Is The United States of America One Big Social Experiment?

Originally posted by bigheadjay
reply to post by Solomons

 

This is part of the problem with many countries they are quickly following suit with the United States,they are becoming Americanized.

This is something I've argued for years. American entertainment media has a stranglehold on the Western world but it's doubly problematic for Britain as Americans speak English which makes the product even more 'market ready' as an export. This creates this drip-drip-drip feeding mechanism of 'American values' such as the glamourisation of violence (compare the amount of violence and the portrayal of violence between British and American films), the fetishising of guns and so on. I don't think it's too much of a coincidence that so many people caught-up in American-style gang culture and gun crime actually try and talk and dress as if they're from some 'project' or other they've heard referred to in American music or films.

Over the last 10 or 15 years our shopping centres have become 'malls' containing so many North American brands and retail lines that these places are practically indistinguishable from their equivalents on the other side of the Atlantic.

We have a service industry full of smiley-faced drones mindlessly spewing 'Have a nice day!' like some 'retail only' Stepford Wives husk. We've got an American-style diet that is slowly turning this country into American-style lard-arses. Which is just what we need when we're slowly getting a more 'Americanised' health care service due to the encroachment of Private Finance Initiatives.

This puts paid to any idea of Britain or Europe being somehow 'jealous' of America - that old badly thought through chestnut - as why should we be jealous of America? We've actually got the American culture that Americans claim we're jealous of. And guess what, it's pretty much all #.

[edit on 12-4-2009 by Merriman Weir]