this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
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I mean, of course USA has culture - it's one of their most successful international exports!
I think when people complain about lack of culture they usually mean "old" culture, since USA as a country is still relatively young.
The pervasive, loud, aggressive "America is full of stupid yokels and has no culture herp derp" sentiment seems to have really ramped up in recent years. I really wonder if it's a side effect of recent politicians pushing increasingly bizarre and oppressive agendas, and actually getting elected.
Maybe we deserve the disdain.
we're sick of the US being the dominant , assumend cultural force and want something else.
Europe is all old culture, no new culture. America is all new culture, no old culture. Yes, I know that's not 100% true, but how many European countries have their version of Hollywood, Disney or silicon valley? Iirc india, China and Japan all have their equivalents, where's yours?. You just don't spend anywhere near the same amount of money on movies, music and TV. On the opposite side, European art tends to be a lot more mature, however you have to spend money promoting it if you want to compete with the US.
Tbf America is nearly equivalent in size to the full West Europe and the culture difference between east and west coast of America is much smaller than the difference in culture between different European countries. With each country focusing on their own culture there, none of them will ever grow to the size of Hollywood. And with the smaller size, they have less content and less opportunities to captivate people from other places as well. It's a full circle.
lol, America is nearly equal in size to ALL of Europe. they are within 5% of each other.
Japan is probably the next biggest cultural exporter after the US and isn't that much bigger than Germany or Norway.
Lol, no.
Most have them, but Europe speaks dozens of languages, so they are all comparatively small compared to the big English-speaking ones.
We mostly are still building on rehashes of old European folk tales, just like Disney. That said, for example Dutch "Disneyland" exists, you just never heard of it because you did not grow up with Max & Moritz, but Dutch kids did.
Well, that place is mostly about venture capitalists who originally got rich off neocolonialism doing dumping schemes on various industries. Their biggest, most impactful cultural achievement is internet ads.
We do, but we watch our own TV because you don't watch French or Polish shows or games. Except when you do, and it gets translated, like with the Witcher. Also, with music, have you heard of Eurovision? Biggest song contest of the world, with even Australia participating? The one where Celine Dion, Julio Iglesias or ABBA got their start? You probably listen to a ton of songs that debuted there, you just don't know it.
All I'm saying is that just because European low art is not big in the US - even though it is, like Harry Potter, Lego, basically all Western (as in Wild West) movies (they were Italian) - it does not mean it is not bigger in Europe than US art.
Edit: Why the downvotes though? I am not saying "US culture bad", just that "European culture exists". Could anyone elaborate on what's so bad about what I'm saying?
I'm not taking issue with anything else, but I just have to say something about the last bit of what you said.
Westerns. No. Not all of them. Or even most of them are from Italy. That's a special and significant subgenre called Spaghetti Westerns. Or Italian westerns, mostly because of Sergio Leone, these happened in the 60s and 70s. But if you look at the history of westerns and western movies, they were made in the US starting all the way back in the 1910s with silent films and continued on into the golden age of the 40s and 50s.
I stand corrected, not a big fan of them so I didn't think about it too hard.