Earlier today, I was thinking about a conversation I had with a fellow academic type about how he could get a job in a linguistics department in Germany but didn't want to. One of the things he mentioned was hostility towards Americans. Now, there are some things people might legitimately be hostile about, but this involved people sneering that Americans don't have any culture. I've heard this before, and it always impresses me deeply with the conviction that the speaker is both an idiot and a jackass. Listen: if we don't have culture, how come everybody listens to our music and watches our movies? What the hell do they think jazz and rock and roll are? Our culture is one of our biggest exports. You can't export what you don't have. They are just jealous because, while they supposedly have culture and we don't, nobody wants to buy theirs.
Inevitably, people who say that sort of thing don't actually know any of their own culture. I can sing a whole bunch of traditional American folk songs and tell a few traditional stories. I also know how to cook my own cuisine and do some traditional crafts. I can identify trends in American literature and philosophy and explain their relationship to the rest of the world. Let's see you do that, with whatever is personally applicable, and then we'll talk about who has "culture." The same people also inevitably don't have any appreciable knowledge of American culture on which to base their sweeping opinions, even (or especially) how it intersects with world culture. For example, Mohandias Gandhi was definitely an important world figure who influenced a lot of people including Martin Luther King, Jr. Gandhi in turn read and was influenced by Thoreau.
Deepak Chopra brought up this canard about Americans' supposed lack of culture at Mythic Journeys in Atlanta a couple years ago. I then got to witness Coleman Barks delivering the smackdown on him for it. All he did was turn to the cello player behind them and say, "Play me some blues." It was a beautiful moment.
The problem with the attitude, other than the fact that it's bullshit, is that it then leads people to not be able to comprehend why Americans do things. This is a problem because, like it or not, we have a lot of weight to throw around* and it might be useful for people to figure us out a little. But no, they think we are just Europe, Jr. and have no culture of our own and therefore are motivated by the same basic worldview that Europeans are. Which is patently untrue and leads to further stupid assumptions. We have a different history and traditions, even from somewhat similar countries like Canada and Australia, and there really is a relationship between that and the peculiar things we think up to do. I swear.
Europeans especially like to project their own ideas about America onto us, and explain us, like we need explaining. They've been doing that since Alexis de Tocqueville, and it's tiresome. You do not find Americans, for the most part, coming up with simplistic theories about what makes other countries tick.** That may be because we're not that interested in anybody but ourselves, but it is also possible that we know you can't just explain people like that. It could be, dare I suggest it, humility on our part.
If you want to understand Americans, listen to the blues. And then some of our folk ballads. (Most if not all of our popular music has its roots in these two forms). All our most traditional songs are about exile and loss. They are all sad, even the funny ones. Especially the funny ones...in "Clementine," she dies. Then the singer goes on to describe how Clementine, his lost love, visits him in his dreams.
All of this will no doubt be lost on people who want to believe that Americans are just a bunch of shallow, uncultured louts whose main contribution to the world is fast food and pop top cans. We even buy that line ourselves, all too often. I think that, on the contrary, Americans are driven by an immense well of sadness*** which we express in our art and music and writing, and informs everything we do as a collective group. Even the famous drive to succeed and achieve all over everything is linked to that, if you think about it. At any rate, Americans are a good bit deeper than even we give ourselves credit for, and much more so than most people seem to think. Next time someone tries to tell you that Americans don't have any culture, tell them you're sorry that they don't understand it. Then play them some blues.
*I personally think this is Not a Good Thing, but nobody is taking my advice on the subject. In any case, it is what it is.
**The exception that springs to mind is that "They hate us because of our freedom" nonsense and ridiculous attitudes towards the Middle East in general. It's both an aberration and a demonstration of how stupid that sort of thing is.
***July 4, 1776. America is a Cancer. Explains a lot, don't it? I also think this disproves the Secret Mystic Masonic Cabal theory of the Founding Fathers, since if they had been more hip to astrology they would have waited a couple more weeks. America as a Leo would have been much less conflicted. On the other hand, they were all against kings and empires, so maybe they did it on purpose. Perhaps Leo America would have been more of an asshole without the constant desire to make everything better and give everyone milk and cookies and airlifted medical supplies. Perhaps we are all better off with America as a big woobie.
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gracielou
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Comments
Whoa, girl, you're being needlessly knee-jerk-ish here. Your whole post reads to me the way many black people respond to white racism, that is, by a visceral reverse racism that does more to prove the futility of the whole affair.
Firstly, I would assume that anyone making such an asinine comment would be referring to so-called 'high culture' (the famed 'Kultur' of the German-speaking peoples). Here you're placing silly value on the rather low-brow tastes of most people, as you seem to do considering you mention how much the rest of the world 'buys' our culture. But the purchasing power of the great mass of people isn't of concern to me, to be honest. I, for one, have nothing to fear of some elitism.
After all 'high culture' (American or otherwise) doesn't have a price tag; it's why some items are rightly deemed 'priceless'. It's what the world's museums are stocked with, not rubbish television programmes or cheesy pop music. And 100 million people across the globe might watch whatever shit film Roland Emmerich (who, after all, is German) has squeezed out of the studios, but to say he's more 'artistic'/skilled (as a money-maker, par excellence) than a Mozart or a Goethe is daft. Not that you're saying this, of course, but that's where that first comment takes us...
As an (expat) American I too take exception to the notion that the United States has no culture. But I also believe that American POP culture is cynically bland, insipid and insidious. I've felt that way all of my life, and didn't need non-Americans to tell me this. But that is my prerogative as a citizen of the country which gave rise to
But why is American pop culture so dominant, then, you might ask? Yes, the average Joe has rubbish taste, that goes without saying. But that is the same everywhere. Sure, one can claim pop culture started in America. Maybe.
But why it CONTINUES to dominate has less to do with 'quality' (har-har-har) and more to do with simple incumbency. Our pop culture became dominant at a time when the rest of the world simply could not match its output; Europe and Asia were in ruins after the Second World War, and the rest of the world was undeveloped. The Americas, however, were unscathed and economically primed to sell their wares to the rest of the world. And whereas our crap cars and their industrial like eventually became less competitive over time the same has not happened in entertainment; basically, the American film and music companies continue to exert a virtual monopoly through their incumbency, their size and their market penetration.
This 'domination' in the means of producing culture is what many folks understandably resent. That they CAN develop their own cultural industries is beside the point, and in the event India has done so nicely--American films there play second-fiddle to Bollywood films at the box office, almost to a film.
Europeans especially like to project their own ideas about America onto us, and explain us, like we need explaining.
Agreed. But I do jealously contest your further thesis, that Americans don't do the same thing; Americans routinely do the same, on both the left and the right of the political spectrum, and not only their values. Our assumptions of the world routinely colour everything from our views of economic development, to the role of the state in the market economies, to the lack of nuance in covering world affairs (like when daft CNN reporters fall back on 'ethnic/religious tensions' to explain many global affairs, when much more is going on). And so on and so forth. We all do the same thing; the only difference is that in Europe and elsewhere they put a special premium in learning as much as possible what they can about America, even when that information is distorted, to a degree Americans never reciprocate.
Again, this information may often be simplistic, just as America's coverage of other countries is--but the sheer amount of information others absorb about America compared to what Americans receive about the rest of the world COMBINED is lopsided, to put it mildly. That's not humility, but an enforced ignorance and arrogance.
This state of affairs is not the fault of individual Americans, perhaps, but of the media, which filters our content. It's why foreigners watch our television programmes in their original format, but Americans are treated like fools and forced to watch usually execrable 'Americanised' versions of foreign programmes.
And yes, I'm one of the few who include 'The Office' (US) in this. :-P
Or something along those lines, hehe.
Take it from the Southern girl : Do not ever use that phrase again. It does not inspire anyone who understands the concept of racism to take your opinions seriously. Also from someone who spent her whole life here and is only four generations away from slave-owners: Do not ever describe the enterprise of dismantling racism as futile. It isn't so.
Racism is a particular relationship between prejudice and power...
I vaguely remember reading Frederickson's Racism: A Short History in university--I'm sure you've come across it, and it's still ensconced somewhere in my book collection in the US--which makes a similar argument. I remember him making some hash about the distinction between prejudice and racism precisely on the grounds that one group holds power to the detriment of another. In a nutshell. A bit Foucault-ish to me, hélas.
Racism has taken many hues in many different parts of the world, and power has been the determinant more often than not. That goes without saying. It's obvious that particular power relationships give rise to different ethnic prejudices, different relationships. That's to say racism is a historical phenomenon with necessarily contingent factors. Sure.
But from the rather more important perspective of the present, from a moral perspective, I find the argument highly unpersuasive. We draw distinctions between similar actions in different contexts for all sorts of reasons; we do so for intellectual categorisation and a will to put attitudes, opinions and events in their proper context.
But actions and the prejudices that give rise to them should not be diluted by a long historical view. That is what we risk in not calling things what they are. You may call those who perpetrate race-on-race violence (black on white, 'brown'--whatever that means--on black, East Asian on South Asian...) whatever you like; I would argue that splitting hairs on specific words makes no practical sense. I have no compunction in calling Hispanic gangs in LA who stab blacks, or blacks who shoot whites, all in the name of their race, what they are: unacceptable manifestations of racism, through and through.
And I'm sorry, my southern friend, but you've given me absolutely no reason why I shouldn't use 'racism' as I see fit, accept by couching that request in a rather patronising 'take it from me' formulation. My 'understanding' of racism is different from yours, sure; it is no less correct, and no less 'nuanced'. Yours is informed by the history of AMERICAN slavery; I'd like to take a slightly wider view. Why you should have something to say about 'racism' when I shouldn't seems far from obvious to me simply because of your ancestors. Nor, indeed, do I believe my education (formal and informal) puts me at a disadvantage in making my case.
Besides, I have roots too, and they go both far and deep.