I am back from traveling in Europe. I don’t like to get all Tom Friedman and talk about Lithuanian cab drivers and what not, but I am always fascinated by Europeans’ love for certain parts of American culture. This is from a burger/music place in Stockholm called Cliff Barnes.
My friends were surprised I didn’t know who Cliff Barnes was. Apparently, “Dallas” was huge over there.
John Puma
Besides perpetual war, our “cultural” interaction with the world is through our “other” export: PR/advertising.
That another culture falls for it unfortunately diminishes them (as it has us) but hardly justifies our underlying global “titillation and death for dollars” modus operandi.
Please explain that to uncle Tom.
Rihilism
This post needs more kittehs. (the music makes the vid)…
WereBear
I think some of our popular culture simply has human universality in it; and everyone is going to respond to it.
Many people think of Westerns as uniquely American. Yet, when I first got into Japanese Samurai movies, it didn’t take long for me to think, “These are their Westerns.” The plot patterns, the moral codes, the thematic structure; swap out the costume, props, and language and yer done.
We are neither uniquely wonderful nor uniquely terrible. We are simply the product of a social experiement: we created much of our civilization from scratch, based on Enlightenment principles and buoyed by a huge enough “tract of land” that we were able to create a bunch of different “laboratories of government.”
THAT is our biggest contribution to world history. And I don’t think we’re done yet. Remember, Europe and Scandinavia basically had their previous culture ripped apart by war. It wasn’t just their infrastructure that got bombed to bits; it was their aristocracy, their ossified classes, their base assumptions were, too.
The Confederate South did have this kind of root devastation; but they refused to change a thing.
Rihilism
Alternatively, our westerns are their samurai movies. Just sayin’, ;) …
Xenos
I lived in England back when Dynasty was the big cultural import from the states. People referred to it as ‘Dysentery’ but watched it religiously.
Of course, The Clash gave the show special mention in “I’m so Bored with the U.S.A.” – ‘but what can I do?’
I would rather watch Dynasty than CNBC, the latest ubiquitous toxic export.
Mike Kay (Team America)
no wonder there’s so many suicides in Stockholm.
MikeJ
@Mike Kay (Team America): 4.3 per 100,000 is almost half of the US rate. New Zealand is almost twice the rate of the US at 15 per 100k. Must be those damned hobbits running around.
Mike Kay (Team America)
twice as many suicides in the US – really? Yikes, I didn’t know “Dallas” was so lethal.
techno
@Mike Kay
Those lies about Sweden’s suicide rate have been circulating since, at least, the Eisenhower administration. They were offensive then. They are offensive now. And people who retell them aren’t funny. They are only demonstrating their ignorance of, and hostility to Nordic culture.
gnomedad
@werebear:
Haha, check out Yojimbo.
(j/k; of course you have.)
superdestroyer
MikeJ,
The suicide rate in Sweden is reported to be 15.8 by 100,000 and is higher than New Zealand’s suicide rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
Maude
They’re re doing some new episodes of Dallas. Europe will be happy.
The Tim Channel
I find many of the Germans like America more than I do. I think it’s because the ones who travel to the US are going to upscale locations on vacations. The euro/dollar conversion is sweet as well. They’re shocked when I tell them the inside stories on private for profit prisons, assault on female reproductive rights, as well as the ever present dangers from right wing religious extremists.
In other news, I’ve managed to get involved in the middle of an Atheist shit storm. To get a peek, here’s the place to start:
http://thetimchannel.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/skepchick-blues/
Follow-up/recap/extended snark:
http://thetimchannel.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/attack-of-the-american-girlyban/
The whole sordid display of male/female angst, is a huge waste of time, and a needless diversion of progressive resources. In other words, the exact kind of stuff folks around here have come to appreciate.
Enjoy.
Libby Spencer
Welcome home and thanks for loaning me your place while you were gone. Nice digs, but the neighbors were a bit noisy…
ericblair
They seem to like the West a lot, both the desert landscape (as un-German as you’re going to get) and the Western cowboy mythology.
Russians probably don’t know where San Diego is, but sure know that there’s a Santa Barbara in California. On the other hand, they know about Brighton Beach and want to go there, which is basically their home twenty years or so out of date. Times Square? Empire State Building? Meh.
Southern Beale
Oh yes! Dallas and M*A*S*H were both huge. I lived in Copenhagen in the early 1980s. Both programs were on television there (they were a season behind, IIRC), and everyone would gather around the TV set on those nights to watch. It was a huge fucking deal and of course, for all of us Americans it was a taste of home.
Will
As an expat in Munich, I can confirm that the Germans are crazy for Westerns and the western desert. They also love Dallas. Many of them can’t understand that I don’t want to live there anymore, until I, like the poster above, explain what it is really like. I hope never to return outside of visiting the relatives.
HL_guy
When I was in Ireland (1990’s, before the economy exploded then imploded, the TV had about 5 channels total), everyone seem to have love for an off-kilter, sort of petrified version of American culture. John Denver and Billy Joel on the radio, constantly, pictures of JFK on the walls (yeah I get that he was ‘Irish,’ sort of). And then there was the enormous Confederate battle flag the college kids put up at the campus pub for their “Beach Party USA” event.
They get what they get, just not always quite right.
robertdsc-PowerBook
I probably would have missed the Cliff Barnes reference, but Ewing Oil would definitely have hit the memory bell for me. LOL.
scav
Too funny — I was in various bits of Europe at a critical season and the question “oo shut JeyAir” is lodged in my memory in about 16 distinct and utterly different accents. (and there I was, all “oo iz JeyAir?” back at them.)
Amir_Khalid
I remember Dallas very clearly. In its early seasons before Bobby Ewing’s death at the start of The Season That Never Was, it was big all over the planet. (Ah, the global reach of American cultural imperialism…) Of course, back then I believed that you couldn’t be the greedy backstabbing sonofabitch that JR Ewing was and last ten minutes in any real-life business. I know better now.
Cliff Barnes was Bobby’s brother-in-law, son of Jock Ewing’s bitter rival Digger Barnes and Digger’s successor as head of Barnes Oil, as well as the sometime lover of JR’s wife Sue Ellen. He inherited Digger’s hatred of the Ewings and Ewing Oil, not least because JR was always outmaneuvering him in business and, uh, in other affairs.
I’m amazed, and not entirely pleased, that I still remember so much of it.
Catsy
Someone above mentioned the Western/Samurai parallel, and I found the EU obsession with Dallas to be amusing, but it’s worth noting that it goes in the other direction, too. Japanese people tend to be mystified and sometimes a little bemused by American anime fandom. If you bring up, say, Fushigi Yuugi in a conversation, the ones who even recognize it are going to wonder why an adult male is a huge fan of a 20-year-old teen/adolescent girls’ series.
piratedan
@Catsy: well geez, next time start off with Cowboy BeBop or higurashi-no-naku-koro-ni instead and you’ll probably get a better reaction, just sayin’.
h/t to http://www.anime44.com
dug
I got a sneak peek at the script for the new Dallas series a couple of months ago. It was much better than I expected, though I admit I didn’t expect much.
Halteclere
Maybe it is an Eastern European thing about being big fans of Dallas? My brother’s wife is from Slovakia, and said that Dallas was a huge thing to watch when she was growing up. When her parents came to the US to visit, they just HAD to visit me in Dallas and have me take them to the “ranch”.
Dallas would have been on TV about the time that Communist restrictions on Western culture were being lifted. My sister-in-law said that everyone loved to watch US television instead of Soviet television, especially for the commercials! Unlike Western Europeans, shows like Dallas may have been Eastern European’s first taste of Americana.
(re-reading Doug’s post – is a Lithuanian cab driver a reference to Doug being in Lithuania, and making fun of man-on-the-ground-cab-driver stories, or making fun of Lithuanian-man-on-the-ground-cab-driver stories?)
SectarianSofa
I can’t see anything in that picture — Loch Ness monster, maybe?
@Tim — why are you reposting your favored bits of what you’re calling a waste of time and resources?
You also fail to mention you’re an asshole with a shaky grasp on logic.
Dawkins was, unfortunately, being clueless. Are you looking for a better reception to your vileness here?
mb
I rented rooms to some Czech guys several years back. They were working to make enough to tour the US, which is what they ultimately did. They had 2 priorities: Graceland and South Fork, everyplace else was secondary. They ended up making a 26000 mile trip that basically began at Graceland and ended at South Fork and included Seattle and Hawaii. But I think they’d been just as happy if they had only gotten to South Fork and Graceland. Nothing else seemed as exciting to them. Dallas was and still is a big deal in Europe.
Using the Cliff Barnes character is really interesting since he was such a loser. I’d like to know the owner’s rationale for that.
dead existentialist
Yes.
The Tim Channel
That sense of befuddled curiosity isn’t exactly confined to the shores of the Japan.
I enjoy intelligent repartee on controversial topics. I’ll keep looking for same.
Enjoy.
The Tim Channel
In order to keep the ugly Americans from bastardizing up the beautiful shores of Europe, please re-watch HOSTEL before planning your summer vacation this year. Europe is almost EXACTLY like what you see in that film. Plus, your money’s not worth squat over here.
(None of this will be taken with the humorous intent I expect it should). I’ll get over the disappointment…somehow.
Enjoy.
The Tim Channel
Oh, and not to appear as dodging any particular question.
1. The issue of wasted time? I got plenty to waste. I expect the atheist movement isn’t so sanguine. It’s they who invested the time, money and trouble of giving these outraged feminists a formal table at an official gathering to vent their minor perturbations. I’d like to not see THEM waste that time and expense in the future. This is based on a very simple calculation that their time is infinitely more valuable than mine.
2. Why repost? Because I write some hella funny stuff. I get to laugh twice because some people take it literally!!
and the requisite punchline….
Enjoy.
The Tim Channel
And what, no movie lovers in the crowd here? Digby got a corner on this with the weekly Hullabaloo movie thing? Cause the last bit of this paragraph that invokes a comparative metaphorical film analogy to the Alien movie is golden as well:
Enjoy.
The Tim Channel
And my last post on the subject shall invoke quoting Yogi Berra:
Half the lies they tell about me aren’t true.
Enjoy.