What is American Culture? Where does it come from, how is it created, and what is our role in it?
I left a few comments in pure_doxyk‘s post that led her to say: “Also, you should talk more — somewhere, somehow — about how exactly fiction, journalism and advertising are representative of our culture…I’m going to have to chew on it a bit, but it’s a darn interesting claim.” So.
After chewing on this a minute (IE, without deep research), I think that our culture (OUR culture) is largely represented by an intersection of our history, fiction, journalism and our advertising.
Let us take as an example our well-advertised believe in The American Dream.
However you interpret that (having a better life than our parents, earning more money, whatever), historically our society was originally built by people who (willingly and unwillingly) left their old culture for an unknown existence in The New World (… over the previous existence of another culture, but let’s move on).
Our music, poetry, books, movies and TV shows reflect this deeply held desire to improve our condition – sometimes in noble ways, sometimes criminal ways. Our heroes and villains, from the founding fathers to The Matrix, are obsessed with it (“rightly so” or otherwise being beside the point).
Our daily news is led by it – so much so that nightly TV news fashions their own stories by looking for the noble underdog or looking out for The Little Guy to make sure we Get Our Fair Share.
The marketing angle is obvious, of course – in order to make you desire someone’s product, you must show that their lives will be (in some way) better for having it, which reinforces the dream to acquire more – ostensibly more of their product, but ultimately more “out of life”.
I think there are other aspects of our life that play into what our “culture” as Americans is, but these are things we have in common as a nation – we share national news, national art (particularly movies, books and TV), national marketing and (for many of us, ESPECIALLY those creating said media) a common history. Did I miss anything, in your mind?
This came up, by the way, in the context of my belief that while there definitely is corporate collusion with our government at our expense, and corrupt decisions are made to our detriment as a country … what defines us as a culture is created largely from individuals working on much smaller goals, unaware or uncaring of how their minor addition contributes to the gestalt of our culture.
Most news editors don’t think about how their stories portray any one group – they think about whether a story is interesting enough to get readership, and about whether their advertisers will throw a fit.
Most TV show writers don’t think about whether they’re reinforcing stereotypes and biases, they think about what will make people laugh, what will be picked up by the producers (who themselves care about the numbers, just the numbers). Artists, in general, create their fictions from their life, their experiences, their thoughts, and those individuals COME from our messed-up culture and REVEAL that culture, intentionally or otherwise.
And advertising is not designed to keep women throwing up into the toilet, to keep us coveting (as a larger concept) more than we can afford, or to separate the haves from the have-nots. Those are byproducts of this concept: To sell your product, you must make people believe their life will be better for having it in it (in small or large ways). That’s all they care about, and if showing beautiful people using it keeps us striving to be perfect, they could care less, as long as our vision of perfection includes their product. If it doesn’t, they’ve failed.
Our culture is defined one story, product, show, and article at a time. Even if they were decided on by a massive vertical corporate structure, the idea (or the alteration of said idea) came from one human being. Those who make national products are good at giving us what they think we want.
Interesting. Perhaps it’s a confirmation of old saying, “Perception is reality”?
interesting thoughts.
I would say the idea that we have a national culture (and all consume it) is another part of the national mythos. One that I’m becoming increasingly aware is not true.
I was just in NYC and was sort of amazed and appalled at how much of the advertising everywhere was just repetitive advertising for the same 20 or so TV shows or products. Yet if you looked at one of the news stands, there was this range of interests represented, and a completely different contingent of periodicals for different segments of the population. Black people, for instance, only showed (this week) on the covers of magazines specifically aimed at black people. (and people have mentioned in RaceFail ’09 how books that are not marketed to black bookstores, etc, are significantly less likely to land in black hands). And my neighbor was just commenting to me last week that he looks around at civic events and wonders where all the black people are (YS is nearly 30% black). Wherever they are, the short answer is “doing something else” and the mainstream/dominant culture people are ignorant as to what non-mainstream people read, consume, and do with their time.
FWIW I’ve been receiving O magazine since I started living in Yellow Springs (don’t know why – it just comes), and I don’t know that I could say that how it’s different from other similar magazines because I don’t tend to read them. But politically, also, I think as a nation we have branched into consuming different media, including news media outlets that tel different “truths” and histories. And personally I think this is both a good thing and a serious problem.
But, like, if you think about the 2-income family with kids and maybe more than 1 job, and they have some subsegment of culture they keep up with (and a lot of it’s aimed at kids, and is something those of us without kids rarely see), but it’s not a single storyline.
scattered ideas, sorry.
Oh, I definitely agree that this is changing, and that we segment ourselves more and more because, these days, we can.
I am just cautious of attributing the sort of media choices I make onto the nation as a whole. We still have 4 major TV stations that receive a massive amount of viewership for their news programs every single day. We still, even with indie films flourishing, have massive blockbusters seen by millions of people at a time. I, myself, don’t watch those TV shows, and I rarely see those movies.
Yes, by race we have some serious divisions even there – I haven’t seen the Friday series of movies, but it’s a pretty common touchstone in some groups of people.
But I think saying that our media defines our rapidly fragmenting culture is rather more accurate than saying that it doesn’t play any role because it doesn’t play the same role for all people, y’know?
I think the whole idea is better served by asking, “What is a culture?” and how does it differ from what we’ve commonly referred to as subcultures? If we get to the point where we DON’T listen to the same news, watch the same shows, listen to the same music (and I think there’s a great deal of cross-pollination there), are we approaching a point where our society is a loose federation of cultures, instead of subcultures with a common thread?