well.
i am one of the multi-minoritized on this list so i think i will speak.
it is true that the us has been the ruling culture in the world for some
time. [why, the very fact that us people call themselves americans as if the
rest of the continent were somewhere else is quite revealing.]
i consider the ''american'' influence on world affairs and most of all on
world cultural trends a sad, sad, sad thing -- a bore for us all, including
''americans''. but that's just me and what do i know, what with my
third-world citizen status. if i were offered a green card, i would accept
it. hey. still, doesn't it seem as though americans believed that all of us
would like to be like them? how wrong can you be, my handsome and nike shod
imperialists: we would like to have what you have, that much is true, but be
like you? no, no, no, no, and no. we accept the fact that in every age there
has been a roman empire, blessed with force yet doomed to perish, but many
of us know better.
i go to the states as often as i can. i am always less than dazzled by
american glamour. in fact, i find america a tad too venal and tacky to be
glamorous. still, the shopping is fabulous and the diversity very
manageable. i admit that such a concept as las vegas -- with its huge hotel
that looks like venice and its huge hotel that looks like new york and its
hotel that looks like... -- escapes me. the states feels so much like a
world in endless adolescence. but i feel good in the us -- as long as people
discuss general topics, don't ask me about evita or express surprise at the
fact that it snows in argentina.
this list is very NORTH-american. what else could one expect? the majority
is NORTH-american, joni is NORTH-american. it doesn't bother me. maybe one
of the advantages of underdevelopment is political thick-skinness. i never
stop to think where my friends are from. i simply love them. if i were
canadian, i'd probably mind the americanness of the jmdl, i guess. as it is,
i amount to too little in the world community to afford any such feelings.
how did we become so americanized in argentina when at least people of my
generation seem so wary of all things american? when i was growing up only
two theaters in my city showed hollywood movies. however, people stood in
line on saturday nights to see godar, bergman, fellini. this sounds so
snobbish, i know, but it would never have occurred to us that those were
''art house'' movies. there were no art houses. we saw those movies because
we were entertained that way. our parents and grandparents believed that fun
came from stretching the limits of our minds and talking about the
experience. oh we did see american movies, but it felt very much like
playing truant: fun but it can't last for ever. we went to the movies, saw
our andrej wajda, and then we headed to the cafes to discuss the symbols,
the references, the implications. how very pre-post-modern of us. not
surprisingly, the criminals that took over the power in 1976 attacked first
universities and then the theater district, where dissent was most likely to
arise. [incidentally, after reading paul o'neill's opinions in the
economist, i would like to assure mr. o'neill and maybe many other americans
that we argentineans may be pathetic but are not to blame for our dictators
or our economic woes.]
oh my, i've gone so far now. how tiresome and contradictory i can be. i
guess my point is that, although i would like to have many of the advantages
that americans have, i won't be wearing a baseball hat backwards any time
soon. yet, i may one day buy a baseball hat because i think baseball hats
are cute and besides, that people should like baseball is so mystifying that
a baseball hat is almost a anthropological wonder unto itself.
so god bless america, but leave the belle ipoque district in buenos aires
alone, if you don't mind. if it is inevitable that stephen spielberg shall
rule the world and that dean&deluca will sell us our own recipes at ten
times the price, then at least give me a few nice facades to look at as we
merrily sink into oblivion.
wallyK
