Is american popular culture poisoning young british society?

australia has some great music and film if you can find it

music - "radio birdman", "weddings, parties, anything", "hunters and collectors"

film - breaker morant, my brilliant career, the getting of wisdom, galipoli

I think it is deplorable how america is holding a knife to everybody's neck to gobble down their despicableculture. really, have you no shame america?

Of course it does. Don't forget the Saints, who recorded my all time favorite punk album. And obviously Crocodile Dundee was made in Hollywood.

It's not like I'm trying to make a legitimate point or anything like that. That's not what I do here.

I'm gonig to see what I can find out about these films you've listed.

galipoli is probably my fave of the list, it's the battle that was the basis for the song "and the band played waltzing matilda", it stars a young mel gibson, it might be his first movie actually, my brilliant carrer and the getting of wisdom are kind of period chick flicks but interesting

Wilso - you're gonna hate this - but I always forget you're not American. I don't know why, but I do- when I read this I thought, 'Isn't he American- and then I remembered you're Australian.

I think it's hard for people who don't live in America and who only access it in short bursts either on vacations or through the media to grasp exactly how diverse and rich American culture is.

And you can't encapsulate it. The Innuits in Alaska are part of American culture as much as slave owners in the deep south, and the cowboys out west, (although now, it's a shame that when anyone outside of America hears Alaska they'll think hockey moms and pitbulls with lipstick like Sarah Palin).
You have the legacy of the iron workers in Pittsburgh, and Pennsylvania Dutch and Amish within an hour of Philadelphia's Main Line society- and that's only in one STATE!
You have the descendents of Cabots and the Lowells of Boston within a few miles of Roxbury (a ghetto).
It's certainly not all good - but it's certainly not all bad.
Read some American literature. Read Steinbeck (if you haven't - maybe you have) but I'm saying this because I think he presents an amazing portrait of Americans and American culture in all its diversity.

It really kills me to think that the world thinks Gossip Girls represent America and Americans. I'm one American who's never even seen it. I haven't a clue what it's about, but I know it doesn't represent me.
Desperate Housewives (again I haven't seen it) represent one small little faction of American housewives, but again- they don't represent me.
I know - I was an American housewife and I hung out with women in Maine who taught me how to weave baskets and rag rugs while our kids played next to the fire we built with logs we hauled in after we broke the ice in the buckets to water the horses while we were forcing our seedlings for spring planting.
It's TRUE! And my mom was a totally different sort of housewife than I was.
And so was my sister.
My point is that you can't point to one person in America and say, 'That's typical of Americans.' I don't know what I'd consider a typical American to be.

But I think the more interesting question is why is the rest of the world is so interested in what are the basest and most shallow aspects of American culture. Why don't they demand and adopt the better and more interesting parts?
I think it says just as much or more about these other cultures who IMPORT this crap. If it's so bad and everyone's so against it, why go to the trouble of accessing it at all? Wouldn't it be better just to make your own cultural contributions?

Goddamnit, we need that money for our economy. Here, buy this television series--39 weekly episodes, that's good for a three year run! Damnnit, buy it, or you'll be sorry ! ! !

funny about the indigenous people of north america, that's more or less how i think of them, i think of the first nations people as north american, not american or canadian, and the Inuit, as just that, i don't see a division between the peoples who live in canada or america

I was just having a conversation about that with a woman who's from Quebec - French speaking- who's married to an Englishman and has lived here (England) since 1972.

And I told her that as an American, I always identified closely with Canadians, (as I lived most of my life in the northeast - I guess if I'd grown up in the southwest it'd have been different) and I guess I just assumed that they identified more closely with Americans, as they were physically geographically closer- than with England (though they were/are part of the commonwealth).
So I asked her how she felt- and of course it was different for her as she was French and from Quebec, but she said that when she was a young girl, there was much more of an emphasis on America and Canada being friendly neighbors and their similarities rather than differences than there is now.
I guess it has a lot to do with a generalized anti-Americanism that's more prevalent now.

I think in terms of the indigenous people being North American - yeah- I mean they were constantly crossing back and forth over what eventually became a three thousand mile long border.

I have to agree that some of the colloquial terms used in America such as "my bad" sound stupid, but that really is much more of a counter culture in America I never use that term or terms like it, and if teens in Britain are picking up on this term it is apart of your culture now, and for the amount of intelligence of which you seem to boast compared to your American neighbors. I mean tea time said here instead of dinner does sound stupid and pointless to us Americans. So before thinking that England is so innocent to all of this cultural exchanges there is always going to be a lower class that speak in slang no matter if your in America or England. So just don't worry about it, they'll probably grow out of this phase of loving rap music and baggy pants.

Okay, honestly? What kind of Americans have you been around? 'Cause that kind of thing - shoving something down someone else's throat, that is - really pisses us off, actually. Regardless of who's doing it. Doesn't matter if it's one of our fellow countrymen or not. Plus, in my experience, most of us don't like it when another country tries to copy our culture. The usual reaction to such antics consists of the following: "Dude. Get your own material."
(And yeah, I know, you do come across the occasional batch of sadistic wackos. But at least they're only visiting you all. We have to put up with them all the time.)

I 'm a lifelong (almost) New Yorker.
That frase began as a self-condemnatory confession of error. It started as: "am I bad!"
It was a playful adaptation. I accept it in that spirit.






As an American, I'd rather not be tarred with that brush.
The language that u mentioned is from the lowest
of the most foul african criminal elements.
Normal Americans don't speak that way.



HOW will it help God ???









David

I keep this post in mind as I occasionally contemplate some of the vulgar and crass elements of American popular culture.

It could be much worse.

George, its not very nice
to exhibit this filth in front of everyone's faces.
That is the reason that I have that filth on IGNORE.





David

You know, I could same thing about you all. All this talk about the king, queen, prince, princess, etc..... Makes. Me. Sick. It goes on and on and on. Simply put, you couldn't control us 250 years ago, so I doubt doing anything about it now is anywhere near possible. Furthermore, the United States of America is spiraling out of control anyhow, so why not deal with us poisonous Americans a little bit longer? We're a ticking time bomb anyway. I highly doubt that your "young British minds" will take after some poverty- stricken American kid forced to the extremes during a second, worse Great Depression.
I'm sure everyone has foreseen such an event, especially after the terrorist attacks. So maybe it's amounted to living life to the fullest and listening to crappy rap music before our lives are basically done for.
I'm sure that you .....understand .....that not everyone is going to be a carbon copy of Brits AND you just. aren't.good enough to build 300 feet high walls around us, as well as cutting off our Internet.
What this basically boils down to is that....this is hard to say.....Not Everyone Is British! And you couldn't possibly stop any sort of cultural diffusion- it just isn't possible!
Different people feed off of each other for new, interesting ideas in order to change what's normal for them. It's natural.

You folks are depressing me.

Dont be depressed. They are all just proving the old saying Change is hard.

Have we finished insulting each other yet?