American Culture

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

While I do not wish to join in the globally popular American bashing, 
and while I realise that what is produced by Hollywood is not 
representative of all US culture just as Reagan is / was not representative 
of popular US politics (was he?), nevertheless: It has always seemed to 
me that the difference between American and, say, British culture was 
negligible (though noticeable to the insider). That's why TRP is so interesting. 
At his best, he's not an American author at all, but a world author (I am 
using Nietzsche's terms here - as you probably know he payed Goethe 
the highest compliment he could think of by calling him European 
rather than German). 
On an arbitrary  scale of 1 to 10, with these two representing opposing 
poles, one might wish to assign American culture (and this is not a 
contradiction in terms despite Michael Jackson, Oprah Winfrey and 
Picket Fences - who says the Pygmies aren't just as idiotic?) a value of 
5,02. English culture would then be 5,018, German culture 5,023, French 
5,024, Russian 5,026, Japanese 5,03, and so on. There is more cultural 
diversity in a square mile of African rainforest than in the entire 
First World (this is a quotable quote which isn't, though it should 
be, straight out of Reader's Digest). Cameroon, for instance, has more than 
200 different languages - not dialects, languages, one as different from the 
other as English from French. Most of them are dying, of course, and will be 
extinct soon, replaced by "Yo man, what's up?". (One might be tempted 
to call all this 'cultural entropy' but then one would simply be, once again, 
guilty of metaphorircally incorrect interdisciplinary crossfertilisation, to put 
it succinctly.)
Remember the Ajtys? - just like biological diversity gurgles down 
the drains of history (and who can really blame McDonalds) so does 
its cultural counterpart. And it really isn't the fault of the US at 
all, my brothers and sisters under the cloth, and I mean this quite 
sincerely. "American culture" exists _only_ as a commodity sold by 
certain multinational companies to people all over the wired world, 
the largest market happening to be, still (but who knows for how much 
longer once China awakes) the territory known as the US. 
                                                             ..... what 
happens in Shitsville, Ohio, on the other hand, and despite all attempt to 
conform to the model on the tube, is 'life'. And that's a whole 
different ballgame (Cricket even, maybe.)

Oh well, back to my poker game with Marylin.
h(culture-just-isn't-what-it-never-used-to-be-any-more)g
hag at iafrica.com