American culture

[Arlekino]

Non offence for USA citizens but I am tired of TV every single day cheap Hollywood films or news about USA problems and I have non good views about USA culture. I would delighted if forum folks try to persuade me such as good culture of USA. I had few arguments with friends all their telling to me you don't know USA. USA is big country and cultures are different.
Probably I am narrow mind I am only in Soviet culture or I do like some British and other European countries artist, films radio plays. Open my mind please thanks.

[#FF0000]

If you're judging "American culture" by the things on TV and on the radio then you're probably right to be hating on it. We have good movies from time to time, though.

[Arlekino]

Yes of course USA does. How about good ballet, plays, artist.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

American mass culture pretty much is crap.Hollywood stopped being creative years ago, television is junk except for some recent exceptions such as "The Wire", "Game of Thrones" (British actors but US produced), mainstream pop music is the pits (some cool indie stuff, local bands in NYC Boston and elsewhere are quite good).

There are some good novelists-although I read more history these days.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Yes of course USA does. How about good ballet, plays, artist.
We have all of that, but you're likely only going to know it if you live here and know where to look.

[Os Cangaceiros]

American culture obviously varies greatly, just like many other countries. Some places like Vermont or Alaska or certain states in the upper Midwest are culturally similar to Canada in ways that other places in the USA are not, for instance. Go to the other side of the country to a city like Laredo and there's obviously a lot of cultural mixing with Mexico. That's without even going into the hundreds of nationalities who've lived in the USA, many of which have influenced the cultural landscape...does a small town in New Mexico have the same culture as, say, Manhattan? Probably not, although of course there are a lot of similarities in the way people live. So one should be specific about what they mean when talking about "American culture".

[Arlekino]

We have all of that, but you're likely only going to know it if you live here and know where to look.

At least I could look on website or on youtube for free. :) Yes there was in past good novelist play writers, many of covered on Soviet Radio which available to listening.
There is another question is seems USA main stream culture invade Europe and I am sick of that.

[Arlekino]

American culture obviously varies greatly, just like many other countries. Some places like Vermont or Alaska or certain states in the upper Midwest are culturally similar to Canada in ways that other places in the USA are not, for instance. Go to the other side of the country to a city like Laredo and there's obviously a lot of cultural mixing with Mexico. That's without even going into the hundreds of nationalities who've lived in the USA, many of which have influenced the cultural landscape...does a small town in New Mexico have the same culture as, say, Manhattan? Probably not, although of course there are a lot of similarities in the way people live. So one should be specific about what they mean when talking about "American culture".
That why I mix up with USA life, as USA with such biggest different nationalities which I always liked like that, as myself I am internationalist but I can't get it USA strange way of multiculturalism is that make sense?

[Os Cangaceiros]

We have all of that, but you're likely only going to know it if you live here and know where to look.

All of that stuff is easily accessible, you just have to have an interest in it and a book of yellow pages or the internet.

I mean the USA is a nation of 300+ million people, many of whom have varied interests.

[hatzel]

We have all of that, but you're likely only going to know it if you live here and know where to look.

Nah that's a lie did you know there actually hasn't been a single play in the whole country since Stella Adler left Broadway true story...

[La Guaneña]

North American culture


Quick fix for you.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

North American culture


Quick fix for you.
Since he's talking about one specific country in North America, US culture would be a better fix.

[La Guaneña]

Since he's talking about one specific country in North America, US culture would be a better fix.

But seeing as he is talking about TV and stuff, and how much "merrican" TV is made in Canada, it's almost ok to say North American.


On a second note, poor Mexico. USA culture it is.

[Rafiq]

I like American culture. What I don't like is this cheap conservativist criticism of "showbiz culture".

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[Os Cangaceiros]

But seeing as he is talking about TV and stuff, and how much "merrican" TV is made in Canada, it's almost ok to say North American.


On a second note, poor Mexico. USA culture it is.

Central America is technically part of the North American continent, too...

[La Guaneña]

Central America is technically part of the North American continent, too...

I don't see think I've ever seen it that way, usually it's either Central America or seen as a part of Latin America. Are you talking about school books and such?

At least in my school North America only went down to Mexico.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't normally refer to central America as part of north America, I'll usually specify "central America", but it is true geographically-speaking that it's part of north America.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Location_North_America.svg/500px-Location_North_America.svg.png

[La Guaneña]

I don't normally refer to central America as part of north America, I'll usually specify "central America", but it is true geographically-speaking that it's part of north America.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Location_North_America.svg/500px-Location_North_America.svg.png

Yeah, my bad then. In school they never taught it to me this way, but this is probably due to cultural differences as well.

[MarxSchmarx]

By the way, a lot of Hollywood movies like the latest Die Hard, Indiana Jones, Ironman, etc... are no longer made for American audiences. In fact the $$$ behind them recognize that these movies will be critical and commercial flops within the USA, but that they hope to make a lot of money in markets like Brazil, China, and, yeah, the EU.

The reason is somewhat complicated (name actors, superior special effects, known brands and distribution networks, etc...) but suffice it to say that cultural anti-Americanism is, as Gramsci quite correctly observed decades ago, still "more silly than stupid".

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Some of my all-time favourite musicians hail from the US, and some very entertaining big-budget blockbuster movies have come out of Hollywood. Lots of crap is also produced, but I imagine that would be the case for any country, except that the rest of the world's crap rubbish doesn't get as much publicity.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Some parts of US pop and folk culture, some of the natural features of the US, and many of the people, are about the only things I like about the US.

As far as elite high culture, well then the US has that, most powerful imperialist countries do or they import it. US high art was pretty dominant in the west for most of the mid-century and probably only recently has begun to loose some ground to China. But frankly Ballet and Opera and most contemporary art do not interest me (not be cause I'm anti-intellectual or anything, I love Modernist literature and art, I just don't have the background to appreciate high art performance like Ballet or Opera and so they bore me). American theater was also pretty important and, along with other English-language theater trends in the early 20th century produced some interesting and subversive work that focused on the lives of regular people rather than kings etc.

I think there may have been a decline in US high-art in the past few decades and I think part of this is the increased narrowness of the audiences for such things. The fine arts have been increasingly privatized which means that art must be even more trendy to fit into what is considered "hot" by taste-makers and art-investors, performance audiences have become more exclusive (at least for high-art) on the one hand while popular performance spaces have also had to go for "lowest common denominator" plays and musical performances in order to keep the donners they rely on happy (who typically will want to see "classics" performed).

Take all the with a grain of salt, these are just my impressions and I have no real concrete evidence.

Now, as far as US pop-culture goes. Well most people in the US feel alienated from this already, so I don't know because of the intense commodification involved if you could say that it represents "American culture" any more than a fast-food Taco from Taco Bell represents "Mexican food".

That being said, the "ground-up" american culture which can be seen in various rock movements, blues, and soul, and hip-hop - while also impacted by commodification like any "cultutre" in capitalism (leading to rip-offs and trendiness, and usurpation) is IMO very amazing and a great contribution to the world - and often adopted (due to the US's imperial influence, so it's interestingly contradictory) world-wide and then refracted back in a better or new and interesting form. I love American blues and rock - the British tend to be better at it than people in the US :grin:. I love American cinema - the France or Hong Kong sometimes do it better than the US.

Culture is contradictory in capitalism, because the system is contradictory. They system can feed us all, but most of us have to eat commodified crap that keeps us hungry. It's the same in culture - more people have access to it, there's more of it and more choices, but it's also limited in quality, variety, experimentation, and so on.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

But seeing as he is talking about TV and stuff, and how much "merrican" TV is made in Canada, it's almost ok to say North American.
Yeah, but US programming shot in Canada is still US programming made for US audiences. It's not the same thing as native Canadian programming made for Canadian audiences.

[one10]

There is definitely variance in American culture.

Some of my favorite music artists/movies are American as well.

But I will agree that mainstream entertainment has dumbed down significantly over the last 13-15 years. I can't listen to the radio and for every good movie that is released, there are 10 horrible ones.

I suggest you look more into the underground/local music scenes and independent films.

[homegrown terror]

and we're all sick of your "doctor who's" and men in drag pretending it's funny!

.....nah, i kid. american pop culture is pretty well shit.

[Comrade #138672]

Western culture does seem to be getting worse. A reflection of Capitalism in decay?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Western culture does seem to be getting worse. A reflection of Capitalism in decay?

Meh, I guess it depends on how we view "worse".

Personally, the correlation for me between culture and society is that when there are movements and political alternatives, even if slight or marginal, then popular culture begins to reflect some of those growing tensions as well as more popular voices.

Much of modernism seems more "relevant" and exciting to me because artists in many fields were trying to figure out how to relate to a rapidly changing world that was full of contradictions - specifically the death throws of the last leftovers from feudal societies and a more mature capitalism. All the tensions of life for regular people moving from small town and often agricultural life to city life are reflected, good/bad, liberatory/reactionary. On top of that the existance of radical and worker's movements were too big for artists to ignore. So you get a lot of people probing what the new totally bourgoise world means, trying to find a sort of secular "spirituality" outside of religious custom still based in feudal community, etc. Theater about working class lives, literature trying to capture contradictions of life, art expressing rapid transformation and new subjects. etc.

IMO the best postmodern art also deals with post-war social changes, but also I think the neoliberal era has hollowed a lot of that out as movements have disappeared and demoralized and the pull of art as a commodity has little counter-weight to it. Artists today tend to feel trapped or stuck if they are concerned with these things and so there have been decades of sort of anti-commodification art, performance art, rejection of galleries, institutional critique, self-referencial mocking of the whole concept of art. But that's a mistake in thinking that art itself can somehow transport itself out of the market - rather than people creating alternative ways of having society so that art is based on its relevance and entertainment and so on alone, not a gallery's prestige or art-investor returns.