What aspects of American culture are often misunderstood? (1 Viewer)

[Keith Mickunas]

I have one personal experience to share with this. A couple of years ago we had a representative from one of our clients come visit for a week from France. While the guy was here we took him to a number of good restaurants. We pretty much avoided chains and took him to a variety of places including Tex-Mex and Mexican, as one should do in Texas. When he would check in with the people he worked with they kept asking if he was eating at McDonald's every day. Apparently they believed that's all we eat.

There were a couple of other things that happened with this guy. We found it slightly amusing when he reacted with horror to seeing my boss's old seventy-something vette sitting in his garage with a bunch of crap piled on top of it. He thought that was just sacrilege. Also, the first thing he did after arriving at his hotel in Dallas was to call a taxi and going to see South Fork. And I'm not making that up!

I think another thing that's misunderstood about Americans is that many of us are interested in other cultures. Probably the biggest reason why other countries look down on us with regards to that is that many of us don't speak any other languages and they might think we don't don't bother learning out of arrogance or something. But I think that's partly a failing of our schools, that wait to teach foreign languages to late, and it also goes along with the fact that we can spend the majority of our lives without ever needing to speak another language so it's not as important to us.

 

[Jason Seaver]

The everyday thing which seems to flummox Europeans the most when they come here is that you can't smoke anywhere. A Greek friend of mine nearly snapped after her first three-hour lecture in college, grumbling about how "if America's the Land Of The Free, how come you can't smoke anywhere? It doesn't make any sense, since this is where all the ____ing tobacco comes from!"

(And, yeah, everyone from the home office of the foreign-owned company I'm currently working at smokes. Nasty)

 

[David Lawson]

Obviously it wouldn't be hard and fast, but roughly speaking is there any basis for this at all?

Did no one else catch this slip/pun?

 

[Hunter P]

Another misconception is that all American males are very well endowed and great lovers. From what I hear, it is not true that ALL of us fall into this category. I think I read an article somewhere that said some scientist discovered one male who was merely well endowed and only a good lover. But he may have been an immigrant so I am not sure this disproves the theory.


Edit--I misread the first post. I misread the word "popular" as "porn" in the following sentence:

"People around the world get an idea of American culture through popular entertainment, such as television shows and movies."

 

[Andy Sheets]

However, I often heard the reason the Americans don't like soccer (the biggest sport in the rest of the world) is because they find soccer to be a slow, boring sport where nothinh ever happens.
Yet you love baseball and US football, both sports that are either slower (BB) or more often interrupted (US foot: 20 sec of "team meeting", 5 sec to get into formation, , 15 sec of shouted instructions, and 2 sec of running. Then 20 sec before the 5 players who jumped on top of the runner finnally get up... then time-out, then 20 sec of "team meeting",...)

I think the distinction is that Americans get frustrated with sports that feature lots of movement but little result, i.e., scoring. It just seems like soccer is the sport most prone to that particular kind of action, with teams constantly attacking the goals but seemingly never managing to hit one in. You could say it's because of good defense, but many Americans don't buy that and demand more points on the boards. I mean, if NFL games started ending up with scores like 6-3 every single time, the league would lose its popularity really damn quick

I haven't seen anyone mention that many people outside the US are convinced that half the country is illiterate and that we live in a ruinous warzone because we have so much fun shooting each other with our handguns and assault rifles

 

[Michael Reuben]

Sex and the City and Ally McBeal, what little I've seen of them, take place in some fictional facsimile of NY, which I'm glad I don't live near.

Not that this makes it any more realistic, but Ally McBeal was set in Boston.

To me the biggest difference between the real America and the TV version is that the TV version weighs a whole lot less. (Tom Clancy had a great line in his Sum of All Fears commentary. Paraphrasing: "Actresses don't look like real women, because real women eat." )

M.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

The original question really needs to be answered by non-Americans as our misunderstanding of others' misunderstandings is two versions removed from reality.....

 

[JamesHl]

Speaking of the religious question a few posts up, I think the fact that we seem to be overall more religious, especially publicly so, has to do with the people that our country was founded by.

You guys should know better by now, nothing of this kind if tolerated on the HTF.

What, coherent opinions that aren't even particularly inflammatory?

 

[DonnyD]

It is really sad that people from other countries get their ideas of American life from watching our silly sitcoms and also the news media. Even we Americans get our info from the same and even though we know life is really NOT like all that, we still seems to let it permeate our day to day routines.
That's why I never watch any sitcoms since they are so contrived and most are not even close to being anywhere close to being a snapshot of real life and its worries.

There remains a real reason that other countries believe that America is a land of milk and honey and all want to come here to 'get rich'.. or otherwise.

Another sad note is that the freedom that we Americans are so proud of is often used by some to do what ever they wish......and these snapshots of life are proudly picked out and displayed on CBS, NBC and other media news outlets.

 

[L. Anton Dencklau]

..

 

[Eric Kahn]

I think alot of europeans have no understanding of the physical size of the US and because of this, and our lack of public transportation outside of major cities, the fact that over half of highschool aged teenagers have cars is probably baffling to them

 

[Chris_Morris]

I think the distinction is that Americans get frustrated with sports that feature lots of movement but little result, i.e., scoring

Yet our 'national pastime' is a game that features very little action, and most of the time very little scoring.

Chris

 

[MarkHastings]

Yet our 'national pastime' is a game that features very little action, and most of the time very little scoring.

I think baseball is more popular because of the Beer

Homer Simpson: (While watching a baseball game during his act of giving up beer): I never realized how boring this game really is!

I do agree that most find soccer boring because of the low scores. Just look at basketball to see why Americans like scoring. I just can't imagine a game, where an average of 200 points total, can be so popular.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

I was working with some people from Warsaw, Poland a few years back. One of the guys had his wife with him, it was her first time in the states. He decided to do a weekend siteseeing trip in the rental car, starting from Warwick, RI. He asked his wife what she would like to do or see, she said "Niagara Falls, The Grand Canyon, Washington DC, The Redwood Forest, listen to Jazz in Harlem, Blues in Chicago and go to a day at Disney World". She was very surprised to hear that the area of the USA on the map was not the same area as a comparably sized map of Poland.

I agree that most people unfamiliar with American Culture do not realize just how diverse and varied our culture is. I was asked by my friends from Poland what our national cuisine is and I said "it depends what region you are from, we have hundreds". They could not understand what I was talking about, so I played along with them and said "McDonalds". It's what they wanted to hear anyway.

 

[Steven K]

What, coherent opinions that aren't even particularly inflammatory?

Yes, if they mention religion

 

[Jack Briggs]

Jeff, your post is interesting because it encapsulates what this thread is getting at: the misperceptions people in one country may have about the people and lifestyles in another.

It's similar to when a New York-based magazine does a "Los Angeles" special issue. I remember reading how an editor at New York magazine complained about a California correspondent's travel expenses in this state, asking him to drive, say, from Los Angeles to San Francisco instead of flying so often. The correspondent phoned his editor back, asking if he would ever consider asking his East Coast reporters to drive from New York to Boston instead of flying.

The editor said no, of course not. Boston is too far away. The California reporter then informed his editor that San Francisco is twice as far from Los Angeles as Beantown is from the Big Apple.

It's hard for some Europeans to grasp the sheer geographical size of the U.S. And it's even hard for a U.S. resident, especially for one living in a large media market, to grasp the cultural diversity within the country itself.

I have relatives in the South, and every time I visited there it amazed me how fundamentally different even "middle class" culture is in different areas of this country. I often felt I was visiting a different country. And some of these same relatives said the same thing about California upon visiting the state.

Diversity is cool.

 

[andrew markworthy]

As I understand, in Europe political leaders often do not reveal their reveal their religious beliefs for fear of being "politically incorrect."

Not so. Tony Blair (our Prime Minister) is openly religious, and so are a lot of our politicians. The difference is that establishment figures who are religious tend to belong to fairly traditional churches (e.g. the Church of England or Scotland or less frequently, the Methodists or the Roman Catholics). Generally worshippers in these churches don't proclaim their faith from the rooftops - 'establishment' relgion is not generally seen as evangelical. What you guys often consider the norm would over here be classed as fairly fundamentalist/non-traditional, and whilst it has a reasonable following in the UK, it's not the principal form of worship. Just as an illustration (and *please* no-one mar this thread by arguing about the rights or wrongs of this), there has been very little fuss in the UK over teaching evolution in schools - it's pretty much accepted by the mainstream churches.

Okay, back to the main topic. I think it's fair to say that Brits generally have the following conceptions of the USA (and I guess the same goes for most of Europe):

(a) You are absolutely clueless about what is going on outside your own country. The statistic about the abysmally low percentage of TV news coverage devoted to the rest of the world is often quoted over here.

(b) We think you have far too much choice of consumer goods. This is often interpreted as envy - it's not. We just can't work out why you need so many types of breakfast cereal.

(c) We think you expect way too much of friendship in the early stages. E.g. any greeting of a stranger that falls short of orgasmic delight is taken as another example of European aloofness.

(d) You have far too many lawyers specialising in litigation. The rise in litigation cases in the UK over the past few years is blamed solidly on you guys.

(e) We still can't work out why you want to vote ex-actors into key government posts.

(f) We find it fascinating that you can't understand the rules of cricket, but then have an electoral system that makes them child's play in comparison.

(g) You think we're obsessed about the events of 1776. Absolutely nobody gives a toss about them.

(h) You are far more interested in the Royal Family than we are.

(i) We cannot understand how you can have managed to make the game of rugby even more boring than it already is by turning it into American football (and incidentally, we think you're big girl's blouses for wearing all that protective padding).

(j) Say what you like, your main summer sport is rounders.

(k) You are convinced that all Brits are either cheerful cockneys or snobs. This is like saying that every American either has a Bronx accent or is from New England.

(l) Your spelling system is designed for people with a lower IQ.

(m) You have no good actors of your own, and so have to import Brits to play all the best or most demanding parts (i.e. the villains) in your movies.

(n) You are a nation of hypochondriacs yet eat more fatty, sugary, salty foods than any other nation.

(o) We are pretty clued up on basic American slang, but you don't seem to want to reciprocate. Otherwise, you wouldn't continue to Christen kids 'Randy'. Though in fairness, you do, after several years, seem to becoming aware that 'Willy' can mean more than an abbreviation of 'William'.

And in spite of all the above, we secretly love you. There's only the Dutch we probably like more (their queen is more cuddly than ours), but as nothing much happens in the Netherlands (sorry, Cees!) we instead spend an awful lot of time watching your TV programmes, hearing about you on the news, etc.

 

[David Baranyi]

I recalled around the time of this year's Super Bowl that a Canadian HTF poster living in the United States did not understand why the U.S. military appeared on this event. I also recalled that he was somewhat uncomfortable about it and may misunderstand the military presence.

Everyone, the thread is about aspects of American culture that are often misunderstood by non-Americans, not what common stereotypes non-Americans have about Americans.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

She was very surprised to hear that the area of the USA on the map was not the same area as a comparably sized map of Poland.

I agree that most people unfamiliar with American Culture do not realize just how diverse and varied our culture is.

I think this is particularly telling. My boss, an Indian Sikh who grew up in Africa and went to university in the states, is shocked that I've never been overseas. Well for us, it takes quite a lot of time and money to take a trip to any country other than Canada or Mexico, and even those can be time consuming depending on where you live. A middle-class family of four that doesn't live off credit, like the one I grew up in, can't afford those kind of things, something my boss just can't relate to. For us, a two week trip by car can take us to a wide variety of places, likewise in Europe a similar trip can take you to a wide variety of countries.

 

[Seth--L]

I know what you mean. We have upper-middle class relatives in the suburbs of Richmond, VA. To them, the Outback Steakhouse is a nice place eat for someone's birthday. When a birthday roles around up here in Philadelphia, the question is: The Palm or The Capital Grille, or someplace nicer, like Le Bec-Fin.

They also dislike the city because they have to walk it, and constantly complain about how "fast-passed" our lives are.