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Cellar Scribblings
Sason:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on December 06, 2017, 10:36:15 pm ---Well, I hope that works out for you all. I don't know enough about either Finnish or Polish culture to assess them, but I can tell you that U.S. culture is pretty screwed up right now. As you probably know. Because everybody, at least in Europe, seems to know far more about this country than most people in this country know about any others.
Sometimes I think of how weird that is. I think, I just happened to be born in the country whose culture and politics dominate much of the world. I could have as easily been born in any of 194 other countries. I guess the closest thing I can feel to that is that I've lived most of my life in Minnesota, a "flyover state" that's not generally considered culturally significant. If I'd lived in New York or LA it would be even weirder.
--- End quote ---
Yes, that's how it seems, at least in general.
I don't know why that is, the reason must be multifaceted and buried deep in history.
CellarDweller:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on December 07, 2017, 10:15:13 am ---That I never did see.
--- End quote ---
I haven't either.
The article did say people said it was "spicier" than Mr Pibb, and the side of Pibb Xtra says "spicy cherry soda"
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Sason on December 07, 2017, 03:43:46 pm ---Yes, that's how it seems, at least in general.
I don't know why that is, the reason must be multifaceted and buried deep in history.
--- End quote ---
Well, I think it has a lot to do with the United States being for at least a century or so a very wealthy country -- which it still is, though more and more of the wealth is concentrated among the richest people -- and because it has at least since WWII been one of the two to three most militarily powerful countries in the world, thanks to helping win the war and being the first to develop atom bombs, and because it has the size and money to produce cultural products like movies and TV shows that spread around the world (and often are tailored to do just that -- hence all those superhero and other action movies), and because things like fast cheap burgers sold by a giant chain happened to originate here, and because my impression is that more Europeans speak English than any other single language. For example, I have seen, say, German and Spanish people communicate via English.
I'm not saying any of those U.S. things are good (or even necessarily bad), just that they're among the main reasons.
I'm no historian -- so Jeff or anyone else, feel free to correct me -- but I think that in the 19th century, England and France had more influence than the United States, and that in fact people here looked to Europe for cultural leadership. Fancy worldly people spoke French. Women wanted to know the latest French fashion trends. I'm guessing that probably shifted with the wars and also because the previously unexploited natural resources in the U.S. -- land, timber, coal, iron, gold, oil, grains, etc. -- provided new wealth.
Meanwhile, I thought of our conversation about retail influence earlier today. So there's this giant department-store chain here, Macy's. One year I got a job at Macy's around Christmas time, thinking I could use my employee discount to buy my family gifts. And that worked, for a year or two, so I saved some money. Then it got to the point where, although I still worked at Macy's over the holidays, my sons announced that Macy's did not sell anything that they would want. :'( :laugh:
There's a sale going on there now, but sadly I don't think the status of their merchandise has improved in my sons' esteem.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on December 07, 2017, 09:30:21 pm ---For example, I have seen, say, German and Spanish people communicate via English.
--- End quote ---
English has become a sort of universal language. While French used to be the language that all educated people knew and spoke (the Russian aristocracy spoke French, and French was the language of diplomacy), French has pretty much been replaced by English. I heard years ago that all air-traffic control, everywhere, is conducted in English.
--- Quote ---I'm no historian -- so Jeff or anyone else, feel free to correct me -- but I think that in the 19th century, England and France had more influence than the United States, and that in fact people here looked to Europe for cultural leadership. Fancy worldly people spoke French. Women wanted to know the latest French fashion trends
--- End quote ---
Well, in the 19th century the British Empire was the largest and most powerful in the world. France had great cultural influence; I guess it still has influence in fashion but maybe not as much as it used to.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on December 07, 2017, 11:11:37 pm ---France had great cultural influence; I guess it still has influence in fashion but maybe not as much as it used to.
--- End quote ---
I'm not particularly knowledgeable about haute couture but from what I do know I don't think French designers necessarily rule over those from the United States or Italy or who knows where else these days. In Gone With the Wind, Rhett gives Scarlett a green hat to break her out of mourning clothes and in the movie she puts it on backwards until he corrects her -- I think the hat reflects what the ladies in France were wearing lately. Elsewhere in that book, and in other 19th-century/early 20th-century things, I'm sure I've heard of American women clamoring to know what French women were wearing so they could update their own (handsewn) wardrobes. In turn-of-the-20th-century books by people like Edith Wharton, Europeans are seen as sophisticated and tasteful, while Americans are still crude and uncultured, even in Wharton's rarefied Fifth Avenue circles.
(That may arguably still be the case! :laugh: But few Americans think that way these days.)
Nowadays Americans seem to think of French women as having a great, sort of inherent sense of style, but they don't necessarily try to copy it.
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