When They say "I hate America", what do you think They mean?

(and we do it so well :wink: )

I owe you some Cheesies for this, Craven.

Damn! OK you got me!

Esto con muintos saudades do Rio Grande do Sul.

I do however challenge you concerning the levels of awareness and real undersatanding of America that prevail in other countries. There is a high degree of awareness of the various cultural and commercial exports we pour out so assiduously - fashions, music, etc. However that is not understanding. I didn't detect all that much understanding of Sao Paulo in Recife either.

While the educated elites in most countries have a fair knowledge of most of the world they do not represent the majority, particularly in the countries we are discussing. If there is any difference in Americans it is a result of our relative wealth, which gives our ill informed and ignorant a bigger platform than those occupied by the ill-informed and ignnorant in other countries.

Saudades da região ou das gauchas?

Morei no sul do Brasil tambem. O povo do Sul do Brasil é gente boa.



It's not true understanding, and misperceptions based on stereotypes abound.

Example:

In Brazil, they might wonder why "Americans like to eat meat for breakfast". A reference to bacon sausages and eggs.

Brazilians don't have a term for "eat breakfast" and the equivalent is "take cofffee". So they express disgust at what they think is our penchant for heavy breakfasts.

This is based on film and TV stereotypes and most Americans do not have time for that heavy meal.

But this is the basis of understanding. They know very much about our culture even if cultural differences prevent them from being truely understanding of it.

So they revile American this and that in culture, just like most Americans disparage other very different cultures.

But they have the basis of understanding which we frequently do not.

For example, a popular "ton of bricks or ton of feathers" joke in Brazil is: "what's the capital of the US? New York or Nova York?"

They are at a level at which they lack true understanding of the culture but know about it.

Many of the people I taught spoke English better than most Americans I know.



Brazil has serious issues of intra-state discrimination. Recife is a very poor and uneducated place. Understanding of São Paulo by Nordestinos is much worse than say, Californian understanding of New York.

Most of these issues of ignorance are simply circumstantial. Americans understand our own regions better than Brazilians do their because Americans travel within America more so than Brazilians travel (out of state) within Brazil.



Yeah, but I'm not talking about the educated. I'm talking about illiterates.

I used to teach homeless kids there, all of them know who the American president is. Their versions of "Jay Leno" shows are full of American references.

It's not about education, it's power of culture.

Brazilians don't generally know about America because tehy are interested in education, they know about America because we have a culture that will redefine culture war.



I disagree, I think that if there can be one named difference it's that our popular culture is in every corner of teh globe, and this brings them superficial knowledge of our culture in large quantities.

While they might not understand us, they know, even if only because they like our music, movies, television and money.

Actually, my last point of disagreement with you may well be saying the same thing from very different angles.

Money has a tendency to speak in every language.

Craven,

I'll confess to a soft spot for things from the colossus of little order and intermittent progress. I love the music from Villa Lobos to the unique Brasilian soft samba jazz, and the literature from Jose de Alencar to Machado de Assis and Jorge Amado. Though I never stayed there for more than a couple of months at a time, I suspect I may well have seen as many cities as you.

Perhaps we agree. Awareness of the superficial aspects of commercial culture, can create the illusion of understanding, but does not constitute it. That may, in fact, be a disability and an obstacle to understanding.

By the way, they do eat meat for breakfast in the south. (Though I do agree that after a sugar laced cafezinho or two, food is unnecessary.

Yes ... das gauchas et das pretas tambien. Also girls named Iracema.

duplicate

Well, that was fun.

Misapprehensions about the US held by folks from other countries are surely part of this story, but even only a diet of popular culture (Hollywood and TV shows) would tell a Tau Cetian a fair bit about America. But America isn't getting any programming from Tau Ceti or Morocco or Afghanistan or Chile.

Because we Canadians speak the same language, our border is particularly porous, and any Canadian TV set will have perhaps five or six Canadian channels, but fifteen from America. And that includes the big networks. So Canadian TVs will often be turned to NBC or CBS or CNN or PBS for the nightly news. How many American families watch Canadian news?

So, any notion of balance in knowledge here is as wrong as the nose on my face.

It's understandable, historically. America is isolated by oceans, didn't retain ties to Europe as we did, and it developed a set of mythologies which set it apart and, in some ways, above the rest of the world. As McGentrix said re learning about Canada...'why bother?'.

If we hold as a fundamental premise that knowledge is better than the lack of it, then we pretty quickly arrive at a general truth that America is hurt by its poor level of knowledge of the world outside. And it's not a long leap from there to understanding why,when the rest of world listens to George Bush, we begin to sweat.

I enjoyed this whole thread notwithstanding looking like an ignorant American. :wink:

This is about the size of it.
**********************
TEACHER: George, go to the map and find North America.
GEORGE: Here it is!
TEACHER: Correct. Now class, who discovered America?
CLASS: George!

Well, in 2000, I was visiting a German family I used to live with 39 years ago. It was the summer and the election was heating up. I was happy to find I could get CNN on their TV. And it was in English. So I found out that Gore had chosen Leiberman for a running mate. But the family I was visiting, even though they had one member who spoke reasonably good English, didn't really know anything about American politics.

They've been to visit me in New York in the early 70s, and that's about the extent they know about America. Other than what they learned from Hose Cartright and JR. It's a small country town in Southern Germany and I'd say none of the people there, neighbors and such, knew much about American politics. I tried to explain, but they weren't much interested.

They were much more interested in what had been going on in Bosnia. The daughter who now runs the house, taking care of her elderly mother, is married to a very good natured and fun man from Croatia. (He kept putting Gummy Bears in my Snapps. Man, do these people drink a lot! No kidding.) I knew more about their government than they did about mine. (although, I'll admit I don't know much, certainly not as much as many international non-American a2kers around here.)

Are we not talking about the intelligentsia? If so, then I agree Americans know much less on average about other country's politics as others know about ours. But as Craven says, it's sort of understandable.......in the sense that what we do does, in fact, impact everyone much more than is true of any one other country in the World.

I don't think Americans are stupid necessarily, allowing of course for individual cases, but we have been more complacent because we felt we were safe........and now we don't any more.

We're very influential in our world, we should learn to use it responsibly.

Lola, Unfortunately, that comes from the top. Us peons can't do too much when our president is hell-bent on a pre-emptive attack on a country that posed no threat to us in any way, shape, or form.

Well, I'm not so sure you're right about that c.i. Or I'm not sure I agree. We can learn more and work for change. For instance a nice fat check to Kerry right now would probably help as well as volunteering.......which I'm afraid I won't do until I get to New York this Summer.

The hell bent president has to go.

On my way home and before seing this post I was already thinking I'd have to retract my earlier wager.

I bet the people of whom you spoke of were middle class and probably knew a bit of English. And I bet you know about as much or more of their culture than they did of yours. Again, a rhetorical wager based on very little.

Machado de Assis wrote the a Portugues version of Poe's "Raven" that I think is the best work of translation I've seen. I also had a gal pal who lived on Machado de Assis street.

I have a soft spot for Brazil, the people are something special and I plan to return one day.



It definitely can. Without an attempt at empathy I've found that most superficial cultural awareness generates at least small amounts of animosity.

So when an American goes to Brazil and encounters third world inefficiency they might blurt "primitive indians" next to a poorly educated Brazilian who happens to understand him perfectly, and a Brazilian who knows American culture on a superficial level will just focus on the insignificant differences and revile it.

They'll make a huge deal about how Americans wear socks with sandals or how Americans eat this or that. The superficial level of cultural exchange reminds me very much of adolescent girls sizing each other up and wrinkling their nose.

"They eat that!" "They dress like that!" "They are so loud!" "They are rude!"

But it's a start. Superficial knowledge is the basis of many stereotypical misconceptions but at the same time it's a start.

A funny story about cultural exchange between these two countries is a Simpsons episode where they go to Brazil (called "blame it on Lisa").

It had some of the typical american gaffes (making all Brazilians look Mexican) but also had moments where you could tell that someone behind the story actually had been to Brazil and also had a soft spot for Brazil.

Rio's tourism board was quite upset, teh cartoon did all the gaffes, putting monkeys in the streets of Rio, rats everywhere and a taxi driver who kidnaps Homer.

But the Brazilians who bristled at this also fail to understand their American counterparts. Coming from America and seeing the favelas of Rio is a culture shock and people are bound to focus on the stark negatives they see.

It just happened to touch a nerve, because Brazilians are tired of being considered "jungle bunnies".

I saw the cartoon as an interesting clash of culture, and both sides saw it as each other being an idiot (when Rio voiced anger the Simpsons producers gave a backhanded apology in which they invited the Brazilian president to meet Homer Simpson or box him or somesuch).

Brazilians know America on superficial levels, and while I think that's better than complete ignorance it's true that this doesn't prevent them from making the same erroneous assumptions.

One assumption about America that I always find funny is the distain expressed about American patriotism.

Everyone says we are jingoistic, while taking great national pride in their perceived lack of patriotism.

It's funny, they are all just patriotic in different ways. Americans are the "we are number 1 and we saved the free world's ass" type of patriots while Brazilians delude themselves into thinking they have the best women and pizza in the world and that Santos Dumont invented the airplane....

Canadians and Australians, for example, may be right to say that our nationalism is different, but in an irony that I think Blatham has touched on, they are immesely proud of their humility in this regard.

IMO, whether one understands a culture or not has a lot to do with the empathy they decide to approach it with and the understanding and tolerance they are willing to approach it with.

I've lived in more places than I remember so I've no initial cultural indocrination to overcome. And I loved each and every place I lived even though many of my compatriots didn't.

To me, the secret is to stop making such a big deal out of the differences and it's in that spirit that I point out American ignorance of places abroad.

It's not because of anything inherent to American people, it's circumstantial. Though expressed in odd fashion McGentrix had it right. People know about what's shoved in their face.

Americans don't have the NEED to know many things about other nations and the other cultures are not imported very much (despite immigration).

To expect Americans to study up on nations that make few ripples is hypocritical. Other people know about America because we are in their face, not because of superior consideration for social study (though I do think there is a legitimate criticism of US highschool history being inordinately focused on American history).

In a sweet irony I noticed that in Brazil many Brazilians know American history better than their own. My brother and I certainly knew more Brazilian history than any of our aquaintances.

People just learn what's shoved in their face unless they decide to go and pursue scholastic tedium. And that curious type is rare, regardless of what people being talked about.

The European, Brazilian or whomever who criticize American ignorance of their country is a person railing against circumstance. And it's hypocritical, they usually know next to nothing about nations that do not affect them and whose culture isn't being shoved in their face.

<end rant>



The south don't count, they breathe meat.



Aposto que queria dizer morenas. As morenas são exoticas. Sei lá, talvez queria diser as pretas mesmo, e talvez a sauldade de morenas e coisa minha. Ba tché, as Brazileirinhas são maravilhosas!

Very interesting Craven, and I am very glad to have discovered this new (to me) dimension in you.

In my experience 'preta' was often slang for babe or sweetheart (except in Belem & San Salvidor). But I do agree about as morenas Brasilieras.

Didn't know about Machado de Assis' translations of Poe (a writer often held in higher regard in other countries than his own). I believe Machado's "Posthumas Reminiscences of Bras Cubas" is one of the largely unsung masterpieces of literature - lyrical,superbly ironic and filled with Brazilian bittersweet, wry, humor. Amado's "Gabriella" is of course unmatched (certainly by anything else he wrote). I'm even a fan of Alencar's epics; "o Guarani "and "Iracema" - a bit old fashioned , but matchless.

I have repeatedly learned that beneath all the cultural artifacts the world is populated with the same human material everywhere. Few of us really understand ourselves much less each other. Perhaps it is just the generalizations about the superficial aspects of natinality and place that are the real subject here. If so then perhaps understanding is not the correct term - knowing may be enough. On that basis perhaps we don't know enough. However the same is true within the U.S. In California they don't know much about Iowa or Nebraska - California is where it is happening - it is the future.

Twas' interesting to see the "Brasileiro de coracão" side of you too. Whooda thunk?

I can't agree more that the heart of man is the same the world over.

Well I certainly didn't guess it. Stepped right in the middle of it - to the delight of some observers here.


Thanks & bem suerte. ( been a while - did I say that right?)

It's "boa sorte", "boa" is more or less "good" while "bem" is more or less "well".

Gotta run, a morena is at the door.

Yes, and this is, of course, a fundamental theme in the Cohen brothers' masterwork...

QUINTANA:
Let me tell you something, bendeco.
You pull any your crazy **** with
us, you flash a piece out on the
lanes, I'll take it away from you
and stick it up your ass and pull
the fukking trigger til it goes
"click".

DUDE:
Jesus.

QUINTANA
You said it, man. Nobody fucks with
the Jesus.

Well I don't know who the Cohen brothers are and I'm not interested in learning either. I infer from your comment they are from California. Senator Barbara Boxer is from California too (living proof that short people should be shot) - I don't hold that against the state either.