine America with lies.

While there is obviously some truth to the fact that a lot of university professors are liberal-leaning, one poster rightly points out that the student isn't some blank slate upon which the professor imprints their worldview. The idea that "EVIL LIBRULS BRAINWASHING THE KIDZZZ" is at best, a gross exaggeration that completely misses actual problems that might exist in universities' curriculums.

Not to mention that some subjects completely transcend left or right. Evolution is a fact, climate change is a fact, and it is a fact that the American Civil War was primarily about slavery. Accepting those as facts in no way prevents you from being a conservative, as witnessed by Evan Mc Mullin and Mitt Romney. That large parts of the Republican party refuse to acknowledge them as facts or cast doubt upon them to placate their base's ignorance makes them anti-intellectual by association and undermines their credibility.

edited 9th Dec '16 7:37:00 PM by Draghinazzo

You know what's fascinating about the "Great American Novel" thing? Most of the candidates blast American culture. The Great Gatsby shows how hollow the Roaring Twenties were, Death of a Salesman (which is technically a play, but whatever) attacks the American Dream and so on. Even badly written stuff that gets held up as the Great American Novel, like Ayn Rand's stuff, tends to have the message of "American culture is totally broken, so we should replace it with a culture of my design." There are books that say "American culture is awesome" but none of them last.

Granted, big chunks of the US don't get how negative a lot of these books actually are. Like, they think Willie Loman's pathetic dreams in Death of a Salesman are something to strive for, or the green light in the Great Gatsby, a textbook example of an unattainable goal, is an admirable target. Like, these people have been trained to not only ignore the subtext, but also to ignore the surface level meaning in favour of something they made up.

Big chunks of the US haven't even read these books (or seen Death of a Salesman), they just know that they're well-respected classics and pretend they read and liked them because they think it makes them look smarter/more cultured.

We talk about anti-intellectualism, but there's also the problem of people claiming they like a "classic" work, but the only thing they know about is that it's critically acclaimed, and everyone else likes it, so they should too. That's how you get these "born in the wrong generation" types; teenagers and maybe even some early 20-somethings saying they wish they were born in an era where "real" music (blech) was still alive because they think liking older music makes them smarter and desperately want to appear as such to previous generations and disprove the "kids today don't know music" they throw around.

...I think I got a bit off-track.

edited 10th Dec '16 6:50:10 AM by PhysicalStamina

How many of the Great American Novel candidates were made mandatory reading in school? I think it might have something to do with people's understanding of it, or rather their attempts to forget it after several miserable semesters.

Gatsby by far is arguably the most popular required reading book in high-schools. The young adult audience finds the tragic romance plot much more appealing than John Steinbeck's farm narratives for sure; it really helps that most of the girls, at least in my English class then, have already been introduced to the materal through the Baz Luhrmann film.

Reading one or more of any given great novel/play is worth little by itself. You have to teach critical thinking skills and the public school system is, in general, pretty bad at it, even the parts of it that try to.

The school system is good at making students hate it as well, and, well, there's little you can do to teach a student who does not want to be there. It is still mainly rooted in the Prussian system which is not conducive to being adaptable, exploratory etc. It is not helped by structures like No Child Left Behind which put an unhealthy focus on standardized testing. And there's the very basic fact that if you crowd a bunch of kids in a room for hours at a time and try to make them sit still and pay attention, you're working against their impulses toward play which is an animal's built-in system for learning things.

They're not exactly giving these great novels to grade schoolers, though. By they time they're in highschool they've learned how to sit still for a while. Also I'm stumped as to how you learn about literature through play unless you're in a theater class, so your comment kind of falls apart there.

Also it greatly depends on individual teachers. For two years I had an English teacher (as in the same teacher as she was the one who taught the AP classes at the time for those grades.) that everyone on class pretty much loved and we all did fairly well with the assigned reading. The other two years were kind of meh.

edited 10th Dec '16 1:39:30 PM by AceofSpades

The attitudes fostered in the early grades of school persist in upper grades.

I'm probably not at my most coherent at the moment but this was a pet subject of mine about a decade ago. There are problems in the public school system that most people don't even realize are problems, assumptions that have gone largely unquestioned on a wide scale and a whole lot of other cruft that really out to be reworked from scratch. If I wanted to go into detail about what my ideal school system would look like, at least some of it would resemble the Montessori system, just to give you an idea.

I went to a Montessori school. Just what are the issues you mention about the American education system?

General lack of flexibility on the part of teachers to respond to the needs of the students, frequent reluctance to do this on the part of many teachers, the fact that teachers in general are disrespected by the culture and get shit pay so we frequently get those who aren't truly qualified to be teachers as teachers, the apathy the entire system can foster in both teachers and students.

All of these vary from place to place; in general I think Texas school districts have a lot of flexibility in what they can adopt or ignore regarding regulation, and this can fairly great but uneven results across the state. Other states, however, may have it set up so each school district has to meet a statewide standard, which can create more even results but also reduce a given district's ability to meet the needs of the students.

Also No Child Left behind was a stupid idea. Also my mom hates the concept of Common Core as a teacher because for some reason it shackles teachers in what they can do with their lesson plans.

In very general terms:

It tries very hard to be one size fits all which just isn't possible. Struggling students are more likely to fall behind, bright students are likely to be bored.

It puts too much emphasis on pass/fail metrics: Failure is presented as a thing that's bad rather than as a learning opportunity and putting in the minimum effort to pass does not foster long-term learning.

Too much focus on standardized testing, teaching for the test (and tying the school's funds to the results incentivizes cheating). Similarly, too much focus on rote learning and the 'what' rather than the 'why' of subjects.

It gives too little autonomy to students, especially at higher grades. There are some schools that are difficult to distinguish from prisons in the degree of behavioral control over students. Raising kids to be independent adults means teaching them to be able to act and think independently and to be treated like adults rather than children.

In the same train, at higher grades there ought to be more variety and choice allowed for a student's courses. I believe early college programs, both vocational and liberal arts focused, are a positive step toward this end

There's too much repetition of material. Some of it is a consequence of students forgetting stuff over breaks but, to give an example, why does history and science material repeat between middle and high school?

History and literature at lower grades tends to be very sanitized and over-simplified. I didn't fully start appreciating how complex history was until I hit college and I continue to be amazed at how limited a picture grade school history presents.

___

Now, I'll grant, most of this stuff is the #FirstWorldProblems of the education world. My experience is mostly in small town/rural, mostly white, average to good districts. I'm not even into the problems of schools in poor or violent neighborhoods or schools in states that try to suppress certain subjects for political reasons.