Is American Culture Being Overwhelmed By Foreign Cultures?

[DaShi]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I live in America. Everyday, I see gradual eradication of American culture by foreign cultures. You can't drive down and city or town road anymore without seeing twenty Chinese restaurants. Speaking of food, how come everyone will say, "Let's go out for Chinese, Italian, Mexican, etc."?However, no one ever says, "Let's go out for American." They'll say, "lets go to McDonalds" instead placing the food in cultural obscurity.

Where else but America (and possibly Canadia) can you find so many culturally distinct districts within nearly every major city? We've got China Town, Little Italies, Japanese Lands, and Harlem. Where is America Burb?

Go to many of our major universities. You'll find that many of the students enrolled are not Americans. They'll go to class and listen to lectures in English, but look at their notes. They're all in scribbles and wingdings.

In addition, many of the foreign people who work at said universities don't even celebrate the holidays here. They'll work on Good Friday and New Year's Day. Oh, they'll celebrate the New Year but in February.

The worst of all is that there is hardly anything American left here anymore. Nearly everything is made overseas. Our clothing is made in China and Taiwan. Our cars are made in Japan. I once even saw an American flag made in Singapore.

So help save American culture before it is lost to the ages.

[Bereta_Eder]

what american culture?

(obvious )

[DaShi]

Exactly!

[BeBro]

Can´t help you, ask Boddingtons

[HershOstropoler]

Whatever happened to America's cultural domination of the world?

[Bereta_Eder]

Dashi is leftist so he always plays himself as the victim.

[BeBro]

The US is being overrun by foreign cultural imperialism.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by paiktis22
Dashi is leftist so he always plays himself as the victim.

Because I am the victim of a heartless society controlled by foreigners and corporations and religion and aliens!

[Japher]

They're all in scribbles and wingdings.

That is so true!

Tell you what. What makes America great is immigration, and the fact that there are these many nationalities mingled into an amalgum of culture that is American culture...

I have been ridiculed by people who say America has no culture, and I have been yelled at by people who say that America's culture is overbearing... Some people are stupid.

I am just happy to live in a country where I can get cultural foods made by cultural people. American culture is still alive; just go to a sporting event and you will see it, go to sports bar, or even an Irish bar, and you will see it... Get out of the big cities, and you will find it...

[MRT144]

god bless foriegn culture for without it i would surely starve

[Worthingtons]

Is American Culture Being Overwhelmed By Foreign Cultures?

No, but English Culture is.

[BeBro]

For English food that doesn´t seem too bad

[The Templar]

Originally posted by DaShi
I don't know about the rest of you, but I live in America. Everyday, I see gradual eradication of American culture by foreign cultures. You can't drive down and city or town road anymore without seeing twenty Chinese restaurants. Speaking of food, how come everyone will say, "Let's go out for Chinese, Italian, Mexican, etc."?However, no one ever says, "Let's go out for American." They'll say, "lets go to McDonalds" instead placing the food in cultural obscurity.

If Micky D's passes for US culture, than this is a good thing. Perhaps US culture is precisely putting all of this variety together on the same street?

Where else but America (and possibly Canadia) can you find so many culturally distinct districts within nearly every major city? We've got China Town, Little Italies, Japanese Lands, and Harlem. Where is America Burb?

Harlem? Harlem is pure US!

The worst of all is that there is hardly anything American left here anymore. Nearly everything is made overseas. Our clothing is made in China and Taiwan. Our cars are made in Japan. I once even say an American flag made in Singapore.

Uh, Americans want inexpensive goods. Sweathshops churn out goods with low overhead and labor costs. Sweatshops are against the law in the US. The conclusion is forgone. Next time look for the union label.

[Adalbertus]

I'd wonder if more than 1/5th of the restaurants in Germany offer mostly German food. Lots of Italian, Greek, Turkish stuff and McDonalds. To a good part it is that German personnel is too expensive (save students ...), and south European restaurants are family business. But I think this is an enrichment. After our weekly choir repetitions, we went to a Czech/German (owner Czeh, husband German) restaurant, since they moved to a Palestinian offering a good mixture of Arab and Greek food (his wife is Greek). After the concerts in our usual locations, we go to an Italian, German, or Greek restaurant. That's interesting.

Most songs in radio or TV are American. This is too much, but I've heard German pop music sucks. In classical music, there is a good representation of German music (and listening to French classical music broadcasts, I felt almost in Germany ).

Cultures never are static and are almost always on the way to absorb foreign influence. American culture is a direct product of a mixture of a lot of cultures. The same holds for the French, German, English, Italian, Spanish ... "culture" in a way that I prefer to understand all of them as dialects of a European culture.

Don't complain but perform your own culture. It's up to you. It's not foreigners who destroy American culture by following their own but it's Americans who do so by not following it. (Applicable to any culture.)

[Lancer]

The whole place is totally wierded out.

[gunkulator]

Who cares? Let other nations fret over their precious culture. America is practically defined by its lack of cultural trappings. Revering one's culture inevitably involves backward looking "golden age" nostalgia. Ah the good old days. Rubbish! Wipe it all clean. The best is yet to come.

[Boris Godunov]

American culture is made up of foreign cultures. How can they be destroying something of which they are a part?

[Jac de Molay]

The worst of all is that there is hardly anything American left here anymore.

There wasn't anything "American" to begin with, unless you were referring to its native peoples.

I think the fact that there is no one distinctive core culture can only be a strength.

edit for NO

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by DaShi
However, no one ever says, "Let's go out for American." They'll say, "lets go to McDonalds" instead placing the food in cultural obscurity.

The day people in the US say "let's go out for American" rather than "let's go to McDonalds" is the day where your culture would be marginal, at least about food.
The day the American people say "let's go see an American movie" rather than "let's go see the latest Spielberg" is the day where American culture will be overwhelmed by foreign cultures in cinema...

If it happened to you, you wouldn't write this post as a joke, you can bet on it.

[Bereta_Eder]

Who cares? Let other nations fret over their precious culture. America is practically defined by its lack of cultural trappings. Revering one's culture inevitably involves backward looking "golden age" nostalgia. Ah the good old days. Rubbish! Wipe it all clean. The best is yet to come.


I don't think so. Older culture of many nations is not a "trap" ( ) but a precious well from where water can be drawn to water modern trees of cultural expression.


You just don't have that well


Seriously, french artists can draw from the revolution archives for example and create something new that does have a source to something old.


To have nothing behind you is a curse not a blessing, this is self evident.

Of course cultures are like attached bottles, they flow freely between themselves.

So an american can also have access to said french revolution written archives and make something new out of them. ( 5 bucks it will be a new joke about france but anyway)

[Velociryx]

Exactly....it's already been said before but American culture IS the intermixing of the rest. That's why it's called the "melting pot."

It's also why it can't be "destroyed" per se, because it doesn't really exist as an entity unto itself (ie - the only way to destroy American culture is to destroy the cultures of every nationality who's ever immigrated here, which, I would imagine, covers most, if not all).

It's also rather funny when people argue from the other perspective, that "American culture" is taking over the world. So? If it's an amalgum of every culture (yours included)...who cares? Surely there are bigger fish to fry than that?

-=Vel=-

[Bereta_Eder]

because unfortunately it is often reduced to the least common denominator

(a curse for all mass media products really, not just american)

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by BeBro
For English food that doesn´t seem too bad

"To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day." - W. Somerset Maugham

[Velociryx]

the thing is, Patty Cakes, is even IF "American culture" spreads to every corner of the globe, it's not like it subverts or destroys the "parent culture" (if it did, it could not exist in the first place), so what's the trouble? Enjoy both, or enjoy one, ignore the other.

-=Vel=-

[HershOstropoler]

I don't see either how american culture could destroy european culture. That's a ridiculous idea.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Velociryx
the thing is, Patty Cakes, is even IF "American culture" spreads to every corner of the globe, it's not like it subverts or destroys the "parent culture" (if it did, it could not exist in the first place) so what's the trouble? Enjoy both, or enjoy one, ignore the other.

-=Vel=-

the bolded phrase doesnt make sense.


the problem is that cheap products (which as said are reduced to the least common denominator as to be accessible by the wider possible audience) in a free market economy can indeed lead to inactivity the domestic industry.

i refer you to hamelink's cultural autonomy for more details about that.


theones in primal danger are theones who already share critical pramteres in common such as language (which makes uk, australia and canada a bit more subscectible)

[HershOstropoler]

Originally posted by Spiffor

The day people in the US say "let's go out for American" rather than "let's go to McDonalds" is the day where your culture would be marginal, at least about food.

What do you mean?

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler
I don't see either how american culture could destroy european culture. That's a ridiculous idea.

It is but that doesn't mean they don't do harm.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Dashi this was a pretty good making-fun-of-Boddington's troll .

[Bereta_Eder]

and there isnt "one" european culture either.