|
Elisabella -> RE: What is culture? (5/29/2010 9:26:22 PM)
|
-FR-
I never really looked at American culture objectively until moving out of the US. I think that in general, American culture is far from monolithic, that there are notable sub-cultural divisions primarily based on region, ethnicity, and class. Obviously this is true in every country but I think it's more pronounced in the US, where we have states talking about boycotting other states, and we refer to regions with terms like "red state," "blue state," "bible belt," etc.
I'd say two of the cornerstones of American culture have historically been the frontier mentality and the view that the US has a special place in the world. Frontier mentality tends to prioritize opportunity over security, competition over cooperation, risk-taking over stability, stressful excellence over comfortable mediocrity. It's also the foundation of the American class system, instead of birthright nobility, there is the idea that American 'nobility' are there because they (or their great grandparents) worked hard and deserve it. Of course that idea is becoming less and less popular, there's backlash against families where nobody alive has ever had to work, as well as against shady business practices that people like Bill Gates have used to succeed, and it's harder to keep a frontier mentality when it appears all the known land and business territory have been settled.
The other cornerstone is the idea that the US is special, this one has been around since the beginning, but it too is losing momentum as many Americans now start to ask "why can't we be more like the rest of the world" - I think that this has to do with the fact that the US is no longer at the top of the curve in a lot of things. We still have the biggest and one of the best trained Western militaries, but it's unclear what, exactly, the role that military should play. The US produces enough food to feed the world, but our farmers need subsidies to stay afloat. We now consume more than we manufacture, our public school system, on average, is embarrassing, we aren't known for technological innovation...basically all the things that made the US unique in a good way, in the past, have been matched or exceeded by other nations, except of course for our military. Our two major sources of competition, that could create the necessity to give birth to invention, would be the EU (our allies) and China (our manufacturers) so we're really turning into a stagnating, mediocre behemoth.
As the cohesive "American identity" loses steam, subcultural identities gain power. It's a lot easier for someone to elucidate what it means for them to be gay, or black, or from a certain region, than it is to explain what it means to be American. Also there seems to be a growing sentiment by Americans that the US is the new Evil Empire, many times in the past I've heard someone say something like "This makes me ashamed to be American," which I think is a backlash against what I said before, the idea that the US is 'special' has been turned on its head.
I'd say there is also a difference between generalized "American culture" as represented by things like Hollywood, sports (basketball/baseball/football), suburbia, and stereotypical "American cooking" (hot dogs, apple pie, pizza, fast food) and sub-cultural innovations that found fertile ground to start in America - stuff like jazz, southern cooking, Spanglish, certain Christian fundmentalist groups - these things don't represent America, as a whole, but they do reflect America in the sense that they could only have sprung up there.
|
|
|
|
