On Thu, 11 Jul 2002 08:56:18 -0700 Joseph Zitt wrote:
On Thu, 11 Jul 2002 08:48:38 +0200 "> chromasoom audio visuele communicatie >" <mail@chromasoom.be> wrote:
How odd. Americans really seem to have no food culture...
How odd, you really seem to have no clue as to American culture. There are actually a wide variety of American food cultures and regional cooking styles. A moment of actual research and thought might avoid foolish comments such as that.
Totally agree (but not sure I could say the same of English food :-). Anyway, there is in old Europe this hackneyed cliche of America being too young to have a culture. Surprisingly, many Americans (usually among the educated ones) confirm it and apologize. The argument used is: look, we (European) have been around for so long and you (American) are still a young country. This is almost as ridiculous as a clueless adult talking to a talended young kid about the experience that age brings... This of course totally misses the point that it is not the age of a society but its achievements that are important. Taking the case of France, yes that country had to go through a long and painful process to be where it is now. But are people naive to the point of thinking that one century during the Middle Age can be compared in achievements with, for example, the 18th century? Based on the exponential growth happening in any domain of human creation, it is ridiculous to put an equal weight on every centuries. I think the same applies to the USA. They might have missed the dark age of Middle Age, and taken a while to get started but when I look at the past 50 years, USA has surpassed everybody (technology, arts, etc). We (Europe) had to go through a lot of trouble but fortunately US was able to skip that (learning from our mistakes) and get where it is quicker. Look at painting, dance, litterature, some of the most important artists to come up in the past fifty years are American and this was new, and realizing that was quite a shock for Europeans not willing to give up their condescending attitude toward the "new" nation. Go even earlier with litterature: what was the hot shit in the '20s and '30s? Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Faulkner. And this was just the beginning, the awakening. When is this stupid cliche of America having no culture will stop? There is almost not a trend these days that does not originate there. And what can the old world do when most of its youth espouses uncritically anything coming out of the States? I could almost say the most important cultural revolution of the past century was the explosion of talent and creativity coming out of the USA (and no doubt that that created a lot of jealousy and resentment in the old world). Now I am sure that somebody will say that achievements and culture are different. In a modern world like ours, I think it is slowly becoming the same. And even if it was not the case, I think it is almost becoming an irrelevant point. How can you keep your culture alive and push it if you have no achievements to bring on the table (besides the one of the past, it goes without saying)? I think this is the main dilemma that many countries are facing right now (they want their (old) culture to be recognized because they have little to show that is new). On the opposite side, USA have little to show from the past, but a lot of new things to bring. Patrice (who loves the creative side of the USA).