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^^It's not because we identify with the Brits, it's because the Brits are part of the "good guys". The Russians and Germans, not so much. And it's not as if there aren't plenty of movies about them. WW II seems to be a subject that will always be of interest to many. DH just watched "Ice Station Zebra" a movie about the US and the old USSR the other night.
You might think, sitting there in New York with all your British names, etc, that it's that way everywhere in the US, but there are many parts of the country where people just don't relate to the Brits. There was another thread about this, where some Brit called England "the mother country". I asked my daughter, Colorado born and bred, who had just returned from England, if she agreed with this and she said, "My state used to be a part of Mexico!" Even my part of PA, in the way western part of the state bordering Ohio, the dominant culture was Scotch-Irish, not British. Whiskey Rebellion country and all that.
Ah but it is because we identify with the Brits. The Brits were not considered "good guys" until WW1. But look at some of the dozens of names I mentioned and you will see that many of them; like A Christmas Carol, Frankenstein, Treasure Island, Black Beauty, etc. have been part of our culture long before 1914,. Some of them, like Robin Hood, King Arthur and Shakespeare plays are considerably older than the United States itself.
I am glad you mentioned your DH watched Ice Station Zebra. It was written by British author Alistair Maclean, who also wrote The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. Hollywood made all 3 books into movies featuring top American and British actors.
So for the reason the English made up the majority of the early white US population(among the earlier arriving Scots-Irish, Germans and so on and dwarfed by the black slave population), they simply became synonymous with American. Everyone else who came later became the others and had to wait to prove themselves to become "American". So while there's a lot of English contributions to American culture--we just tend to overlook them as being American. We don't find them particularly exotic. Even an English-themed pub in the US, is often just a theme. When English people move to the US, we just expect them to live where ever they like. There's not been specific "English" neighborhoods unlike say specific Irish neighborhoods that are still around that have been around in some parts for over a hundred years or more. So not just talking about British culture, but in specifically English culture--we're heavily influenced by it--yet we're so influenced by it that we hardly notice. But the historical culture of the English isn't seen as something to search out... No one goes out for English food in the US...
Presenting Shakespeare in the park isn't seen as some exotic foreign culture--it's sort of a staple of the arts in the US. Same thing with British rock music--when you hear a German or French band from today or days past--people will often think of that fact to define them. People think of the Beatles and Led Zeppelin as British or English bands, but no one defines them solely by their nationality--and the fact is that they were as influenced by American music as anything else. It's almost as much a part of our culture as that of the UK. So there's always been a lot of cultural interplay between the two nations--yet as far as looking at other elements of traditional English culture--it's not something that has a broad range in the modern US...
Pretty much right on target. I did not even get into the music aspect, from Rock and Roll to Pomp and Circumstance.
Then there is the traditions of the United States Navy. For instance, The Navy Hymn is used by both the Americans and the British. It has been used in a number of movies including Titanic.
The New York area, having the most immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries, is one of the least British (excluding Irish) in the country. A 1960 study estimated 5% of the population was of English ancestry.
The Scotch-Irish are a part of UK culture, which did not exist at the time of the revolution, when PA was being settled. The Scotch-Irish did not care for the Brits. They were overwhelmingly Presbyterian, and the Brits came up with some requirement that "all crown officials be of the Anglican faith; this regulation eventually included all those in the military, or employed by civil service, municipal corporations, and educational institutions. The Scots-Irish, devoutly Presbyterian, were not only excluded from any sort of power, even their clergy was stripped of its authority to perform marriages. (Thus the genealogist seeking information may need to look at Anglican marriage records.)" The Scots-Irish in the Southern United States: An Overview | Katharine Garstka
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Originally Posted by LINative
Ah but it is because we identify with the Brits. The Brits were not considered "good guys" until WW1. But look at some of the dozens of names I mentioned and you will see that many of them; like A Christmas Carol, Frankenstein, Treasure Island, Black Beauty, etc. have been part of our culture long before 1914,. Some of them, like Robin Hood, King Arthur and Shakespeare plays are considerably older than the United States itself.
I am glad you mentioned your DH watched Ice Station Zebra. It was written by British author Alistair Maclean, who also wrote The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. Hollywood made all 3 books into movies featuring top American and British actors.
Add away. I remain unconvinced. The movie was about the US and the Russians. I could make a list of German movies/books, or Russian ones, for that matter.
The Scotch-Irish are a part of UK culture, which did not exist at the time of the revolution, when PA was being settled. The Scotch-Irish did not care for the Brits. They were overwhelmingly Presbyterian, and the Brits came up with some requirement that "all crown officials be of the Anglican faith; this regulation eventually included all those in the military, or employed by civil service, municipal corporations, and educational institutions. .
That doesn't makes sense. The Scotch-Irish are British, how could they not care for themselves. Britain is composed of England, Scotland (where the Scotch-Irish originated from) and Wales. Britain refers to the entire island, and was the name of the country consisting of only the island at the time of the revolution.
In Scotland, you'll annoyed response if you say they are somehow not British. Northern Ireland is its own special case. The Protestant Northern Irish (which are mostly Scotch-Irish) are probably have the most religious fundametalism in all of Europe, similar to what can be found in parts of the US. Perhaps some of the US inherited that subset of British culture.
Pretty much right on target. I did not even get into the music aspect, from Rock and Roll to Pomp and Circumstance.
Then there is the traditions of the United States Navy. For instance, The Navy Hymn is used by both the Americans and the British. It has been used in a number of movies including Titanic.
The University of Pittsburgh alma mater has the same tune as Hitler's "Deutschland Uber Alles" (Sp?). My alma mater is older, and in Pittsburgh, that Scotch-Irish, Presbyterian refugee camp. The tune is actually the tune of a Lutheran hymn, and Lutheranism started in Germany, has almost no presence in Britain.
Add away. I remain unconvinced. The movie was about the US and the Russians. I could make a list of German movies/books, or Russian ones, for that matter.
Maybe. But British books, movies and music are more well-known than continental European ones. There's a lot more cultural contact, a German or Russian George Orwell or C.S. Lewis would have been less mainstream and more foreign.
I don't think too many people think more of the UK in the context of World War II, it's mostly historic at this point. And for younger people, same with the Cold War.*
The strangest I heard was Mitt Romney calling Russia "our #1 geopolitical foe". At first I sounded to me as if he picked a random country out of hat. After a while, I thought it might have had something to do with the Cold War and was in another century.
One of the other thing that makes the connection more clear, Canada across the border has far more British heritage than the US and a British government and legal system. And just connected for far longer. But other than government, culturally, English-speaking Canada doesn't feel drastically different from the US. In fact, for what I can tell, much of the South has more differences with the much of the north than the north with Canada.
So even, though Canada would seem like it would be far more British, it's still similar to the US. Why? Because they're both settler states started by the British and underwent similar changes in a new world.
The Scotch-Irish are a part of UK culture, which did not exist at the time of the revolution, when PA was being settled.
Thinking about this some more, true, the UK didn't exist in the 18th century; the country was Great Britain and the flag was different. It was the union of the English and Scottish flags and looked like this:
Many of the Scotch-Irish today (protestant Northern Irish) like to think of themselves as "British", with some denying they are "Irish", though a long time ago it was different. Removing the UK flag recently created riots there:
We have things in common with Britain, like we do with all the European-based cultures, eg, Canada, Australia, NZ, Germany, Scandinavia, etc. Many of our customs come from these places, such as Christmas trees from Germany, adopted by the Brits from there. There is some Scandinavian influence in the upper midwest and the west, such as Solstice celebrations.
However, there are major differences between the US and British lifestyles. We do not have a NHS. We do not have the extensive welfare system they have. People here are more likely to get married, and more likely to have children. We smoke and drink less. We go to church more. The UK is the most densely populated country in Europe, and third most dense in the world. England is most crowded country in Europe - Telegraph
True, though I think a lot of those differences are from being a "New World" nation rather than an "Old World" nation, hence why the US has a lot of similarities to Canada, and to a lesser extent, Australia. The welfare state size in Canada and Australia are in between the US and northern Europe. From what I can tell, though, the UK still has more cultural similarities with the US than northern Europe, from having a common language and cultural connections (as well as being started by British settlers). Germany sounds far foreign to me than the UK.
Currently, the US fertility rate is slightly lower than the UK, though that may be temporary. The UK is certainly crowded, though the photo from the start of that link is extremely cherrypicked (either an event, or some office area in the center of London right after rush hour). Though there's plenty of countryside there, coming from the Northeast, the more striking part to me wasn't the density but how the countryside (90% for England, lower for Scotland) lacked trees!
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