teh.arkhon said:
So..
Last night I watched Saving Private Ryan - and I thought it was absolutely fantastic.
The opening battle scene (the Normandy landing) was absolutely incredible and got my real hyped up for the rest of the film.
However, I found that it was so ridiculously "American" it almost put me off the movie.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-patriotism, nor am I anti-American, but I don't see why the Americans get so involved with films like these, where as other war films - IE: British films - are much less patriotic in a sense.
I come from New Zealand and I can relate with war tales, especially those where my own countrymen are concerned (I am often deeply moved by stories/ceremonies regarding the landing at ANZAC Cove in WWI etc.) but I don't see why the American versions always have that overlying American "air."
I was just wondering what all the Americans out there thought of this, and what your thoughts on patriotism are.
I hear this all the time, and I can understand the resentment. That is how things always are with the dominant world power. It's sort of like how when The British Empire pretty much ran the world, a lot of the pop culture like the works of Rudyard Kipling were arguably the same way. Not to mention all the stories about British sailors and explorers, and so on and so forth. Geeks nowadays tend to look at the Victorian Era and it's "arrogant Brits" as something exotic and special and don't fully realize that was how the world was at the time in a literal sense, and a lot of people also resented it, especially seeing as they were arguably worse than the US has ever been in terms of imperialism (and ultimatly made a mistake similar to Hitler's, in expanding too fast and spreading too much over too many fronts at the same time). Granted there wasn't the same kind of instant global media then as there is now, so I suppose that does influance perceptions somewhat as well.
What's more the global endgame is approaching. Humanity needs to unify under one goverment if we're going to survive as a species. If nothing else we need to do it in order to efficiently use manpower and resources to get off planet to obtain more resources. A lot of people increasingly realize this even if they don't rationalize it. While a lot of people hate it, the system and principles of the US are the only ones that could really work for humanity as a whole. The dissolution of nations into a world goverment DOES mean that the US will also dissolve. It also means that in the end those same principles and style of governing will amount to Asians running most of the goverment simply by the numbers (largest population) in the long run. The principles and rules mattering more under our system than what someone looks like. The problem of course being that in doing this it means that the history of centuries or thousands of years for some civilizations suddenly becomes trivial. Things like a gloabl language are going to ease communication, but for all the benefits people in the short term are going to resent a long-used language like French becoming a hobby with English (for a lot of reasons beyond the US using it as it's primary language) being taught to everyone in school, and so on. As time goes on people realize that their history will become fringe study, like most things past periods will be condensed and we will be looking at a "late American Era" right before a global unity.
Oh sure, we aren't there yet, though people realize it has to happen soon, the bottom line is that the majority of people are going to be annoyed by whomever is the dominating power and doing the uniting. I think a lot of the resentment of the US comes from the fact that a lot of people realize that there just isn't time left for their own people to rise to dominance and be the ones to unite everything.
As far as an overly American air, I think a lot of people overseas tend to read into that as part of the points above. It's not so much America doing anything to tell people that they "don't matter" or anything, people project that themselves, just as people were resentful of Spain, Britan, or other nations when the world revolved around them. The US is nicer, but there is the whole element of time as well, and I think people realize it on some level even if they don't want to accept it. For America to fall, and someone else to crop up and start over again, and then hopefully get to a place where they can unify the planet, chances are it will also mean we doomed our species since the simple passage of time will have depleted the resources we need to get off planet, and then we can sit around waiting
for the sun to finally go nova.
I could say more on the exact point about unity and why it's nessicary, but this is long enough as it is, and I don't expect people to actually agree with me to the point of going "Gadzooks Therumancer, your absolutly right, I never realized that until you said it".
