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I keep hearing from the liberal left that we have no identifying culture. We are supposedly just a multi-cultural maze.
Was it Urban Cowboy with the guy in the trailer punching his woman and saying "fix me somein ta eat"?
I think that is American Culture for some. So is just about everything else. In a sense you are correct.
I mean, how many of us identify things like Trump Gold Toilets as American Culture? Some do....mostly very old folks. Others think cheering for a hockey team or following a Grateful Dead Cover bank is American Culture.
IMHO, the single largest identification of American Culture is the car - and therefore the horrible landscapes of endless chains, shopping malls, interstate ramps, traffic jams and everything else that is needed to support that system.
Or, we could say that Consumerism (debt, deficit and more things) are the heart of American Culture - because THEY ARE. What did GWB say to do after 9/11? He told us to SHOP.
But there is a weariness settling in about those major parts of our Culture. The Auto was freedom....but, like everything else, when there are too many of them it becomes the opposite. We are chained to it instead of being freed by it.
The are many other aspects to American Culture, but none as large as the Car and the sameness of Interstates, Chain Stores, etc......drive for a couple thousand miles, get off the highway and the Taco Bell will be there next to the Comfort Inn. You can escape Rap Music, Youtube, Facebook, Talk Radio, Rap and everything else...but you cannot escape Car Culture very easily nor the noise, pollution, and covering of the land that goes with it.
I was listening to a talk show host that basically said American culture sucked. Loved America but considered Hollywood, movies, music and the current the pop culture as nothing more than a cesspool influence on our society. Do you agree?
The culture that "sucks" is the one that doesn't respect non-aggression, property rights, freedom of movement, and freedom of association.
Music, movies, and Hollywood are some of the least offensive things about "American culture".
To each their own, but I've never been wild about jazz and the blues. Motown is catchy, but that's because it was adapted for a white audience (me). I prefer classical music to jazz, if we're reaching back to archetypes.
If we are discussing American culture we must use metrics of size as well as age (by definitely, most culture is not made out of old folks).
The genres you mention have sold literally BILLIONS of records. They are played billions of times per day.
Classical music is nice - but most of it is European (not American) and it is not considered a large part of American Culture due to the relatively tiny and upscale audience. It will always have its place among those who know what it is, but it's like having a passion for Greek Architecture.
I always say...imagine if the Romans or Greeks or Moors has, instead on innovating, looked back hundreds of years and thought "you know, I like those caves and huts"....like we do today! It's a funny thing...we should be creating the present and future instead of looking back to the good ole days.
But, yeah, I still maintain that there are only so many combinations in music - so people will listen to the Beatles in 100 years as well as Bach.
What sucks about so-called main-stream American culture these days is how quickly Hollywood people are willing to jump at anything that moves. We don't care what they think, but they think we do. The more they speak, the less we're interested.
- The perception of money and wealth as moral authority and righteousness. (Even seems to me Jesus warned us of this.)
- The rise of anti-intellectualism as if one person's ignorance is, and should be, as valuable, meaningful and interesting as another's facts, critical thinking and judgement.
- The tossing aside of the better parts of our cultural history in the name of pure, unadulterated selfishness.
On these:
1 - this is not different from most people around the world. Our "issues" (I'd say) with money/materialism and it being some sort of end all/be all thing to have/be is primarily based upon European greed cultural traditions from England.
2 - I don't think this is a part of American culture.
3 - What better parts of our cultural history? I don't get this one as I don't see it happening either. IMO too many people are ignoring the better parts of our cultural history and instead are trying to denigrate our culture based on history - and I do think that that is disingenuous considering there is always good and bad parts of history that impacts a country's national culture.
IMO the main part of our cultural history that "sucks" is the continued adherence to a white supremacy sort of tradition. Most Americans in general ignore that white supremacy is a part of our national culture; however, I'll admit that it has waned and that a "good" part of this that doesn't suck is the fact that our country/culture/society actually has been confronted with this for a long time, which came to a head during the CRM. And attitudes/ideas and the perception of our history as a nation was impacted by that climax. I feel that in comparison to other nations, especially those impacted by European colonialism that we are further ahead on issues pertaining to sociological race than other nations because they are more apt to ignore that they engage in a white supremacy cultural ideology in those nations (and this includes Europeans countries and those outside of Europe BTW).
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