this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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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.
At least here in the UK there has almost always been a distaste for 'americanisms' among the middle-aged and older (conveniently forgetting the ones that entered common use during their youth.) Its largely just snobbery and old man yells at clouds.
It is also less that the states have no culture as they only have low culture. Again, ignoring that most 'high culture' is just old, and was low when it was new. Shakespeare wrote for the common folk, Dante's Inferno was something of a hit piece on everyone he didn't like. The Rite of Spring was hammered by critics who saw it as barberous to the point of insult and suggested women should not be permitted to see it, should it continue to be performed. The Count of Monte Cristo was serialized not unlike a comic book (and was abridged to not scandalise English speaking audiences.)
Yup, it's just snobbery all around.
I would say a large contributor to America's stupid yokle image are the people with the red caps.
Funnily enough some of shittier USA politics also get imported in other countries. :')
What kills me is when I run into people in other countries that are big Trump supporters... Like, I can understand looking at other countries' politicians and maybe seeing one they like, and saying "hey, that one has some things going for them". However, when I run into Trump fan boys from other countries... It hurts my head.
Its tough when Americas old culture is centered around greed or religion. Every bit of old culture has an awful undertone to it unless you were part of the right group.
I bet it is. The President represents us, so when we elect a loud, hateful moron like Trump it makes our entire country look bad
I was disappointed that you guys didn't just hold your nose and vote for Hillary (I know she won the pop vote).
Honestly Obama did wonders to repair your reputation; he was a great statesman. Hillary was a massive step down, but electing Trump....wow what an own goal.
Between BREXIT and Trump, the world got worse pretty quickly.
I am really hoping you get your act together and elect Harris, Trump is worse now than he was in 16 and 20. If he gets elected, it will further embolden the far right, but not just in the USA, the rise of fascism in Germany is not something the world needs again.
That kinda makes sense. At the same time, Brazil is just as young as USA but we have a ton of "old-ish" culture here. The beliefs and stories of the native population merged in with the ones from several incoming cultures and it's now hard to really separate them, as some are much older than the country itself but are clearly inspired by stories from the old world as well. Some mythical creatures that are good examples of this: Saci, Curupira and the Headless Mule.
It might help if your country isn't paranoid about such made up concepts as "cultural appropriation". :)
Which is kinda amusing, since USA is literally made up of several different cultures.
The difference is that Brazil was a slave state were the slaves and local populations became the dominant culture. In the US, white settlers persecuted everyone that wasnt a white English/German protestant. Catholics were ostracized to the point where an entire colony was established to keep them. Millions of native people were slaughtered and their cultural identity stripped and suppressed. Africans taken from their homelands to be sold as property had their entire identity stripped from them while they worked the fields as slaves and denied their own culture. After "liberation" they were still second class citizens who lacked equal rights and had their interests and culutre viewed as lesser. Now those cultural elements have been commercialized, but it's the descendants of the oppressors who profit, not the oppressed. Irish Catholics would be enraged and protest if London had a soccer team called "The Wimbledon Mickeys" or if the RUC did a river dance before official events.
The US is a multicultural state, but that is despite the best efforts of oir leaders, not because of them. I've met plenty of people who scream 'Build the Wall!" and call Mexicans all sorts of slurs, but are then happy to get blackout drunk on Corona and margaritas at a Mexican restaurant on Cinco De Mayo. Jazz music and the blues were forbidden from radio stations because they were associated with black communities, but suddenly white people started to incorporate elements of the blues into music, creating the mosern rockstar. And while Mic Jagger, Elvis Presley, and Steven Tyler are household names, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Muddy Waters are relagted to music history classes.
So your saying opposite teams won their countries, with the US being dominated by the oppressor and Brazil dominated by the oppressed?
That would change the perspective on older culture in each country.
I wouldn't describe it as "winning" or "losing". In the US, Canada, and Australia, the white majority rried to eradicate any non-conforming cultures, whereas in Latin America, Africa, and India, the white settlers in power were so drastically outnumbered that they used various forms of racial hierarchies amd segregation. When those colonial empires collapsed the governments became more representative of the local populations. They still oppressed (and continue to do so) various groups, but indigenous and historical cultures were able to survive due to large populations that were able to carry on those traditions.
I am aware I can phrase things poorly often, but thank you for replying with more to learn about.
Brazil actually merged the freed slaves into society because people at the time thought that over several generations, everybody would end up being white again. In a different way they were also trying to suppress them.
As for the indigenous population, before Portugal arrived here there was one large tribe already dominating all the others. The Portuguese then negotiated with that large tribe and that one tribe's culture managed to survive, but the colonizers also had no respect for it or any of the others and grouped them all together as if being the same thing. The other cultures ended up being either absorbed or erased by that larger tribe.
Do you think people would feel better about how america handles culture if they would stop replacing their culture with things like shopping malls and business center?
Maybe the problem is more about Americans destroying culture and not replacing it with anything that will last or represents them.
The concept of cultural appropriation annoys me so much. Everywhere outside America people tend to love when their culture is appreciated by others that are not part of it.
It's one thing when such culture was created as a safe space for a certain demographic that couldn't be part of stuff from other cultures before - it's understandable that they would hate to see that thing they created for themselves be taken over by the same people that kept them from other things before.
But then at some point someone claimed that participating in things from other cultures at all is bad and all the american whites who consider themselves allies thought "well it's not really my place to say anything to oppose this" so instead they parroted that sentiment, not realizing it was also not their place to say anything to enforce that. In the end, we once again have the whites overriding the opinions of folks from other cultures - this time in a desparare effort to defend them (from something they see no need to be defended from).
Just look at what happened to Speedy Gonzales in Mexico for a good example of this.
What a lot of people hate is when their culture is white washed, and especially when it's later on commercialized.
I was watching a video the other day about a neighborhood in the UK that spawned a genre of music out of the hard times they lived through. That music brought them some prosperity, but it also brought the attention of the government and hipsters. They started cleaning up the area, so more people wanted to move there. So they start cleaning it up more. Slowly but surely the area was fully gentrified and that culture is all but erased, and the area is now just another area that nobody can afford to live in.
Yeah, it seems people in this thread don't actually know what cultural appropriation is. They seem to think that consuming outside culture, and taking inspiration from it, is cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is when a foreign culture takes a culture, or aspect of it, and then positions themselves as the owners of it.
Sometimes a term loses its intended meaning when it is misused enough. I myself have been accused of cultural appropriation before for creating a character of another culture in a video-game I was developing. Any time I see anyone being accused of it on the internet is also something similar.
I agree that actual cultural appropriation is bad, but the term has been misused so much that it is more often associated with simply consuming cultures that you've not inherited.
I agree, I think we need to work on a new term for it and weening off the use of the term in academic/professional circles, which will bleed into the lay population.
So like what Christianity did with the Pagans?
Yes, things like turning the myriad winter holidays of the pagans into christmas is appropriation. Promoting Elvis as the King of Rock is appropriation, etc.
America has a lot of cultures and does a good job of blending them together in new, interesting ways. But one thing that America doesn't have is history in depth, like most other countries. So each culture is treated as an identity by Americans because it's how we get our history.
A common phrase in America is "I'm part (other nationality)" and that is shorthand for "this is what traditions I am familiar with and the foods I frequently eat." Folks love their culture because it gives them their own personal history of their family running from somewhere and finding a chance here. Folks hold onto the adventures of Grandma and Pa as their own. So it makes sense that those same stories are what help inform us that taking something a culture has made and calling it your own name upsets quite a few people.
America is sensitive about cultural appropriation because few folks want to lose their own culture.
Old culture sounds like gatekeeping
"global cultural hegemon has no culture"