British Culture Minus America

[Somethingthecatdraggedin7]

Considering America is no longer a friend and ally I wonder if there will be a gradual lessening of the americanisation of our culture?
I realise of course that some really good and useful things have travelled across the pond but there are many, many not so good things which have slipped into our language, behaviour and expectations.
I think the US is on the whole a negative influence on us in the UK, especially younger people, in a way which is entirely different to the more subtle additions of influence from other nations.
The enormous prevalence of their films and tv series have changed a generations idea of normality in all areas of life.
I am hoping that out of the current orange shit show at least one positive can be that we stop future generations wanting to be pseudo Americans.
YABU America is a wonderful influence on UK culture
YANBU Goodbye US and good riddance

Is your issue with US influence on the UK or is your issue with Donald Trump?
American merchandising, cultural and media have been a successful export for them, and a welcome import for us. A shared language is a great advantage. Do we import a lot from Australia, Canada or New Zealand? As much of a common language and even more of a shared culture and heritage.
How do you feel about the multitude of Chinese influences, and if you don't like Trump and the Republicans, is the Chinese Communist party less objectionable?

The shared language thing is an illusion and a delusion. We (in the UK) have FAR more in common with people in other Europe countries.

@GrouachMacbeth the issue is the size of their influence. Because of the shared language and their huge tv and film industry the US has a much bigger cultural impact than other nations.
I have an issue with both trump and pre / post orange influence.
China, Russia etc pose different risks. This thread is about American influence. The US has infiltrated the UK in plain sight and at a much wider level.

Yes, I agree. I think we are waking up to that now. At least I hope so.

As the saying goes, 'two nations divided by a common language'.

In my youth, I used to make the mistake of thinking that Americans were basically Europeans with a different accent: I was VERY wrong.

An American friend of mine rightly points out that America was a nation founded by religious zealots: isolationism and supremacy are still fundamental to US thinking.

Culturally, I have far more in common with my European friends and colleagues than my American ones.

I agree. I am often struck by just how different we are to Americans. We overestimate how much we have in common with them, and underestimate are similarity to other Europeans. I’m often surprised by this. I don’t dislike Americans. My favourite lecturers at university were American. I found them far more friendly and approachable than the Brits. I admire their self-reliance and gutsiness, and also the individualism. But the lack irony and self-awareness unnerves me. I also find them very credulous, by which I mean eager and quick to believe things. They are a deeply religious people - temperamentally religious. They are believers in the widest sense. Even American atheists often respect religion and don’t like to see it mocked. In comparison, we are sceptical, cynical, ironic, pessimistic and self-mocking. Americans pursue happiness. It’s part of their identity. And to not be happy is to be a failure, even ungrateful and unpatriotic, which is why Americans seem so artificial and false to us. They all seem like actors, because they’re all pretending to be having a great day - that’s what it means to be an American. If you’re not having a great day, you’re a failure and an outsider. In the U.K., it’s the opposite. The norm is to be having a shit day but cracking a joke about it - totally different. We are cheerful pessimists.

More generally, I’m not a huge fan of American culture. They way they see everyone as an apprentice American really annoys me. Certain things I adore, of course, like The Simpsons, Breaking Bad, the novels of Kurt Vonnegut and Henry James, the works of Harold Bloom and T S Eliot, etc. But there is something about Americanness that repels me. I think it’s the abscence of oddity and eccentricity, the strange blandness, the lack of irony and cynicism, the ugliness and vulgarity. Trump is the ugly American incarnate.

Whoah, how essentialist is this post. Henry James would be embarrassed that someone who professed to love his novels was so basic. Harold Bloom is nothing if not American.

It is wrong to suggest that the prevalence of American culture in the UK is anything new, it has played a big role in British consciousness for many decades, probably at least a century.
I grew up consuming huge quantities of American media, music especially but also books, tv and films and I don't believed it had a detrimental effect on me. In fact, I believe it helped broaden my horizons as a child and gave me a life-long love of all things American.
Most of the music I listen to these days is by American artists and my life would be far poorer without it. I believe that the USA has given the world a great deal culturally and I am generally a keen Americophile, if that's a real word, if not it should be! I think taking cheap shots at the supposedly delitirious effects of American culture on the rest of the world is pretty passe, people have been complaining about it since at least the 1950s!

We could start with SPAG.

‘Infiltrated’?

Also, as exemplified by some comments on this thread, it seems that Americans are the one nationality people feel comfortable being as rude about as they like without fear of being accused of xenophobia. It still doesn't make sneering at and making gross generalisations about all of the people of an entire nation seem like a good look though!

Someone once said,

"Britain sent their religious nutters to the Americas and their criminals to Australia. By far and large the criminals have made a much better job of it!"

I think it's great to push back against the import of US media and greatly encourage more home-grown content but I also think that blaming US media for changes to children in the UK feels a bit like not taking responsibility for the shite on our own doorsteps.

I'm American and British. I have a mixed accent, and so do my kids. I've more than once had to talk to schools about staff making anti-American jokes in class because it was inflaming bullying against my kids. I've more than once had complete strangers get aggressive with me and my kids because they don't like how we sound, young and old alike.

I don't know any Brits who want to be any type of American, the closest I've had is people telling me where they'd like to go on holiday. The current increase in brain drain of young people who are educated in the UK and leaving as young adults has little to do with US media, and more to do with how remote work has grown. Most aren't fleeing to the States, they're going to places like Thailand or Bali.

As I said, limiting US media and replacing it with more home-grown content and good role models is great, but let's not pretend that the issues we're having with kids and the rest of British life is really about what the US is exporting. That's a copout.

The US has infiltrated the UK in plain sight and at a much wider level.

I think the UK and most of Europe infiltrated what is now the US, and some of what those Europeans made found their way back, much of it changed.

"Britain sent their religious nutters to the Americas and their criminals to Australia. By far and large the criminals have made a much better job of it!"

A common joke; however, Britain sent more convicts to their penal colonies in what would become the US, than they did to Australia or any of the other penal colonies.

The same zealots held sway in Northern Ireland for decades until the Good Friday Agreement (brokered by a different calibre of American politician). The DUP and their allies cheered trump's win in November.

So true. And these threads may start with an ostensibly reasoned post, but they soon degenerate into outright bashing of Americans. And the generalizations that some people make often display a staggering ignorance.

Britain was a totalitarian state for hundreds of years, exporting its wretched poor and those it deemed criminals (poachers, petty thieves, etc). It put the rights of property ahead of the rights of people. Its treatment of Ireland and the Irish was brutal.

Someone needs to examine British history through the prism of totalitarianism, religious intolerance, and class oppression. The British state provided the blueprint for the Bolsheviks' suppression of organised religion and for oppressive governments everywhere, as well as the economic exploitation and cultural ruin of colonised lands and their peoples.

At least there was a time when the descendants of those who fled or were transported out of Britain tried to do better (and working with the descendants of millions of people from other parts).

absolutely this. Brexit was a Russian funded project to seperate us from our nearest and dearest.

Even American atheists often respect religion and don't like to see it mocked

@Dappy777
What you meant to say is that that's a win for the separation of church and state, American education in general, and civic values, right?

I also find them very credulous, by which I mean eager and quick to believe things.

Unlike the millions who tanked our freedom of movement and the economic future of our children by choosing to believe an obvious falsehood peddled by liars on the side of a bus?

These posts are always written by people who seem to have not been to America or spent time with Americans, nor spent any time in modern day England.

And Harold Bloom was a twat.

Exactly.

Also the extent of religious fervor in the US is almost always overstated on every relevant thread on MN. Latest data shows that only three in ten Americans attend religious services regularly, with over 50 percent in the seldom or never category. And the numbers continue to decline year by year. I realize this is only one measure of religious attachment, but it's a fairly good indicator.

I find MN’s obsession and hatred of “Americanisms” so strange.

I have no idea why you think their cultural impact will cease.

I agree 100%, having lived in the US. We made American friends, but found the Germans and Austrians really congenial - similar senses of humour.

Exactly, crude and offensive generalisations about an entire nationality are always ugly and based on ignorance and small-mindedness. What makes the whole thing even more depressing and frustrating is that most of the posters spewing their ill-informed vitriole about all Americans on this thread probably pride themselves on being tolerant of all other races, religions, backgrounds, etc. This is why we all need to be very aware that, like the posters on here displaying their virulent anti-Americanism, all of us are capable of prejudice, no matter how enlightened we think we are, and it behoves us to examine and challenge our own preconceptions and prejudices and not just try to find excuses for them

I echo what others have said. When I was younger I used to think that Americans were basically British that lived over the pond, but the older I get the more I’m removed from that perspective.

I feel much more aligned to our European neighbours, despite the language barrier.

I find the hypocrisy quite alarming. The abolition of a woman’s right to have an abortion in so many states was the final straw for me. They are supposed to be the leaders of the free world…. There’s nothing free about that.

I can't really vote YABU or YANBU based on your poll choices, but I don't think the Trump regime will make any difference at all to Brits' use of Americanisms or desire to watch American films. Why would it?