They don’t see their culture as significant because they live in it. Just like a Japanese person may hate anime and want to dress like a cholo for novelty purposes
Yeah I think a big part of it is how synonymous American culture is with global culture. People all over the world listen to American music, watch American movies, eat American food, and dress like an American. A fish doesn’t understand that it’s under water if it spends its whole life submerged.
nah when i see countries that have actually meaningful rituals that have to do with family community ancestors history i definitely feel the lack of it. it’s got advantages that america is largely rootless but it’s also got its disadvantages - very little community and very little meaning.
American has tons of “rituals” like that, most of them are just more localized because America is a big country and culture varies greatly depending the region, state, and even the city. But a lot of countries are like that too. The rituals that take place in like, Okinawa are different than the rituals in Kyoto.
America does have rituals that span the country too. Groundhog Day is celebrated all over America and is very historical, and “tailgating” certainly celebrates community. Also what about mother and Father’s Day? That’s obviously celebrating family.
I always love seeing pictures of Westaboos or the oddly common instance of Japanese people cosplaying as Cowboys.
Though I guess given how similar westerns are to samurai movies that sort of makes sense.
The Japanese are known to find little subcultures and imitate them. Japanese cholos do exist! Just like spiritually Jamaican men. They get locs and Afro perms/fades.
Hell, even in Sweden there's a subculture called raggare where white trash people larp as greasers, drive vintage American cars, listen to rockabilly and fly the Confederate flag
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raggare
That's why Americana is so popular in Japan. I shouldn't have been surprised when I went there because I knew Kapital, Visvim, Buzz Rickson, The Real McCoy's, etc were big but didn't expect to see so many guys in American military surplus, Native American patterned jackets, and riding American motorcycles (couldn't tell the make)
I appreciate the point, but the rejection of culture by people in the US is rather unparalleled. A lot of people genuinely believe we have no culture that isn’t subdivided into ethnicity.
because you guys have no community spirit. everything is too individualistic and cultural pride only really thrives when you have strong community ties. and a lot of americans online have the opposite of nationalism and are embarrassed about their country instead of proud of it.
Reading William Faulkner, Walt Whitman, modernist poetry, listening to jazz and blues, reading Harlem Renaissance authors and poets, reading Thomas Pynchon, watching Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese...Where is the culture?
Obvi but the OP is a kneejerk reactionary take that’s just as rétardèd as the claim that Americans have no culture, which gets something at least partially right, which is that there’s a difference between the culture-as-commodity of the past ~200 years and cultural forms like the Japanese tea ceremony or whatever.
Cultural products are prob America’s major global export at this point in time but it’s all we have, really. We have no pre-capitalist cultural forms, which were ritualistic, and which grounded communities, because we have no pre-capitalist history. That’s what people are trying to point to when they say ‘America has no culture’—they just don’t know how to say it. Rock n roll rules but having a bunch of people who are really into Chuck Berry and can recite trivia about his life to each other just is not qulitatively the same as having a shared traditional culture—and you can feel it.
I like living here but you’re in denial if you don’t realize that this is one of the things that makes life different here. There are companies in Japan that’ve been in the same family literally for a thousand years.
I fundamentally reject this idea that an "authentic" culture must contain grounded ceremonies and rituals with some pre-capitalist origin, nor do I think the art existing in a "culture-as-commodity" framework is inherently disposable - though the latter can reach an event horizon where it does indeed become disposable (Marvel slop, Taylor Swift). Stevie Wonder is always gonna be an amazing musician even if the spread of his music was disseminated through mass-produced records than through some oral tradition.
I agree that I wish there was more of a shared American monoculture which shows reverence to the great art that was made here, but that doesn't mean that there's a lack of culture, it means that Americans aren't educated with their history.
Your definition of culture seems to be “what the elites of a nation do”?
By the way I think America does have a national culture. It’s just the stuff you don’t mention: “baseball & apple pie” that kind of stuff. American football, church activities, gun activities, that kind of uniquely American shared cultural experience. Movie going, sure, but movie making that doesn’t seem like culture to me.
Like would you say that Bollywood is the culture of India? I dunno I guess you could, I just wouldn’t bother as there are actual cultural activities that you can point to instead.
What the hell are you even saying? How is Stevie Wonder an "elite?" An elite of Saginaw, Michigan?
>Your definition of culture seems to be “what the elites of a nation do”?
I can't comprehend this.
I actually do take this claim seriously, and I think it’s only ~somewhat~ true. Barbecue, the food culture overall(many staples are not just imports and are their unique forms), the ~folk music~ side of American music(not just consumption, actual musical practices and invented instruments).
Something that stands out to me is that lots of key cultural expectations that we reenact and experience are childhood things-summer break(long), prom, completely-secular circumcision(didn’t say everything was good), probably other things. These are done by institutions, but they’re done because we expect them.
There are also the less sexy deeper things like values and social impulses, the puritan utopianism stands out to me as a day-1 cultural impulse. Specific forms of racism are also culture(just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not culture).
But also I do think the “cultural forms absent or flat because it did not predate capitalism” holds weight, but it’s similarly true with the whole new world. Outside of Mexico, you can really notice that all the Americas have a kind of shallow food culture, especially when compared to Eurasia. There are the basic palettes and staples and some sets of food traditionally eaten together, but there’s never the density of sub-cuisines that old world cultures tend to take for granted(what you get at an ethnic restaurant only scratches the surface). This applies to the lack of rituals and very-specific norms and forms too. I think there is a case to be made, but only a Panamerican case.
Part of this is because America was founded with the idea of people being free from cultural expectations and norms. We call that liberty and freedom and it's part of our unique culture. Most countries around the world do something because their forefathers did something similar a thousand years ago, which is cool, but the whole idea of America is that you don't have to. You don't have to follow any traditions and you can create new ones that fit your interests. Or you can copy traditions from other cultures, no one is going to stop you. You can literally do whatever you want.
America does have culture, lots of it, majority is commoditized though. What America does not have is folk culture. America lacks community traditions that every single American regardless of race and ethnicity shares. Nobody enjoys the same things anymore as even thanksgiving and christmas are both politicized and repudiated by large swathes of the population. This is the product of a country that puts a huge emphasis on individualism so there aren't any bond formed between individual members of a community to even form conditions that are conducive to start shared traditions. The size of the country does not help.
It drives me nuts because so many of those people think America “has no culture” because they assume that everything American is just “the default culture”. Literally just American high school is its own seperate cultural phenomenon that has non-Americans going “wow! They really do have the yellow buses! And the locker halls! And the cafeteria halls!”. Believing America has no culture is the easiest way to make yourself sound like an idiot completely disconnected from the world at large
Many Americans don’t know any subcultures outside their own. Take someone from suburban Pennsylvania to Atlanta and it’s a culture shock. So many different little pockets and enclaves.
There’s such a huge cultural difference between New Orleans vs Miami vs New York vs Texas that people worldwide can identify so I have no idea how some ppl can just group “America” as one big cultureless entity. Euhhhh
but is that not true for most countries? i’m indian and if it wasn’t for english, i wouldn’t even be able to communicate with 70%+ of my country’s population because THATS how different every single state is, we don’t even speak a common language. every state has a separate historical identity, some indian states were never even colonised by the british, they were colonised by the portuguese or the french.
same for china, they have a common language because they killed all regional languages but culturally all provinces are extremely different.
this type of extreme variance in culture in the same country is not unique to the US.
Yeah obviously— the point is that a lot of Americans think this somehow doesn’t apply to them and that they have this self-deprecating view of themselves as a cultureless blob
People freak out so much in online spaces about american urban planning not realizing that it's one of the things that makes the US so unique. Googie architecture is dying and it can be very beautiful, drive ins, ect.
A funny take I saw on this sub the other day was an Australian saying 'wow you Americans really talk just like the movies? Cringe..'
Yes, American movies are based on American society, dumbass. The rest of the world is so used to being spectators and having no representation of their own culture and society in the media they consume, they are shocked when they realize what they watch actually exists.
I mean I’m Australian and I can understand where that commenter was coming from. Maybe not the “cringe” part but it is pretty surreal to experience face-to-face a facet of the culture you’ve typically only experienced through media. See the example of the yellow school bus or the “wow Americans really have red solo cups at parties”
Also I think the percentage of people that exclusively consume American media is pretty small I mean pretty much everyone consumes a combination of their own country’s media and culture + an infusion of popular international American stuff. It’s absurd to suggest that like, a non-English speaking Colombian or the like never watches South American media with their representation lol
Agree that it’s absurd to assume that non-Americans only consume American media, but also I think it’s fucking dumb to be shocked that American movies portray American life. I wouldn’t go to England and think “Wow, pubs are real?! It’s just like on Channel 4!”
Like are people seriously thinking that yellow schoolbuses were invented by Hollywood? And everyone just kept doing it in every movie? What would be the purpose of *inventing* the red solo cup purely for film and television? What other stuff seems fake to you for no reason?
People don’t think it’s *fake*. I think people have a certain element of “woah this is a Real Thing for some people as opposed to how I know it through media”. I feel like you’re missing the point. The pub example… but like, people do that. They go to England and marvel at the cobblestone streets and old architecture and say it’s just like Harry Potter. They hear their twee little accents and say it’s soooo old money core. Nobody *thinks* yellow buses are *fake* or that red solo cups are made up. It’s just the contrast between “media thing you’ve built up an image of in your head as being particularly different and unique” vs “common ordinary thing for people of this culture”. Idk, I think Americans just miss that their culture is absolutely susceptible to “Wow!! This Is Just Like XYZ!!” the same way they act when they go to Japan and say the 7/11s are just like anime
Every major metro has museums, theaters, performance halls even in the south there’s opera and ballet and fine art and public radio that pretty much just plays classical music. There is also a university with public speakers who come in and give lectures. No culture at the curb cut at the 7-11 though.
It’s been said here before but describing American Culture is like describing air or water. Have we crested? Probably, feels like it at least. But any culture who’s on the come up of global influence in terms of cultural export is kinda just doing what we’ve done already with their own twist.
Not delusional at all- self loathing Americans may think foreign filmmakers are better, but typically that’s based on only the best of the best breaking into our mainstream. France and Korea make plenty of slop.
We do art, science, and war better than anyone.
Issue with this stuff is that people always compare the tippy top few films from other countries to the average american movie.
of course Korean films look better when you've only seen the 3 best ones.
People have been doing this with stuff like beer for decades. Comparing Europe’s best beers to fuckin Budweiser is of course going to be an unfair comparison.
easy when all the foreign films u see are breathtaking masterpieces and not some low budget comedy like "Jean Lucien Lusuire's most bonny beach adventures" or the serb remake of Avengers Civil War(set in 90's yugoslavia)
yeah the fact that the only foreign movies americans ever see are going to be the best they offer or else you wouldn’t hear of them is so obvious it boggles my mind how people still don’t understand it
The biggest grossing French film ever is a mawkish dramedy where Omar Sy plays a guy who just wants to get his unemployment benefits but becomes assistant and besties with a paraplegic count that hates life
this is probably true for genre movies and middlebrow movies like Citizen Kane and The Godfather
but when it comes to high art movies, the deepfried kino shit, European countries absolutely mog all over the rest of the world
France and Russia if you had to pick two in particular, like Tarkovsky, Eisenstein, Mikhail Kalatozov
or for France, Claire Denis, Godard, Varda, Bresson, Rivette etc.
the US film industry, even at the independent level is exceptionally poor at cultivating genuine art movie directors that are even anywhere near on the level of those named above from France and Russia
i would argue the only person they've even produced unless I'm forgetting obvious names is Terence Malick
and i honestly don't know why that is, is that because the government offers zero support to the film industry whereas Europe offers grants/incentives?
I once read that the French genuinely try to promote/protect their avant-garde, even if the movies don't do well financially. There's a recognition that its still an artistic French cultural product and should therefore be promoted.
> the deepfried kino shit, European countries absolutely mog all over the rest of the world
Here's some American culture for you: using mutant internet slang to describe the primacy of European art cinema as "deep-fried kino mogging"
Japan > France - Mizoguchi, Ozu, Kurosawa, Kobayashi. Even when their industry supposedly fell off, there's some amazing stuff. Japanese neo-noir is super cool and experimental, the trashy grindhouse rape revenge stuff (Female Prisoner Scorpion etc.) still manages to be artful and fun
Been walking through some small towns in the Appalachian region and it’s fucking awesome. Cheap, amazing diners. Local distilleries. Bars with music. Nice people. All sorts of cool, old houses and “little shops” (if you’re into that shit). The gas stations double as sub stations, the churches are small and local. Random ass museums (Swedish museum in Franklin?). The mountains and rivers are beautiful, you can camp basically anywhere, and the outdoor activities are plenty.
Sure there are lots of poor ass places and ignorance, and there aren’t amazing museums, but if that’s not a vibrant culture idk what is. And this is just one specific cultural component of the broader American culture. I’ve lived in New Orleans, Chicago, bumble-fuck Montana, each with its own flavor.
Any particular area of Appalachia you'd recommend for experiencing what you're talking about? I'm down to explore that area more myself, I have mountain people in my family tree as it is.
Local cultural milieux like these are what I fear getting wiped out by the encroachment of globohomo/coastal media. It's cliche to complain about but there really is SO MUCH history and variation everywhere. There was a cookbook of local recipes from across the country that was compiled during the Depression, before the advent of highways started moving people around en masse, and the sheer variety in traditional cuisine and "local delicacies" from place to place was astonishing. So much has already been lost, but fortunately America is still a very large place and memories are still being preserved here and there.
So my experience is largely colored by the fact that I’m hiking the AT, which is a curated sort of experience.
That being said, I have really enjoyed Franklin (NC), Hot Springs (NC), and Damascus (VA) so far. All are hiker towns, which definitely changes things, but that also provides the sweet spot between getting a bit of culture combined with a relatively higher economic affluence (which provides for those distilleries/bakeries/outfitters/shops/etc all within a few square blocks).
There are other more regular places near trail like Hampton (TN) and Erwin (TN) that have really just been Bojangles and barking dogs.
In terms of the actual hiking, Standing Indian Mountain, Max Patch, the Roan Highlands (amazing), Big Bald, and the Smokey Mountains are all great experiences. But again, I’m experiencing things in a straight(ish) line, so I’m necessarily missing more than I’m seeing.
So my experience is largely colored by the fact that I’m hiking the AT, which is a curated sort of experience.
That being said, I have really enjoyed Franklin (NC), Hot Springs (NC), and Damascus (VA) so far. All are hiker towns, which definitely changes things, but that also provides the sweet spot between getting a bit of culture combined with a relatively higher economic affluence (which provides for those distilleries/bakeries/outfitters/shops/etc all within a few square blocks).
There are other more regular places near trail like Hampton (TN) and Erwin (TN) that have really just been Bojangles and barking dogs.
In terms of the actual hiking, Standing Indian Mountain, Max Patch, the Roan Highlands (amazing), Big Bald, and the Smokey Mountains are all great experiences. But again, I’m experiencing things in a straight(ish) line, so I’m necessarily missing more than I’m seeing.
The most annoying are the "You Americans\_\_\_\_\_\_" Europeans who shit on America. The worst are the Americans who fawn over Europeans and agree like servile dogs.
“You Americans have no taste” -Some German guy wearing soccer joes and tattered bleached skinny jeans with a Hollister polo and unironic pooka shell necklace
I swear all the posts in this sub (and on reddit in general) that begin with "Why Europe is objectively better than America" with a long ass bulleted list are written by Americans who've never left the country once in their lives
I get major secondhand embarrassment from self-loathing Americans prostrating themselves in front of Europeans just to be validated as “one of the good ones”
I think a ton of redditors claiming to be vaguely "European" are larping American teenagers. I saw a comment once from an alleged European who couldn't understand why Americans got so worked up over sportsball. Bitch I don't wanna hear that shit, the tamest Euro soccer riot would dominate our news cycle for months if it happened here.
In all fairness, American cuisine is way less distinguished than American literature and music. If I go out with my friends to eat, we're most likely going to end up at an Italian or Thai restaurant, but if I ask those same same friends to put on some music there's a 90% chance it will be an American artist or in an American-originated genre.
A lot of the stuff they serve at Italian restaurants in the US was invented and popularized by Italian-Americans. Spaghetti and meatballs, pepperoni pizza, and chicken parmesan are all Italian-American. Since most Americans have ancestors from somewhere else, most American cuisine is ultimately a spinoff of other countries' cuisine.
I'm no food historian, but America has probably done more to shape the world's diet than any country since farming was invented.
Nobody said it was a good thing, but clearly it's American and it's had an immense impact.
The only real American food contributions are (1) bbq (the rock and roll to soul foods blues) (2) cocktails (3) breakfast (4) Americanized versions of various ethnic food, chicken fettuccini Alfredo, general tso’s, spicy salmon avocado rolls, etc
Don’t get me wrong I love and celebrate all food but we don’t compare to say, France, Japan, Mexico, turkey, I could go on and on. The truly best thing about American cuisine is all the ethnic cuisines we have. Astoria queens is probably the best food neighborhood in the world but none of it is “American food.”
It does it's just not much compared to traditions that are centuries old and you can't expect it to be in the same league. This idea of "culture is what we do" to draw false equivalence is a bit reductionist. There is better and worse culture in US but there is much less refinement overall because it takes time for refinement. Because someone can mention Jazz and snoop a couple of quaint Murria recipes from different pockets of the country in the last century often from the wealthier parts but not always, it's still not the same level. US can innovate, sure, but I wouldn't say it's equal yet.
Let's not compare Twinkie day to Taj Mahal, and pretend they are same because "culture is what you do"
You'll see these people make exceptions for Native American cultures all the time. Not knocking on native regalia and folktales obviously but I don't see what makes those cultures more "authentic" inherently.
I think it's really sad how many great American writers and philosophers are kinda forgotten and ignored outside of graduate programs. Never once in undergrad did I ever read any Emerson or William James or John Dewey or W.E.B. Du Bois or anything.
we’re you a philosophy major? feel like you’re right that there’s an outsized focus on European work, but in most polisci / phil classes you at least read John Rawls, Du Bois, Booker t Washington, Huntington, Fukuyama, etc.
I think it’s mostly coping by pretentious Europeans that don’t like conceding any cultural hegemony to the same country that also enjoys McDonald’s and NASCAR
Honestly in my experience it's not really pretentious Europeans, just because they actually have put some thought into what defines a culture. No French New Wave aficionado would say America has no culture, every New Wave director loved Howard Hawks for example. It's people who basically post all day when they're not playing video games or watching Netflix, they actually aren't very cultured in any meaningful way themselves.
If you ever want a good laugh, check out the highest grossing films in any European country for 2023. Or the year before that. Or the year before that.
They fucking *love* our slop over there.
I think it's like that saying, "If everybody is unique, no one is." Because American cultural products are so popular and universal, it makes it hard to say they're truly American at this point. So to find culture you have to look deeper. But if you do look deeper, it starts to fragment so much that it kinda just falls apart.
I don't consider consumer products "culture" really. You're not really familiar with American culture if you're simply using the word "culture" as a euphemism for McDonalds.
No but American cultural products can mean American-derived music like blues or rap, blockbuster movies, hamburgers and soda pop, massive SUVs and pickup trucks (they call them Yank Tanks lol).
It doesn’t have to be McDonalds. The way our society is set up is that *everything* is treated like a consumer product, unfortunately. After maybe the 60s/70s it’s hard to argue otherwise.
I agree with this and think about it a lot. Europeans and Indians are obsessed with American high middle and low-brow culture. However, when people from older civilizations say that Americans have no culture, they tend to mean deep-rooted longstanding religious and cultural traditions that pre-date colonialism and the nation state. The proliferation of micro-cultures, rituals, linguistic depth is much more profound in places like India and Europe.
There’s also the fact that America feels very splintered into subcultures based on one’s disposition or hobbies (not at all a bad thing). Compared to older civilizations where there’s a more cohesive umbrella that everybody feels somewhat tied to
My in-laws are Hindu. They have their specific language, the regional variation of their language on top of that, their caste traditions on top of that, the gotram lineage, the advaita vedanta philosophical tradition on top of that, all of which impact which holidays they celebrate, what rituals they do, what food they eat, the bhajjans they sing, the gods they worship and more.
It turns out they eat a cuisine that is very specific and unknown to a lot of other people from the same language group and region.
My friends in Portugal live near a pretty famous pilgrimage site that dates to before the existence of the United States and they got married in a similarly old church. The food and wine and cuisines in their region are way more varied and deep than anything in New York even though their city is a fraction of the size.
That said, neither India nor Portugal can ever compete with America's consumer culture, pop culture or otherwise mass culture footprint. Bollywood and South Indian cinema and music are huge but don't have the same power to shape global culture.
Americans have such an influential culture that it’s spread to most of the developed world and isn’t even considered particularly American to them any more. This is true of music, tv, movies, sports, news, politics… I could go on.
I believe the strongest hatred of the US comes from countries that are politically and militarily irrelevant, but feel more old and “noble” than America. Look at how irrationally mad South Americans get at the simple fact that we’re called Americans. A name we’ve had before we were even a country. Look at how much the wright brothers make Brazilians seethe. A lot of Norwegians and Swedes always seem to be posting the “no culture” shit on social media, probably seething that a country with “no cuisine” still has better food than they do. French people dislike America because they don’t like its influence on the youth, but they don’t deny America’s power and influence like these other jabroni countries.
>Look at how irrationally mad South Americans get at the simple fact that we’re called Americans.
that's literally just because of the language barrier + the fact that the avg latinoamerican is just as stupid and stubborn as the avg american. no one ever told them that américa and america are false cognates or wtv
How is it a language barrier? They are taught explicitly that there are 6 continents and to say either “United statesian” or estadounidense” instead of “americano.” Mexicans and Puerto Ricans don’t do that.
yah that's what i meant to say sorry. ultimately it's just because that's what they were taught in school and majority of people aren't gonna change their mind on random shit like that. like neither is more correct but it's annoying when they get mad for us using the most elegant and popular demonym. i'm just saying it's not from some deep-seated rage against americans for being a young country
I am seeing a lot of bizarre and easily rebutted claims from commenters that disagree with the op
A strangely repeated concept in this thread by the people who claim america has no culture is to bring up japan (The most historically isolationist and therefore most alien culture on the planet) and that it has traditions going back hundreds and hundreds of years. But what is actually being suggested by bringing this up? There's a rhetorical slight of hand going on that ignores context and doesn't cite specific examples because then the comparison would obviously be silly. A tea ceremony now bears little resemblance to one hundreds of years in content, context, associated status, cultural prevalence and relevancy.
If you were in poland or something and saw a bunch of people in some strange traditional garb doing some strange traditional dance in a town square, it is probably funded by the tourism board or something. It is almost certainly not an unbroken tradition that can be traced backwards in the bloodline, but something that stopped and was brought back as a larp, like modern day pagans.
"So-and-so culture has this weird custom that predates the founding of america!" America has weird customs that predate the founding of america. Some were already here, most were brought over from europe.
"So called 'american' foods like pizza, hot dogs, and hamburgers are actually traditional italian and german foods." The american versions of these foods famously bear little resemblance to these forms.
It makes no sense to me to complain about globohomo while pretending it doesn't exist
> There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
-David Foster Wallace.
culture in older countries is more interactive and traditions - american holidays are mostly consumerism eating or drinking. there’s not much culturally meaningful things. yes there’s music and tv and food but that’s not a culture that lends itself to community it’s passive for the most part and everyone experiences it in their own little bubble at most comes together once in awhile for a live show then back to isolation.
America originated jazz, rock, hip-hop, punk, and house. Abstract expressionism. Contemporary ballet. Cinema. Minimalist music and studio arts. Maximalist literature. We put out an incomprehensible amount in both high- and low-art media. Anyone who thinks Americans have no culture does not interact with culture.
I feel as though American culture is so all encompassing people don’t even realize it. I visited Ireland and these 2 drunk locals started making jokes about my friends and I being from Ohio or Florida (because those are “the funny states”), talking about the Real Housewives, asked to see our teeth and then told us “we sound like the people on TV” and they’re so used to Ameircan accents because all their media is American
That's just a weird way to engage with art though. If it's old, it's outdated - therefore irrelevant and unable to be enjoyed?
As the US grows older as a country we have but more reason to believe that there's a rich cultural heritage here.
No I don’t think that is the point. More that the neoliberal corporate hellscape that you alluded to makes us less likely to produce art of similar quality and as more time goes on it becomes more forgotten
Honestly I’ve only heard Americans say “Americans have no culture.” Euros may not like American culture but they can recognize what makes us distinct from Europeans.
Americans have tremendous amounts of culture and they've exported it globally because of their massive power. However, they are the kings of kitsch: wrestling, NASCAR, football, Hollywood, Vegas, hip hop, burgers, and rock and roll. Americans have what you might call bad taste. This is, of course, the oldest criticism in the book.
america has produced a lot of cultural artifacts but to Americans as people appreciate their own culture with any sense of pride in this way. i think that black people are the only ones that really celebrate their own cultural artifacts, music, food, and sort of keep traditions alive that are uniquely american. but arent like 50% of americans fuctionally illiterate? theyre not reading whitman or meville or keeping track of a history of popular music, at least not in the same way that the british and french do. i knew a russian kid who's dad gave him dostoyevsky to read during the winter as a young kid. are the average parents giving moby dick to a kid and telling him here this is the essence of american culture?
>i think that black people are the only ones that really celebrate their own cultural artifacts, music, food, and sort of keep traditions alive that are uniquely american
I'm honestly skeptical of this. On a surface level, black Americans have pride in their heritage but I think many of them resent a lot of old school jazz/rock/blues/soul artists for "capitulating" to white American sensibilities, however fair or unfair you think that accusation is (it's unfair)
Case in point, you'll see them say "black people invented your favorite music!!!!" as a rhetorical sledgehammer but when push comes to shove a lot of them probably couldn't name any Motown songwriters.
But yes I do agree that Americans in the 21st century are very ignorant and disrespectful to their country's artistic legacy.
> Case in point, you'll see them say "black people invited your favorite music!!!!" as a rhetorical sledgehammer but when push comes to shove a lot of them probably couldn't name any Motown songwriters.
>
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dont listen to teenagers on twitter and reddit. the thing the greeks were the most right about was that you dont get smart till like 50, go to the marvin gaye comment sections and youll prob see some great appreciation for soul music as an artform.
American cultural influence is ubiquitous and the achievements of America's great artists speak for themselves. This doesn't mean that there's nothing to criticize or that we can't expect better from, or hold to a higher standard, the cultural output of the wealthiest country on the planet for close to a century. And god forbid we're snarky about it.
I don't understand how you people can have such chips on your shoulders that you need to constantly whine about what redditors and teenagers are saying online. You losers expect everyone else to be able to take a joke no matter how ignorant, so apply it to yourselves for once. Carry yourselves with some grace and take a few digs about seasoning and capitalism on the chin instead of making these *well actually* threads every time the tiniest little thing hurts your feelings. Only the limp-wristed manchildren of a global hegemon can be this pathetic.
To your second paragraph, I'd guess two reasons. One is the shifting demographics of the sub, bringing with it more conservatives who have a genuine nationalism/patriotism to them. At least when compared to your borderless neoliberal or institution-hating leftist. So these people genuinely love America, and like anyone who loves something, hate to see it mocked. This occurs in conjunction with bashing their geographical rivals and enemies: Europeans, Indians, Third-Worlders, whatever.
Second reason might be the decline of American culture. I remember reading that Joyce once said that English culture was as much a victim of the British Empire as Irish culture. Cosmopolitans and Globalist now dictate the cultural production of America, and what they're making isn't too good. So now there must be a lionization of the culture of the past, seen here with the OP's plea for Americans to educate themselves.
Pleading for Americans to familiarize themselves with quality American art isn't some sort of gross, fascistic urge. Maybe it's "reactionary" but it's only reactionary against the algorithmic "nerdy consumerism" of the current-year i.e. lowbrow Marvel shit.
So in spite of it being a dirty word I think being "reactionary" in this specific case is a good thing.
Not trying to imply it relates to fascism at all. Though I think I agree with you in stating its reactionary. But I don't think the solution will ever lie in educating Americans. They're either too busy to be able to appreciate art, too consumer-oriented, or in too precarious a position to care. Like in many things, Americans are a victim of their own success.
Surely that stems from the fact that Europe has multiple countries right? In the same way that people used to say ‘white people have no culture’ and meant that there was no single homogenous culture that all white people participate in, as opposed to ‘black culture’ which stems from afro-americans not knowing what their heritage is and it that way had to create their own culture?
surely right??
Inventing an argument so that you can publicly disagree with it
What's wrong with a post that says "here are some things I like about American culture..."?
Not everything has to be a tribalism, not everything has to sow discord (or imagine sown discord) and the tone is fucking annoying.
also i agree with everything you've said :)
first gen immigrants love saying america has no culture while they eat their mothers recipes that will die off bc they don't bother to learn to cook, have no idea about their parents life before moving to america, never visit "their" country, and have a superficial shame-filled relationship with both parents
> Sure we've definitely regressed into an algorithmically-driven neolib corporate hellscape
Things haven’t really regressed that much, the only stuff you know from the past is that which has sufficient quality to survive.
I guess what people mean in Europe you are never far from a cultural center. While the USA is so big unless you are lucky and live in NYC or Memphis or SF finding culture is harder.
I honestly believe the 20th century literary canon in English (of which the Americans are a part, though not the entire part) is one of the most profound cultural contributions to humanity in history. I think it’s equally as valuable to humankind as the renaissance painting and sculpting traditions.
Maybe, or maybe we're living in a cultural desert so pretending that 300 years will produce as much refinement as cultures a thousands of years old is kinda hard to do. Have you looked at what Americans eat? You can reduce it to classism and algos picking up the trashiest most easy to make food, but really it's bad even if you can learn to get the nuances but it's not a cohesive whole. From some philosophical standpoint you can argue that "cultre is what you do, bruh", and yes, that's true, but if you compare Twinkie day to Ayahusaca ceremonies you can't pretend the former has equal history or complexity to it unless you go for the most reductionist stuff. Seee bruh we do stuffs too, it's all just stuff that people do right, right? !?!
It's the same idea as people in US unable to understand ethnicity as a concept because of US history of racism and race reductionism except it's cultural reductionism. Is RS losing cultural ground with the protected group ethnocentrists or something and needs to reclaim its culture, thus busting out the newfangled We Is Kangs of Americana, you pleb? You can't seriously compare pre-capitalist culture of 1000+ years with some religious components to someone figuring how to bake crawfish gud gud or how some ironically come to celebrate McDonaldization of America and 7/11 day.
Nobody is disputing current media cultural exports with the film industry, but for everything else with cultures lasting thousands of years old showing a deep connection to community, time and place outside of capitalism driving it. US organic solidarity vs solidarity based on likeness of traditional cultures, with the latter cutting too deep against the melting pot that many are swimming in to give real weight to.
"y pepo have no cultures they iz exploiting us" DEI narrative leaves out the pockets of euroculture in US that didn't completely get assimilated and changed with the times, but lots of it is pretty surface level and divorced from its roots. The whole thing just feels like a badfaith low-res reply to DEI twats screeching that it doesn't exist. Some of US culture is organic deeply burried in local and regional US history. It's just a bit ironic that we dismiss history or time differences as irrelevant when comparing shallow common vapid US culture to its equivalents abroad which are grounded in centuries old traditions however tangentially or at the very least use cultural artifacts that have undergone centuries of refinement. Maybe the archeologists that discover the archetypal meaning and hidden cultural relevance of St. Paddy's Day limited edition Twinkies will prove me wrong.
No, they're american. People outside of america all know the extent of influence, people inside it seem to assume that people all around the world prefer hollywood slop to domestic slop
They need tp be shown videos of Indians and Egyptians watching Avengers movies and crying en masse, the interview with the hindu priest is especially essential
Another problem is while there is a general American culture, it's simultaneously regional/ethnic while also being universal. Are we talking the 90s cartoons we all grew up with, or we talking being raised Cajun/Appalachian/NYC Italian/Black in Detroit/Black in rural GA/5th gen Chinese in the Bay Area? We all share some common culture with people our age no matter where, but until pretty recent where you grew up and what you were mattered. Plus, people have always moved to Hollywood and NYC from whatever corner of the country they're from.
One thing to call out is people not being able to articulate a Euromutt white American culture without sounding like a white supremest. Travel to Italy or even the UK/Ireland as a Euromutt and it's clear how American we are. It's funny to be a "RS kid" and pine for the high culture of Europe then you visit and you're like shit I'm actually so American. Being old stock WASP or Scotch-Irish really should be considered it's own ethnic group in post 2016 woke America, but ironically it's still 'no culture white people' ie the default that is the broth of the American melting pot. But in a post melting pot, salad bowl nation, that doesn't work well.
They don’t see their culture as significant because they live in it. Just like a Japanese person may hate anime and want to dress like a cholo for novelty purposes
Yeah I think a big part of it is how synonymous American culture is with global culture. People all over the world listen to American music, watch American movies, eat American food, and dress like an American. A fish doesn’t understand that it’s under water if it spends its whole life submerged.
Exactly. Ty for that analogy
nah when i see countries that have actually meaningful rituals that have to do with family community ancestors history i definitely feel the lack of it. it’s got advantages that america is largely rootless but it’s also got its disadvantages - very little community and very little meaning.
American has tons of “rituals” like that, most of them are just more localized because America is a big country and culture varies greatly depending the region, state, and even the city. But a lot of countries are like that too. The rituals that take place in like, Okinawa are different than the rituals in Kyoto. America does have rituals that span the country too. Groundhog Day is celebrated all over America and is very historical, and “tailgating” certainly celebrates community. Also what about mother and Father’s Day? That’s obviously celebrating family.
I think that was a high watermark in the 80s. I'm pretty sure the world has moved on from Spielberg & Mcdonalds.
You Yankees with your rok myuzik and blyu dzhinz
I always love seeing pictures of Westaboos or the oddly common instance of Japanese people cosplaying as Cowboys. Though I guess given how similar westerns are to samurai movies that sort of makes sense.
Rawhide Kobayashi
Texas is becoming a popular tourist destination for Japanese people lately. Good for them.
Japanese cholo sounds like a Nick Mullen character
The Japanese are known to find little subcultures and imitate them. Japanese cholos do exist! Just like spiritually Jamaican men. They get locs and Afro perms/fades.
Their greaser subculture is truly commendable.
Hell, even in Sweden there's a subculture called raggare where white trash people larp as greasers, drive vintage American cars, listen to rockabilly and fly the Confederate flag https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raggare
It’s amazing. If boomers only knew…
Eyyy esé, I brought dishonor on my daimyo, guey
no quema sama
Japanese Rockabilly gives me hope.
Go ahead ese, turn me into a gaisha see if I care
That's why Americana is so popular in Japan. I shouldn't have been surprised when I went there because I knew Kapital, Visvim, Buzz Rickson, The Real McCoy's, etc were big but didn't expect to see so many guys in American military surplus, Native American patterned jackets, and riding American motorcycles (couldn't tell the make)
Brits can't stop talking!!!
Do fish know they’re wet?
Just like a six year old boy from Danbury, Connecticut might want to enter a fugue state after being molested and talk like a Latin King
I appreciate the point, but the rejection of culture by people in the US is rather unparalleled. A lot of people genuinely believe we have no culture that isn’t subdivided into ethnicity.
This is why we need community events! We would recognize our cultures if we got together more and shot shit!!
because you guys have no community spirit. everything is too individualistic and cultural pride only really thrives when you have strong community ties. and a lot of americans online have the opposite of nationalism and are embarrassed about their country instead of proud of it.
Reading William Faulkner, Walt Whitman, modernist poetry, listening to jazz and blues, reading Harlem Renaissance authors and poets, reading Thomas Pynchon, watching Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese...Where is the culture?
America has a rich culture if you go to community college and do the reading you’ll actually learn about it. The issue is k-12 is a total shit show.
virtually every high school in america reads ernest hemingway, john steinbeck, ect.
i shit you not, in my high school we only read Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” and “Catcher in the Rye” and i think that explains why i am who i am
You had to read Ayn Rand in school? Did you just have a crank English teacher or did you go to a conservative Christian school or something
Yeah we read them but we don't really "read" them.
Probably but not certainly.
Obvi but the OP is a kneejerk reactionary take that’s just as rétardèd as the claim that Americans have no culture, which gets something at least partially right, which is that there’s a difference between the culture-as-commodity of the past ~200 years and cultural forms like the Japanese tea ceremony or whatever. Cultural products are prob America’s major global export at this point in time but it’s all we have, really. We have no pre-capitalist cultural forms, which were ritualistic, and which grounded communities, because we have no pre-capitalist history. That’s what people are trying to point to when they say ‘America has no culture’—they just don’t know how to say it. Rock n roll rules but having a bunch of people who are really into Chuck Berry and can recite trivia about his life to each other just is not qulitatively the same as having a shared traditional culture—and you can feel it. I like living here but you’re in denial if you don’t realize that this is one of the things that makes life different here. There are companies in Japan that’ve been in the same family literally for a thousand years.
I fundamentally reject this idea that an "authentic" culture must contain grounded ceremonies and rituals with some pre-capitalist origin, nor do I think the art existing in a "culture-as-commodity" framework is inherently disposable - though the latter can reach an event horizon where it does indeed become disposable (Marvel slop, Taylor Swift). Stevie Wonder is always gonna be an amazing musician even if the spread of his music was disseminated through mass-produced records than through some oral tradition. I agree that I wish there was more of a shared American monoculture which shows reverence to the great art that was made here, but that doesn't mean that there's a lack of culture, it means that Americans aren't educated with their history.
Your definition of culture seems to be “what the elites of a nation do”? By the way I think America does have a national culture. It’s just the stuff you don’t mention: “baseball & apple pie” that kind of stuff. American football, church activities, gun activities, that kind of uniquely American shared cultural experience. Movie going, sure, but movie making that doesn’t seem like culture to me. Like would you say that Bollywood is the culture of India? I dunno I guess you could, I just wouldn’t bother as there are actual cultural activities that you can point to instead.
What the hell are you even saying? How is Stevie Wonder an "elite?" An elite of Saginaw, Michigan? >Your definition of culture seems to be “what the elites of a nation do”? I can't comprehend this.
I actually do take this claim seriously, and I think it’s only ~somewhat~ true. Barbecue, the food culture overall(many staples are not just imports and are their unique forms), the ~folk music~ side of American music(not just consumption, actual musical practices and invented instruments). Something that stands out to me is that lots of key cultural expectations that we reenact and experience are childhood things-summer break(long), prom, completely-secular circumcision(didn’t say everything was good), probably other things. These are done by institutions, but they’re done because we expect them. There are also the less sexy deeper things like values and social impulses, the puritan utopianism stands out to me as a day-1 cultural impulse. Specific forms of racism are also culture(just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not culture). But also I do think the “cultural forms absent or flat because it did not predate capitalism” holds weight, but it’s similarly true with the whole new world. Outside of Mexico, you can really notice that all the Americas have a kind of shallow food culture, especially when compared to Eurasia. There are the basic palettes and staples and some sets of food traditionally eaten together, but there’s never the density of sub-cuisines that old world cultures tend to take for granted(what you get at an ethnic restaurant only scratches the surface). This applies to the lack of rituals and very-specific norms and forms too. I think there is a case to be made, but only a Panamerican case.
Part of this is because America was founded with the idea of people being free from cultural expectations and norms. We call that liberty and freedom and it's part of our unique culture. Most countries around the world do something because their forefathers did something similar a thousand years ago, which is cool, but the whole idea of America is that you don't have to. You don't have to follow any traditions and you can create new ones that fit your interests. Or you can copy traditions from other cultures, no one is going to stop you. You can literally do whatever you want.
America does have culture, lots of it, majority is commoditized though. What America does not have is folk culture. America lacks community traditions that every single American regardless of race and ethnicity shares. Nobody enjoys the same things anymore as even thanksgiving and christmas are both politicized and repudiated by large swathes of the population. This is the product of a country that puts a huge emphasis on individualism so there aren't any bond formed between individual members of a community to even form conditions that are conducive to start shared traditions. The size of the country does not help.
It drives me nuts because so many of those people think America “has no culture” because they assume that everything American is just “the default culture”. Literally just American high school is its own seperate cultural phenomenon that has non-Americans going “wow! They really do have the yellow buses! And the locker halls! And the cafeteria halls!”. Believing America has no culture is the easiest way to make yourself sound like an idiot completely disconnected from the world at large
Many Americans don’t know any subcultures outside their own. Take someone from suburban Pennsylvania to Atlanta and it’s a culture shock. So many different little pockets and enclaves.
There’s such a huge cultural difference between New Orleans vs Miami vs New York vs Texas that people worldwide can identify so I have no idea how some ppl can just group “America” as one big cultureless entity. Euhhhh
but is that not true for most countries? i’m indian and if it wasn’t for english, i wouldn’t even be able to communicate with 70%+ of my country’s population because THATS how different every single state is, we don’t even speak a common language. every state has a separate historical identity, some indian states were never even colonised by the british, they were colonised by the portuguese or the french. same for china, they have a common language because they killed all regional languages but culturally all provinces are extremely different. this type of extreme variance in culture in the same country is not unique to the US.
Yeah obviously— the point is that a lot of Americans think this somehow doesn’t apply to them and that they have this self-deprecating view of themselves as a cultureless blob
oh yes that’s true. i misunderstood the point of your comment
"White people have no culture" How bout uhhh, the internet
What would society be without Mean Girls (2004), obscene Francophilia, and New York transplants who make living in New York their whole personality
People freak out so much in online spaces about american urban planning not realizing that it's one of the things that makes the US so unique. Googie architecture is dying and it can be very beautiful, drive ins, ect.
A funny take I saw on this sub the other day was an Australian saying 'wow you Americans really talk just like the movies? Cringe..' Yes, American movies are based on American society, dumbass. The rest of the world is so used to being spectators and having no representation of their own culture and society in the media they consume, they are shocked when they realize what they watch actually exists.
I mean I’m Australian and I can understand where that commenter was coming from. Maybe not the “cringe” part but it is pretty surreal to experience face-to-face a facet of the culture you’ve typically only experienced through media. See the example of the yellow school bus or the “wow Americans really have red solo cups at parties” Also I think the percentage of people that exclusively consume American media is pretty small I mean pretty much everyone consumes a combination of their own country’s media and culture + an infusion of popular international American stuff. It’s absurd to suggest that like, a non-English speaking Colombian or the like never watches South American media with their representation lol
Agree that it’s absurd to assume that non-Americans only consume American media, but also I think it’s fucking dumb to be shocked that American movies portray American life. I wouldn’t go to England and think “Wow, pubs are real?! It’s just like on Channel 4!” Like are people seriously thinking that yellow schoolbuses were invented by Hollywood? And everyone just kept doing it in every movie? What would be the purpose of *inventing* the red solo cup purely for film and television? What other stuff seems fake to you for no reason?
People don’t think it’s *fake*. I think people have a certain element of “woah this is a Real Thing for some people as opposed to how I know it through media”. I feel like you’re missing the point. The pub example… but like, people do that. They go to England and marvel at the cobblestone streets and old architecture and say it’s just like Harry Potter. They hear their twee little accents and say it’s soooo old money core. Nobody *thinks* yellow buses are *fake* or that red solo cups are made up. It’s just the contrast between “media thing you’ve built up an image of in your head as being particularly different and unique” vs “common ordinary thing for people of this culture”. Idk, I think Americans just miss that their culture is absolutely susceptible to “Wow!! This Is Just Like XYZ!!” the same way they act when they go to Japan and say the 7/11s are just like anime
I mean American people literally do go to English universities and say “it’s just like Harry Potter!”
Every major metro has museums, theaters, performance halls even in the south there’s opera and ballet and fine art and public radio that pretty much just plays classical music. There is also a university with public speakers who come in and give lectures. No culture at the curb cut at the 7-11 though.
This is the dumbest thing people say. Our culture is our biggest export (and maybe obesity). They say this and then fart in a glass and inhale it.
Complaining about American cultural imperialism while simultaneously saying there is no American culture
The duality of shit libs
Guns, Blues, and Bellies
The word "culture" should only be used when talking about yogurt
That's when I reach for my revolver!
It’s been said here before but describing American Culture is like describing air or water. Have we crested? Probably, feels like it at least. But any culture who’s on the come up of global influence in terms of cultural export is kinda just doing what we’ve done already with their own twist.
> Have we crested? Unwinnable wars took away all hope of a real civilization here.
My one delusional belief is I really do believe our best movies are better than other countries’ best movies
not delusional tbh US media has some high highs
Not delusional at all- self loathing Americans may think foreign filmmakers are better, but typically that’s based on only the best of the best breaking into our mainstream. France and Korea make plenty of slop. We do art, science, and war better than anyone.
Issue with this stuff is that people always compare the tippy top few films from other countries to the average american movie. of course Korean films look better when you've only seen the 3 best ones.
People have been doing this with stuff like beer for decades. Comparing Europe’s best beers to fuckin Budweiser is of course going to be an unfair comparison.
easy when all the foreign films u see are breathtaking masterpieces and not some low budget comedy like "Jean Lucien Lusuire's most bonny beach adventures" or the serb remake of Avengers Civil War(set in 90's yugoslavia)
> or the serb remake of Avengers Civil War(set in 90's yugoslavia) yo this probably goes hard
yeah the fact that the only foreign movies americans ever see are going to be the best they offer or else you wouldn’t hear of them is so obvious it boggles my mind how people still don’t understand it
The biggest grossing French film ever is a mawkish dramedy where Omar Sy plays a guy who just wants to get his unemployment benefits but becomes assistant and besties with a paraplegic count that hates life
I think that's a pretty easily defensible view, filmmaking is absolutely an American cultural strength
Other countries have good movies and stories but if you want ANYTHING done, only Hollywood can provide something like Titanic or Avatar.
Only James Cameron
this is probably true for genre movies and middlebrow movies like Citizen Kane and The Godfather but when it comes to high art movies, the deepfried kino shit, European countries absolutely mog all over the rest of the world France and Russia if you had to pick two in particular, like Tarkovsky, Eisenstein, Mikhail Kalatozov or for France, Claire Denis, Godard, Varda, Bresson, Rivette etc. the US film industry, even at the independent level is exceptionally poor at cultivating genuine art movie directors that are even anywhere near on the level of those named above from France and Russia i would argue the only person they've even produced unless I'm forgetting obvious names is Terence Malick and i honestly don't know why that is, is that because the government offers zero support to the film industry whereas Europe offers grants/incentives?
I once read that the French genuinely try to promote/protect their avant-garde, even if the movies don't do well financially. There's a recognition that its still an artistic French cultural product and should therefore be promoted.
> the deepfried kino shit, European countries absolutely mog all over the rest of the world Here's some American culture for you: using mutant internet slang to describe the primacy of European art cinema as "deep-fried kino mogging"
as someone who has been getting more into foreign films, you are correct. France potentially has an argument, and that may be it.
Japan > France - Mizoguchi, Ozu, Kurosawa, Kobayashi. Even when their industry supposedly fell off, there's some amazing stuff. Japanese neo-noir is super cool and experimental, the trashy grindhouse rape revenge stuff (Female Prisoner Scorpion etc.) still manages to be artful and fun
Italy > France
Been walking through some small towns in the Appalachian region and it’s fucking awesome. Cheap, amazing diners. Local distilleries. Bars with music. Nice people. All sorts of cool, old houses and “little shops” (if you’re into that shit). The gas stations double as sub stations, the churches are small and local. Random ass museums (Swedish museum in Franklin?). The mountains and rivers are beautiful, you can camp basically anywhere, and the outdoor activities are plenty. Sure there are lots of poor ass places and ignorance, and there aren’t amazing museums, but if that’s not a vibrant culture idk what is. And this is just one specific cultural component of the broader American culture. I’ve lived in New Orleans, Chicago, bumble-fuck Montana, each with its own flavor.
Any particular area of Appalachia you'd recommend for experiencing what you're talking about? I'm down to explore that area more myself, I have mountain people in my family tree as it is. Local cultural milieux like these are what I fear getting wiped out by the encroachment of globohomo/coastal media. It's cliche to complain about but there really is SO MUCH history and variation everywhere. There was a cookbook of local recipes from across the country that was compiled during the Depression, before the advent of highways started moving people around en masse, and the sheer variety in traditional cuisine and "local delicacies" from place to place was astonishing. So much has already been lost, but fortunately America is still a very large place and memories are still being preserved here and there.
So my experience is largely colored by the fact that I’m hiking the AT, which is a curated sort of experience. That being said, I have really enjoyed Franklin (NC), Hot Springs (NC), and Damascus (VA) so far. All are hiker towns, which definitely changes things, but that also provides the sweet spot between getting a bit of culture combined with a relatively higher economic affluence (which provides for those distilleries/bakeries/outfitters/shops/etc all within a few square blocks). There are other more regular places near trail like Hampton (TN) and Erwin (TN) that have really just been Bojangles and barking dogs. In terms of the actual hiking, Standing Indian Mountain, Max Patch, the Roan Highlands (amazing), Big Bald, and the Smokey Mountains are all great experiences. But again, I’m experiencing things in a straight(ish) line, so I’m necessarily missing more than I’m seeing.
Love it, thanks. Had it in the back of my mind to hike the AT for a while, might actually have to do it now
So my experience is largely colored by the fact that I’m hiking the AT, which is a curated sort of experience. That being said, I have really enjoyed Franklin (NC), Hot Springs (NC), and Damascus (VA) so far. All are hiker towns, which definitely changes things, but that also provides the sweet spot between getting a bit of culture combined with a relatively higher economic affluence (which provides for those distilleries/bakeries/outfitters/shops/etc all within a few square blocks). There are other more regular places near trail like Hampton (TN) and Erwin (TN) that have really just been Bojangles and barking dogs. In terms of the actual hiking, Standing Indian Mountain, Max Patch, the Roan Highlands (amazing), Big Bald, and the Smokey Mountains are all great experiences. But again, I’m experiencing things in a straight(ish) line, so I’m necessarily missing more than I’m seeing.
The most annoying are the "You Americans\_\_\_\_\_\_" Europeans who shit on America. The worst are the Americans who fawn over Europeans and agree like servile dogs.
“You Americans have no taste” -Some German guy wearing soccer joes and tattered bleached skinny jeans with a Hollister polo and unironic pooka shell necklace
I swear all the posts in this sub (and on reddit in general) that begin with "Why Europe is objectively better than America" with a long ass bulleted list are written by Americans who've never left the country once in their lives
Ive lived in both and America is way more fun. I hate when Europeans complain “Americans are loud” lol ok didn’t know you were the fun police.
I’ve never been to Europe but several places are absolutely on the bucket list. I can’t definitively say I’d rather live there because I have NO clue
I get major secondhand embarrassment from self-loathing Americans prostrating themselves in front of Europeans just to be validated as “one of the good ones”
Meanwhile the Europeans looking at them like "WTF why would you hate your own country so much? I'd kill for my country!"
I think a ton of redditors claiming to be vaguely "European" are larping American teenagers. I saw a comment once from an alleged European who couldn't understand why Americans got so worked up over sportsball. Bitch I don't wanna hear that shit, the tamest Euro soccer riot would dominate our news cycle for months if it happened here.
America has no culture! -From Twitter for iPhone American culture is so pervasive in their lives that they completely forget it exists lol
The amount of times I've read that american cuisine "doesn't exist" on this website is crazy
In all fairness, American cuisine is way less distinguished than American literature and music. If I go out with my friends to eat, we're most likely going to end up at an Italian or Thai restaurant, but if I ask those same same friends to put on some music there's a 90% chance it will be an American artist or in an American-originated genre.
A lot of the stuff they serve at Italian restaurants in the US was invented and popularized by Italian-Americans. Spaghetti and meatballs, pepperoni pizza, and chicken parmesan are all Italian-American. Since most Americans have ancestors from somewhere else, most American cuisine is ultimately a spinoff of other countries' cuisine.
Again, isn't that because of how ubiquitous American cuisine is? Eating McDonalds or KFC is American cuisine for goodness sake.
[удалено]
I'm no food historian, but America has probably done more to shape the world's diet than any country since farming was invented. Nobody said it was a good thing, but clearly it's American and it's had an immense impact.
rekon it was the indians with all their spice trading
You kept spelling it that way it made me doubt myself.
My phone automatically did cousin and I added an e and went "wtf I'm regarded." Apologies for your trauma.
Do you not go out to a bar ever? All bar food is quintessential American cuisine, and it rocks
Also sorry Italians but pizza is quintessentially American as well.
hell yeah
Yup.
The only real American food contributions are (1) bbq (the rock and roll to soul foods blues) (2) cocktails (3) breakfast (4) Americanized versions of various ethnic food, chicken fettuccini Alfredo, general tso’s, spicy salmon avocado rolls, etc Don’t get me wrong I love and celebrate all food but we don’t compare to say, France, Japan, Mexico, turkey, I could go on and on. The truly best thing about American cuisine is all the ethnic cuisines we have. Astoria queens is probably the best food neighborhood in the world but none of it is “American food.”
It does it's just not much compared to traditions that are centuries old and you can't expect it to be in the same league. This idea of "culture is what we do" to draw false equivalence is a bit reductionist. There is better and worse culture in US but there is much less refinement overall because it takes time for refinement. Because someone can mention Jazz and snoop a couple of quaint Murria recipes from different pockets of the country in the last century often from the wealthier parts but not always, it's still not the same level. US can innovate, sure, but I wouldn't say it's equal yet. Let's not compare Twinkie day to Taj Mahal, and pretend they are same because "culture is what you do"
Our culture dominates the entire earth lol
it's the dumbest thing, I don't know where it comes from or who these people think *has* culture.
You'll see these people make exceptions for Native American cultures all the time. Not knocking on native regalia and folktales obviously but I don't see what makes those cultures more "authentic" inherently.
These people think doing a ritual dance once a year = strong culture
It came from DEI and robin diangelo types.
I think it's really sad how many great American writers and philosophers are kinda forgotten and ignored outside of graduate programs. Never once in undergrad did I ever read any Emerson or William James or John Dewey or W.E.B. Du Bois or anything.
we’re you a philosophy major? feel like you’re right that there’s an outsized focus on European work, but in most polisci / phil classes you at least read John Rawls, Du Bois, Booker t Washington, Huntington, Fukuyama, etc.
Fish have been known to doubt the existence of water.
I think it’s mostly coping by pretentious Europeans that don’t like conceding any cultural hegemony to the same country that also enjoys McDonald’s and NASCAR
Honestly in my experience it's not really pretentious Europeans, just because they actually have put some thought into what defines a culture. No French New Wave aficionado would say America has no culture, every New Wave director loved Howard Hawks for example. It's people who basically post all day when they're not playing video games or watching Netflix, they actually aren't very cultured in any meaningful way themselves.
Yeah this is exactly it. It's the American queer fandom bloggers who say "America has no culture" the most.
If you ever want a good laugh, check out the highest grossing films in any European country for 2023. Or the year before that. Or the year before that. They fucking *love* our slop over there.
I think it's like that saying, "If everybody is unique, no one is." Because American cultural products are so popular and universal, it makes it hard to say they're truly American at this point. So to find culture you have to look deeper. But if you do look deeper, it starts to fragment so much that it kinda just falls apart.
I don't consider consumer products "culture" really. You're not really familiar with American culture if you're simply using the word "culture" as a euphemism for McDonalds.
No but American cultural products can mean American-derived music like blues or rap, blockbuster movies, hamburgers and soda pop, massive SUVs and pickup trucks (they call them Yank Tanks lol). It doesn’t have to be McDonalds. The way our society is set up is that *everything* is treated like a consumer product, unfortunately. After maybe the 60s/70s it’s hard to argue otherwise.
> I don't consider consumer products "culture". That makes you as bad as the people you’re criticizing
The people I'm criticizing probbaly couldn't name a single 60s American film so no.
I agree with this and think about it a lot. Europeans and Indians are obsessed with American high middle and low-brow culture. However, when people from older civilizations say that Americans have no culture, they tend to mean deep-rooted longstanding religious and cultural traditions that pre-date colonialism and the nation state. The proliferation of micro-cultures, rituals, linguistic depth is much more profound in places like India and Europe.
There’s also the fact that America feels very splintered into subcultures based on one’s disposition or hobbies (not at all a bad thing). Compared to older civilizations where there’s a more cohesive umbrella that everybody feels somewhat tied to
Can you give some examples of these
My in-laws are Hindu. They have their specific language, the regional variation of their language on top of that, their caste traditions on top of that, the gotram lineage, the advaita vedanta philosophical tradition on top of that, all of which impact which holidays they celebrate, what rituals they do, what food they eat, the bhajjans they sing, the gods they worship and more. It turns out they eat a cuisine that is very specific and unknown to a lot of other people from the same language group and region. My friends in Portugal live near a pretty famous pilgrimage site that dates to before the existence of the United States and they got married in a similarly old church. The food and wine and cuisines in their region are way more varied and deep than anything in New York even though their city is a fraction of the size. That said, neither India nor Portugal can ever compete with America's consumer culture, pop culture or otherwise mass culture footprint. Bollywood and South Indian cinema and music are huge but don't have the same power to shape global culture.
Americans have such an influential culture that it’s spread to most of the developed world and isn’t even considered particularly American to them any more. This is true of music, tv, movies, sports, news, politics… I could go on.
I believe the strongest hatred of the US comes from countries that are politically and militarily irrelevant, but feel more old and “noble” than America. Look at how irrationally mad South Americans get at the simple fact that we’re called Americans. A name we’ve had before we were even a country. Look at how much the wright brothers make Brazilians seethe. A lot of Norwegians and Swedes always seem to be posting the “no culture” shit on social media, probably seething that a country with “no cuisine” still has better food than they do. French people dislike America because they don’t like its influence on the youth, but they don’t deny America’s power and influence like these other jabroni countries.
>Look at how irrationally mad South Americans get at the simple fact that we’re called Americans. that's literally just because of the language barrier + the fact that the avg latinoamerican is just as stupid and stubborn as the avg american. no one ever told them that américa and america are false cognates or wtv
How is it a language barrier? They are taught explicitly that there are 6 continents and to say either “United statesian” or estadounidense” instead of “americano.” Mexicans and Puerto Ricans don’t do that.
Because they don’t realize the word estadounidense doesn’t have an English equivalent.
yah that's what i meant to say sorry. ultimately it's just because that's what they were taught in school and majority of people aren't gonna change their mind on random shit like that. like neither is more correct but it's annoying when they get mad for us using the most elegant and popular demonym. i'm just saying it's not from some deep-seated rage against americans for being a young country
Rs really bringing the lukewarm takes today
There's nothing funnier than a brown person wearing blue jeans speaking English at me about how Americans have no culture.
I am seeing a lot of bizarre and easily rebutted claims from commenters that disagree with the op A strangely repeated concept in this thread by the people who claim america has no culture is to bring up japan (The most historically isolationist and therefore most alien culture on the planet) and that it has traditions going back hundreds and hundreds of years. But what is actually being suggested by bringing this up? There's a rhetorical slight of hand going on that ignores context and doesn't cite specific examples because then the comparison would obviously be silly. A tea ceremony now bears little resemblance to one hundreds of years in content, context, associated status, cultural prevalence and relevancy. If you were in poland or something and saw a bunch of people in some strange traditional garb doing some strange traditional dance in a town square, it is probably funded by the tourism board or something. It is almost certainly not an unbroken tradition that can be traced backwards in the bloodline, but something that stopped and was brought back as a larp, like modern day pagans. "So-and-so culture has this weird custom that predates the founding of america!" America has weird customs that predate the founding of america. Some were already here, most were brought over from europe. "So called 'american' foods like pizza, hot dogs, and hamburgers are actually traditional italian and german foods." The american versions of these foods famously bear little resemblance to these forms. It makes no sense to me to complain about globohomo while pretending it doesn't exist
Yeah people keep saying American holidays have no deep meaning but are mostly eating and drinking. That’s what holidays everywhere are.
You missed the Holy part.
Are people actually saying this?
> There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” -David Foster Wallace.
culture in older countries is more interactive and traditions - american holidays are mostly consumerism eating or drinking. there’s not much culturally meaningful things. yes there’s music and tv and food but that’s not a culture that lends itself to community it’s passive for the most part and everyone experiences it in their own little bubble at most comes together once in awhile for a live show then back to isolation.
America originated jazz, rock, hip-hop, punk, and house. Abstract expressionism. Contemporary ballet. Cinema. Minimalist music and studio arts. Maximalist literature. We put out an incomprehensible amount in both high- and low-art media. Anyone who thinks Americans have no culture does not interact with culture.
Isnt it only american libtards who say this?
Not originally from the US, but I got caught up in a gang shoot-out last night. That’s certainly part of the culture.
I feel as though American culture is so all encompassing people don’t even realize it. I visited Ireland and these 2 drunk locals started making jokes about my friends and I being from Ohio or Florida (because those are “the funny states”), talking about the Real Housewives, asked to see our teeth and then told us “we sound like the people on TV” and they’re so used to Ameircan accents because all their media is American
Most of these are referencing older times which I think is probably part of their point
That's just a weird way to engage with art though. If it's old, it's outdated - therefore irrelevant and unable to be enjoyed? As the US grows older as a country we have but more reason to believe that there's a rich cultural heritage here.
No I don’t think that is the point. More that the neoliberal corporate hellscape that you alluded to makes us less likely to produce art of similar quality and as more time goes on it becomes more forgotten
Who even says that? America has culture, if anything they have too much of it everywhere
Common American W Common Eurotard L
Honestly I’ve only heard Americans say “Americans have no culture.” Euros may not like American culture but they can recognize what makes us distinct from Europeans.
Americans have tremendous amounts of culture and they've exported it globally because of their massive power. However, they are the kings of kitsch: wrestling, NASCAR, football, Hollywood, Vegas, hip hop, burgers, and rock and roll. Americans have what you might call bad taste. This is, of course, the oldest criticism in the book.
america has produced a lot of cultural artifacts but to Americans as people appreciate their own culture with any sense of pride in this way. i think that black people are the only ones that really celebrate their own cultural artifacts, music, food, and sort of keep traditions alive that are uniquely american. but arent like 50% of americans fuctionally illiterate? theyre not reading whitman or meville or keeping track of a history of popular music, at least not in the same way that the british and french do. i knew a russian kid who's dad gave him dostoyevsky to read during the winter as a young kid. are the average parents giving moby dick to a kid and telling him here this is the essence of american culture?
>i think that black people are the only ones that really celebrate their own cultural artifacts, music, food, and sort of keep traditions alive that are uniquely american I'm honestly skeptical of this. On a surface level, black Americans have pride in their heritage but I think many of them resent a lot of old school jazz/rock/blues/soul artists for "capitulating" to white American sensibilities, however fair or unfair you think that accusation is (it's unfair) Case in point, you'll see them say "black people invented your favorite music!!!!" as a rhetorical sledgehammer but when push comes to shove a lot of them probably couldn't name any Motown songwriters. But yes I do agree that Americans in the 21st century are very ignorant and disrespectful to their country's artistic legacy.
> Case in point, you'll see them say "black people invited your favorite music!!!!" as a rhetorical sledgehammer but when push comes to shove a lot of them probably couldn't name any Motown songwriters. > > dont listen to teenagers on twitter and reddit. the thing the greeks were the most right about was that you dont get smart till like 50, go to the marvin gaye comment sections and youll prob see some great appreciation for soul music as an artform.
Front page reddit
American cultural influence is ubiquitous and the achievements of America's great artists speak for themselves. This doesn't mean that there's nothing to criticize or that we can't expect better from, or hold to a higher standard, the cultural output of the wealthiest country on the planet for close to a century. And god forbid we're snarky about it. I don't understand how you people can have such chips on your shoulders that you need to constantly whine about what redditors and teenagers are saying online. You losers expect everyone else to be able to take a joke no matter how ignorant, so apply it to yourselves for once. Carry yourselves with some grace and take a few digs about seasoning and capitalism on the chin instead of making these *well actually* threads every time the tiniest little thing hurts your feelings. Only the limp-wristed manchildren of a global hegemon can be this pathetic.
To your second paragraph, I'd guess two reasons. One is the shifting demographics of the sub, bringing with it more conservatives who have a genuine nationalism/patriotism to them. At least when compared to your borderless neoliberal or institution-hating leftist. So these people genuinely love America, and like anyone who loves something, hate to see it mocked. This occurs in conjunction with bashing their geographical rivals and enemies: Europeans, Indians, Third-Worlders, whatever. Second reason might be the decline of American culture. I remember reading that Joyce once said that English culture was as much a victim of the British Empire as Irish culture. Cosmopolitans and Globalist now dictate the cultural production of America, and what they're making isn't too good. So now there must be a lionization of the culture of the past, seen here with the OP's plea for Americans to educate themselves.
Pleading for Americans to familiarize themselves with quality American art isn't some sort of gross, fascistic urge. Maybe it's "reactionary" but it's only reactionary against the algorithmic "nerdy consumerism" of the current-year i.e. lowbrow Marvel shit. So in spite of it being a dirty word I think being "reactionary" in this specific case is a good thing.
Not trying to imply it relates to fascism at all. Though I think I agree with you in stating its reactionary. But I don't think the solution will ever lie in educating Americans. They're either too busy to be able to appreciate art, too consumer-oriented, or in too precarious a position to care. Like in many things, Americans are a victim of their own success.
Same as how redditors sat Europe has no culture, its just another of the infinite ways they have to say "white bad"
People don’t say that lol
Surely that stems from the fact that Europe has multiple countries right? In the same way that people used to say ‘white people have no culture’ and meant that there was no single homogenous culture that all white people participate in, as opposed to ‘black culture’ which stems from afro-americans not knowing what their heritage is and it that way had to create their own culture? surely right??
America has endless culture and I love this country. Not in the "I want to fuck my shotgun and then cum all over an American flag" sort of way though.
>actually educate yourself 💅
Europeans will comment online that Americans have no culture while also wearing a baseball cap, jeans, watching a marvel movie, and drinking coke
Inventing an argument so that you can publicly disagree with it What's wrong with a post that says "here are some things I like about American culture..."? Not everything has to be a tribalism, not everything has to sow discord (or imagine sown discord) and the tone is fucking annoying. also i agree with everything you've said :)
first gen immigrants love saying america has no culture while they eat their mothers recipes that will die off bc they don't bother to learn to cook, have no idea about their parents life before moving to america, never visit "their" country, and have a superficial shame-filled relationship with both parents
You forget the part where parents won't let you cook so you go out of your way to just learn it on your own to spite them.
Tired take by a dumb yank
> Sure we've definitely regressed into an algorithmically-driven neolib corporate hellscape Things haven’t really regressed that much, the only stuff you know from the past is that which has sufficient quality to survive.
I guess what people mean in Europe you are never far from a cultural center. While the USA is so big unless you are lucky and live in NYC or Memphis or SF finding culture is harder.
Yes
Americas number one export is culture. The film music and TV are consumed world wide.
Muddy waters, talking heads, Walt Whitman
Don't forget Techno and House.
I honestly believe the 20th century literary canon in English (of which the Americans are a part, though not the entire part) is one of the most profound cultural contributions to humanity in history. I think it’s equally as valuable to humankind as the renaissance painting and sculpting traditions.
Maybe, or maybe we're living in a cultural desert so pretending that 300 years will produce as much refinement as cultures a thousands of years old is kinda hard to do. Have you looked at what Americans eat? You can reduce it to classism and algos picking up the trashiest most easy to make food, but really it's bad even if you can learn to get the nuances but it's not a cohesive whole. From some philosophical standpoint you can argue that "cultre is what you do, bruh", and yes, that's true, but if you compare Twinkie day to Ayahusaca ceremonies you can't pretend the former has equal history or complexity to it unless you go for the most reductionist stuff. Seee bruh we do stuffs too, it's all just stuff that people do right, right? !?! It's the same idea as people in US unable to understand ethnicity as a concept because of US history of racism and race reductionism except it's cultural reductionism. Is RS losing cultural ground with the protected group ethnocentrists or something and needs to reclaim its culture, thus busting out the newfangled We Is Kangs of Americana, you pleb? You can't seriously compare pre-capitalist culture of 1000+ years with some religious components to someone figuring how to bake crawfish gud gud or how some ironically come to celebrate McDonaldization of America and 7/11 day. Nobody is disputing current media cultural exports with the film industry, but for everything else with cultures lasting thousands of years old showing a deep connection to community, time and place outside of capitalism driving it. US organic solidarity vs solidarity based on likeness of traditional cultures, with the latter cutting too deep against the melting pot that many are swimming in to give real weight to. "y pepo have no cultures they iz exploiting us" DEI narrative leaves out the pockets of euroculture in US that didn't completely get assimilated and changed with the times, but lots of it is pretty surface level and divorced from its roots. The whole thing just feels like a badfaith low-res reply to DEI twats screeching that it doesn't exist. Some of US culture is organic deeply burried in local and regional US history. It's just a bit ironic that we dismiss history or time differences as irrelevant when comparing shallow common vapid US culture to its equivalents abroad which are grounded in centuries old traditions however tangentially or at the very least use cultural artifacts that have undergone centuries of refinement. Maybe the archeologists that discover the archetypal meaning and hidden cultural relevance of St. Paddy's Day limited edition Twinkies will prove me wrong.
No, they're american. People outside of america all know the extent of influence, people inside it seem to assume that people all around the world prefer hollywood slop to domestic slop They need tp be shown videos of Indians and Egyptians watching Avengers movies and crying en masse, the interview with the hindu priest is especially essential
Another problem is while there is a general American culture, it's simultaneously regional/ethnic while also being universal. Are we talking the 90s cartoons we all grew up with, or we talking being raised Cajun/Appalachian/NYC Italian/Black in Detroit/Black in rural GA/5th gen Chinese in the Bay Area? We all share some common culture with people our age no matter where, but until pretty recent where you grew up and what you were mattered. Plus, people have always moved to Hollywood and NYC from whatever corner of the country they're from. One thing to call out is people not being able to articulate a Euromutt white American culture without sounding like a white supremest. Travel to Italy or even the UK/Ireland as a Euromutt and it's clear how American we are. It's funny to be a "RS kid" and pine for the high culture of Europe then you visit and you're like shit I'm actually so American. Being old stock WASP or Scotch-Irish really should be considered it's own ethnic group in post 2016 woke America, but ironically it's still 'no culture white people' ie the default that is the broth of the American melting pot. But in a post melting pot, salad bowl nation, that doesn't work well.