On the prevalence of US tropes in storytelling

[Fung Koo]

I'm off on holiday until Sunday. As usual, a few things I wanna say Later!

 

[A. Lynn]

...apparently to yell at American culture for the titillation over sex-violent harm to young women. which has nothing to do with aggressive avenger heroes,

This line got my interest a little because my Cyberpunk Thriller features a female protgaonist who gets kidnapped (thus her call to adventure).

Is this to say that this concept is over-done, trite, etc?

 

[Laer Carroll]

This line got my interest a little because my Cyberpunk Thriller features a female protgaonist who gets kidnapped (thus her call to adventure).

Is this to say that this concept is over-done, trite, etc?

No. But your handling of it might be. A fresh approach to an old idea can make it fascinating again. (Old wine in new bottles, as the saying goes.)

 

[Hereford Eye]

(archeology)Noun; culture
1) (archeology) a particular society at a particular time and place “early Mayan culture”
2) The tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social group
3) All the knowledge and values shared by a society
WordWebPro 6.3, Copyright © Anthony Lewis 2010 All Rights Reserved

Although it is true that no two humans know exactly the same things, they often have a great deal of knowledge in common. To a large extent, this common knowledge or collective memory allows people to communicate, to work together, and to live together. It forms the basis for communities, and if it is shared by enough people, it is a distinguishing characteristic of a national culture. The form and content of this common knowledge constitute one of the elements that make each national culture unique.
It is our contention that such a body of information is shared by literate Americans of the late twentieth century, and that this body of knowledge can be identified and defined.
The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, What Every American Needs to Know, Hirsch, Kett, Trefil, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993

Characteristics of Culture
1. Culture is an emergent process
2. Culture is learned behavior
3. Culture channels human behavior
4. Culture is boundary maintaining
Types of Shared Knowledge
1. Symbols
2. Technology
3. Ideologies
4. Societal norms
In Conflict and Order, Understanding Society, D. Stanley Eitzen, Allyn and Bacon, Inc, 1982

The authors of the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy provide the same argument Fung Koo advances, that the body of knowledge can be identified and defined, though, it seem to me that the the flaw I find in this position lies in the foundational argument if it is shared by enough people. People identify themselves in groups, e.g., political parties, religious sects, gangs, et al. Each of these congregations tends to share symbols, technology, ideology, and societal norms that are distinct and separate from all other competing groups.

Attempting to identify a given society is not a straightforward proposition. There are tables available on the web that indicate the most popular language in terms of the number of people using it is Mandarin Chinese. English is third. According to Information Please 1,213M people speak Mandarin; 329M speak Spanish; and 328M speak English. OTOH, there 536.6M English users on the WWW; 449.9 Mandarin users; and 153.3 Spanish users. Care to draw any conclusions on shared symbols?

The U.S. Population is just over 312M. The numbers above indicate that there are a good number of US citizens whose primary language is not English. Shared symbol set?

In 2008, 76% of US adults identified themselves as Christian (sub-divided into 18 sects), down 10% from 1990. In 2008, 15% identified themselves as atheist/no religion, up nearly 6.8% from 1990. Shared ideologies?

65% of eligible voters registered to vote for the 2010 election. Of that number, 69% voted. The totals read 43.4M of 2010 voters registered Democrat; 29.9M registered Republican; 2.25M registered in minor parties; and 23.6M of us registered unaffiliated. Shared ideology?

The population density of my home state in the Southwestern USA is 32.3 folks/sq mile while the population density of New Jersey on the east coast is 1,061 persons/sq mile. Shared ideology?

The US/Canada theater admission in 2009 amounted to 1.4B tickets sold. With combined population of 350M, each of us must have bought 4 tickets. Or , accordng to the MPAA statistics, 67% of the population over the age of 2 went to the movies at least once last year. What was the other 33% thinking?

Hollywood and the movie industry are located on the west coast; Washington, D.C. And the media covering it are on the east coast. Shared ideology?

The US' poverty rate is running 15%. Shared technology?

I get that the perception of the USA from outside can be one thing and the perception inside something else. I get that most people outside the USA learn of us through our exports, particularly movies and news stories presented from local biases just as ours are presented from distinctive biases.

I submit that those of inside the USA get the same kind of input about countries outside the USA. My knowledge of France or Turkey comes from news media and the little bit of world history I once read. My knowledge of some other countries is based on much the same abetted by my personal excursions into those countries. The fact that I was on holiday in the United Kingdom and Australia or that I was stationed in multiple countries in the Far East (a term I suspect indicative of my biases) adds a little to my understanding of those countries but does not make me an expert by any means.

So, when I generalize about those countries, I attempt to condition my remarks with the caveat that my understanding is less than perfect. For example, my understanding of the countries of France and Turkey is that they are muti-ethnic in character, that the ethnicities involved are not always polite and civilized in their daily interactions, and, thus, attempting to a describe a French culture or a Turkish culture would be a very foolish exercise.

 

[A. Lynn]

No. But your handling of it might be. A fresh approach to an old idea can make it fascinating again. (Old wine in new bottles, as the saying goes.)

That would be quite the discussion in its own right. I suppose my best bet is to read the Cyberpunk fiction out there and see what trends or patterns have surfaced time and again? (care to recommend anything I should read, whether Cyberpunk or not?) Or perhaps I PM you a general gist of the event?

 

[txshusker]

The US/Canada theater admission in 2009 amounted to 1.4B tickets sold. With combined population of 350M, each of us must have bought 4 tickets. Or , accordng to the MPAA statistics, 67% of the population over the age of 2 went to the movies at least once last year. What was the other 33% thinking?

Sorry, my daughter was in the hospital that year. But I went twice in 2010 to make up for it!

I'm still reeling from the original OPs quote that anything Debard brought up were obviously and strictly US tropes. Until that can be proved or their origins from elsewhere disproved, I don't see how a semantical discussion of "culture" matters much in this particular case. It's a fine discussion, though.

 

[A. Lynn]

I'm still reeling from the original OPs quote that anything Debard brought up were obviously and strictly US tropes. Until that can be proved or their origins from elsewhere disproved, I don't see how a semantical discussion of "culture" matters much in this particular case. It's a fine discussion, though.

Well that's just the thing, the blogger was blaming all glory-seeking-violence-prone-lone-heroes as being strictly a US invention, or something that US movies alone are producing. The Greeks had the lone-hero mentality long before we did (think Heracles and Achilles) What is the blogger ranting about anyways when their story features a violent Mayan culture? It's just a curious rant altogether. I think people are just seeking to point at American works perioud just so say "you're not so great!" But they are not actually going by merit anymore, they are just nitpicking.

 

[Dawnstorm]

I'm still reeling from the original OPs quote that anything Debard brought up were obviously and strictly US tropes. Until that can be proved or their origins from elsewhere disproved, I don't see how a semantical discussion of "culture" matters much in this particular case. It's a fine discussion, though.

Well, partly because your demanding that proof is sort of cultural, too, in the first place.

Here's what makes me uncomfortable with the situation in the first place: This is a rant. Something bothers you, and you let off steam to release the pressure. That way you don't explode and free up energy for the serious and more interesting discussions. There's a time and place for ranting, and it's normally in more private situations.

Enter the blog: a sort of diary. For whom do you blog? Plenty of people replying to DeBodard's blog (and it's livejounal mirror) add positive comments. There are comparatively few offended responses, though these, too, exist.

And because these offended reactions exist, rants usually include this-is-a-rant disclaimers. Go to the blog-post and look for them. They're not hard to find. Do they work?

Yes, for some. No, for others.

Enter the message board. We're used to discussing things. So how are we to approach that post? My own posts were - initially - designed to treat the post not as an argument, but as social data. I supplemented that with my own reaction: I sympathise with the need to rant like that, and in a pub I could spend hours with Ms DeBodard ranting like that. Online? No. I'm uncomfortable with that, because you inevitably end up trying to explain yourself, which adds rather than detracts from the pressure you feel the need to relieve.

A rant is not an accusation. A blog is not a court room. And yet, the activity rants attract match these situations. See? You're demanding we proof the allegations and assume you're innocent unless proven guilty. This is a context I don't like, so I generally won't rant like that online. I've learned my lesson.

That is not to say that a rant doesn't contain accusations. But, see, my primary interest isn't whether these accusations are fair or not, whether there's truth to them or not. What I'm more interested in is this: why do I feel the need to rant about this in the first place. On that front, if you play the innocent-unless-proven-guilty card, and thus cast us as opponents in a trial, we're getting nowhere, as my rhetorical strategies must match winning an argument rather than understanding a situation.

How fair these accusations are will emerge more clearly during the conversation. But only if we manage to respect each other, and that can be hard when notions of respect themselves differ between cultures. And there's the catch: if finding yourself at the receiving end of such an accusation is perceived as inherently disrespectful to American, then the project of understanding the need for this particular rant in a message board may be doomed from the start.

Unless, of course, we can learn to see our cultural blind spots. This is not easy, and takes lots of time and energy, and bears a risk of offense. If you're (general you - which in this particular situation includes me) not willing to invest that amount of time, energy and willingness to suppress immediate feelings of offense (while still pointing out that they're there), then it's better not to play at all. Which is why I bowed out of this thread:

I don't have the time and energy it takes to engage in that process properly.

 

[KatG]

This line got my interest a little because my Cyberpunk Thriller features a female protgaonist who gets kidnapped (thus her call to adventure).

Cyberpunk was a new term that was applied to the sort of stories SF authors had already been doing for a long time. We tend to like to keep naming things, and that is part of culture. In this case, it was actually identifying a literary movement that went on in SF in the late 1970's, 1980's, propelled by a number of authors such as William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, etc., writing around the same time and with similar approach in style and themes, sometimes with each other. It has become a staple of SF, and after first being declared a non-scientific, not hard enough, overly popular interloper, has now been relabeled a form of veteran hard SF.

The key ingredients of cyberpunk are in its name: cyber (story having to do with computers, communication networks, AI and related technology and particularly mind-related technology) and punk (rebellion against the established order and mega-corporations, often youth related, and noir hard-boiled themes of despair, corruption, decay, betrayal, psychological turmoil, etc.)

So if you are writing cyberpunk, you are writing in a particular style using a particular approach -- you've already picked your side essentially. So trying to break out of cyberpunk patterns would be counterproductive as then you would no longer be writing in the cyberpunk movement and tradition. You'd be writing a different kind of SF. You are using the tools of cyberpunk, the elements, to say something or other in your story.

Women have had sort of a dual position in cyberpunk. Cyberpunk has offered some really interesting female characters and usually fairly independent, capable types. But at the same time, cyberpunk likes its macho cred and noir style. So you can look at that re your main character and how she reacts to things.

You should definitely read Necromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net and Heavy Weather, and his collaboration with Gibson, The Difference Engine, and possibly a newer one like The Zenith Angle, Robert Silverberg's Hot Sky at Midnight, Rudy Rucker's Ware series, Pat Cadigan's Mindplayers (hers might be particularly relevant,) John Shirley's A Song Called Youth series, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, and K.W. Jeter's more recent Noir, and his Dr. Adder and The Glass Hammer (Jeter invented the term cyberpunk.) The grandparents of the movement are Phillip K. Dick principally, but also Samuel Delaney, Harlan Ellison, J.G. Ballard, Roger Zelazny and Stannislaw Lem. And I'd add Peter Watts' Blindsight and Rifters series as a more recent incarnation worth checking out.

Cyberpunk has of course spread out. If you're writing a thriller or spy story with a fair amount of technology to it or an A.I. focus, you're likely to be considered cyberpunk, even if you're not that noir and rebellion focused in style. If you're writing about the decaying planet and world-altering technologies, you might get called it too. And the "punk" term is so catchy that not only did Jeter apply it to steampunk, the other term he made up, but it's been used repeatedly for other groupings -- biopunk, etc. Anything kind of edgy in tone gets a punk slapped on it. So it is a wide field now, so consider reading a lot of SF thrillers, things like Elizabeth Bear's Hammered, for instance. These books are good to know, fun to read, but ultimately, you'll do your own story because authors can't do anything else.

I'm still reeling from the original OPs quote that anything Debard brought up were obviously and strictly US tropes.

It's not a matter of it being strictly U.S. ideas. It's the concept that U.S. storytellers (by which she meant pretty much all kinds) tend in the majority or at least in a big way to be drawn to and use particular storytelling concepts because those concepts are part of the American cultural psyche, particular spins and types of characters, and that the prevalence of U.S. storytellers doing this, particularly in SFF, is drowning out other types of spins and encouraging European authors, for instance, to copy it instead of alternatives, diluting European and others' ideas into American remakes, etc.

She's an American and has as much of an insider's knowledge of U.S. culture as anyone else. My lack of interest is not from my thinking she isn't qualified to talk about the subject. It's from thinking it's not a very effective rant. She tries to throw in too many concepts from multiple mediums that have different cultural factors, some of them contradictory and others exceedingly vague, and makes what for me is a very surface oriented argument that doesn't really capture the American psyche concepts, particularly for written SFF, and she supports that argument by pinging written SFF writers by way of Hollywood action movies. She does not really look in any clear way about what European writers have done in the past or are doing and relative to their own cultural history, which since that's the main point of her rant, makes it ineffective for me.

Fung feels her identifying of concepts is clearer and more on target than I do for America versus the rest of the world. He sort of agrees about the movie thing being an issue in her essay. America is often seen as a very militant, brutish culture psychicly, as Dawnstorm explained, which is often confusing to Americans and very understandable for the rest of the world given that America's impact on the world has been often military, both requested and not requested, and that it is the only superpower at the moment (China is on the edge and is more isolationist.) Some of our most successful products entertainment wise -- mainly film -- seem very gung ho to the rest of the world. And economically, De Bodard, Fung and I all agree, that America is an octopus about the world, and this is understandably regarded as troublesome and altering out in that world by many, and prone to inspire what they see as not so good or worthwhile things.

America is an incredibly divided culture. We have sub-cultures and populations that are isolated and hide-bound and unaware of world cultures or other American cultures or willing to value any of them over their own. We have deep conflicts over consummerism, spirituality, etc. We have a feudal system of a certain type that is different from Europe's, coupled with conflicted democracy concepts. We have a media that is now owned by foreign corporations and only sensationalistically representative of American cultures, putting out various propaganda messages for ratings (which in itself is cultural) for an audience predominantly of older Americans who find the current world weird. We have a system of thirds -- one third conservative, one third liberal, the other third bouncing about in the middle. We do this for nearly everything, including the American Revolution. In the past, as my husband was talking about tonight, we were somewhat less split, with politicians and policies hugging the center. But for the past thirty years, that's gone increasingly out the window, with the population being pulled toward the poles, state legislations turned into battlegrounds, and with the advent of the Internet, the world gets full exposure to our rabid ranters -- and we have a lot of them. We've had in the last decade two wars, one of them completely unnecessary, disasterous, scarring and costly, and the other confused, scarring, etc. The very people who worship the mercantile have so undermined it in the country in the name of international corporations and finance that we don't know if we can internally rebuild.

So the question is, does South Park's satirical Team America, America F -- yeah anthem represent the main American psyche that SFF writers are being shaped by? (It doesn't have to be America that is in the story, just the sentiment.) Obviously it is there in parts of U.S. culture that have shaped both policy and entertainment (South Park wouldn't have successfully satirized it otherwise,) and especially in action movies, but is it ingrained as dominant for American stories, and are European authors pursuing stories in that vein and not based on their own history and cultural psyche but on the overwhelming presence of American art? I feel that not only did De Bodard not really draw a meaningful line on this but that she was not really just looking at this and went all over the map. It lacks connection and so for me, it lacked meaning. It was more her just listing her preferences, and her preferences seemed rather odd given what she herself is writing. She has a feeling that other writers are not pursuing substance or the right substance.

This is an argument that I've often heard, but for me, for several decades of storytelling, it isn't a very substantive one most of the time. It is often expressed in an either/or manner, with one thing ascending and the other supposedly descending, and this is not, if you look at the whole market and how people buy and read fiction, usually what is happening out in the real world. I'm not sure if this is the main bone of contention between Fung and I or not. I'll stop on this since Fung is not around and he can decide if he wants to talk further about it when he has the time.

 

[KatG]

Missed Dawnstorm's post, which I think quite apt.

What I'm more interested in is this: why do I feel the need to rant about this in the first place.

On this point, I feel I basically know why people need to rant about things like this and it doesn't have to do with them being anti-American. (Although of course a person can be anti-American if they want to.)

And there's the catch: if finding yourself at the receiving end of such an accusation is perceived as inherently disrespectful to American,

For me, again, this was never the issue. It was never about offense or disrespect.

The question that was asked by hippokrene is what do you think about what she is saying, do you find it interesting? And my response was that no, it's not interesting to me or real. It's basically someone letting off steam about American big budget action movies. I have no problem with someone disliking big budget action movies and seeing them as a cultural blight. I just don't find it very interesting.

What was mildly interesting is that she kept making it bigger and bigger. But in doing that, it becomes further and further divorced from the world to me.

 

[A. Lynn]

What was mildly interesting is that she kept making it bigger and bigger. But in doing that, it becomes further and further divorced from the world to me.

For me, I was just rather amused at the fact that she complains about violence (etc) but then writes about a considerably violent culture.

Perhaps I just need to read the novels though. Perhaps she feels that the violence in American works are "over-to-top" when hers might be subdued.

But I'd rather read the cyberpunk list you left for me KatG, thank you.

Speaking of cyberpunk, I don't want to be counter-productive to the genre my WIP falls into. I actually didn't consider it cyberpunk at first until it dawned on me that it shares "X" amount of elements in common with other things that are identified as being "allegedly" cyberpunk.

I was more or less wanting to focus on your comment of:

...the titillation over sex-violent harm to young women...

Is this really such a recurring theme in fiction? Is this a reference to the ol "damsel in distress" adage. Maybe I haven't read enough fiction. I'm trying to go through the several examples in my head (many of them admittedly from older writers of 30's-70's) and I really do not recall such a compenent being so overt in what I've been looking at.

Also,

So you can look at that re your main character and how she reacts to things.

What does "re" mean in this sentence? Please pardon my ignorance.

 

[Laer Carroll]

What does "re" mean in this sentence? Please pardon my ignorance.

"In REference to"


Some chunks in the stew of de Bodard’s crockpot commentary may have an element of truth. But then when you shoot a shotgun some pellets may well hit a target.

In the two semesters of American history required for my degree the professor and the textbook spent a good deal of time on three threads which have shaped the American psyche. And that of Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and South Africa.

• the Immigrant
• the Frontier
• the Entrepeneur

Immigrants are often single individuals. They establish a life in the new country all by themselves, though they may eventually build up a local support group of friends and co-workers. Then they may pull in their families and friends from the old country. (This is not unlike the way a virus infects a cell, by the way!)

Thus the American experience generates the myth of the Lone Hero.

Immigrants face a frontier empty of competitors, save for a few pesky savages. It is full of resources: land, water, vegetation, etc. Or in some myths in the old country about the new country, The Streets are Paved with Gold. The situation is the same whether the resources of the new country is a virgin land, or one of an enormous number of dirty jobs the people of the new country don’t want to dirty their hands with: nannies, gardeners, and the like.

Thus the American experience generates the twin myths of Optimism and Opportunity.

Immigrants who work hard and save their money and invest some of it and study can become modestly rich, which they may parlay into vast riches. Or raise kids who will turn the modest chain of startups their parents created into a vast empire. This class of small entrepreneurs are the Salt of the Earth, or the True Nobility of the New World, or whatever grand cliché one wants to use.

Thus the American experience generates the myth of the Upside-Down Class Society. Where the lower class is the admired class, the True Upper Class.

In the old country this idea is usually scorned. The Worker Bees were labeled the Shabby Genteel in Regency England: they dirtied their hands with commerce and aped the culture of the aristocracy (poorly, of course). They Reached Above Their Station. You see some of this in Jane Austen’s books. In Ewardian England they were labeled the Petty Bourgeoisie and sniffed at as socialists or even communists or maybe even anarchists.

In fact, all three ideas are typically scorned: The Lone Hero. Sniff. The Optimist in a bleak world. Sniff! Worker Bees. Sniff, sniff!


My! What a gift de Bodard (and hippokrene) gave us. This thread is up to 2111 readers and still counting!

.
.
.
.​

 

[KatG]

Laer -- I'll let Fung Koo play with that one. But de Bodard wasn't riffing off just the Immigrant and the Frontier exactly.

Speaking of cyberpunk, I don't want to be counter-productive to the genre my WIP falls into. I actually didn't consider it cyberpunk at first until it dawned on me that it shares "X" amount of elements in common with other things that are identified as being "allegedly" cyberpunk.

Ah, in that case, don't worry about it and write it however you want.

Is this really such a recurring theme in fiction?

It sort of depends on who you ask. There is the cultural argument made by many that serial killer stories and particularly movies, and slasher films, etc., are to let the audience, mostly males, be titillated by and revel in violence and sexual violence done to young, often nude women, and that this is the main reason these stories are popular. This comes out mainly from the films in the 1970's and 1980's. De Bodard seems to be taking this tack. The same argument is often made about graphic rape scenes and such in SFFH. I wouldn't worry about it regarding your fiction and it doesn't have anything to do with cyberpunk, although cyberpunk can have sexually explicit material. But it's not its main focus usually.

What does "re" mean in this sentence? Please pardon my ignorance.

Regarding, as Laer said. You can look at how you want to handle your female protagonist and her reactions to events and other people's reactions. You can basically chart your own course in terms of what you want to do with her as a female lead and what sort of person she is. Don't worry about making her too much this or too much that because every zig you can think of has already been zagged by others before, so it really is more about what serves your story.

 

[Laer Carroll]

Laer -- de Bodard wasn't riffing off just the Immigrant and the Frontier exactly.

The history professor and her textbook discussed WHY important elements of the American psyche existed. The optimistic, lone, working-class hero, specifically.

European-minded critics of America like de Bodard (despite her American background) come from histories and cultures in some ways the opposite of American culture. They don't care why America is like it is. They only know they don't like it.

This optimistic etc. strain of American culture is shared in good measure by countries with similar histories. This includes Australia and New Zealand, Argentina, and South Africa. And Canada?

 

[KatG]

While that does relate to the post-colonialism that Fung was talking about, I don't think de Bodard was simply presenting disdain for America. And I don't think the post-colonial countries embody those myths and the Europeans do not.

We have multiple approaches.

There is the paragon of virtue on the side of the light gathering the allies to defeat evil and mindlessly killing or attacking without doubt, guilt, etc. There is the gray anti-hero not on the side of light and mindlessly killing or attacking without doubt, guilt, etc. There is the generally good hero who has remorse, doubt, etc. about killing and so forth -- is not mindless. And that person may be experienced or completely naive and inexperienced. There is the gray anti-hero that feels remorse, guilt, etc., and may act to seek redemption or may not and keep killing. There is the generally good hero who is not mindless but in the end may make a decision of killing. There is the not very good person who then is faced with a survival situation. There is the lone outcast who comes back into grace. There are various types of satirical protagonists. There are all sorts of antagonists as well. So straddling them for what seems quintessentially American may or may not be the immigrant on the frontier doing entrepreneurship, depending on the view.

 

[ebusinesstutor]

Looking at the original post, I agree with many here that a lot of what is put out to be American tropisms could also be said to come from a long tradition of heroes going back to Beowulf.

But, because so much of the world entertainment produced is from Hollywood, there are some American things that slip in, such as:

1. The assumption that the US will be the center of activity that affects the world. Of course, this happens as they are making the movies/shows primarily for their own US population, but I would find it funny to see a show where the aliens land elsewhere - in China (largest population), Europe (densely populated with many countries close together) or Australia (for weather) and the US is ignored - perhaps because it has such a high deficit and the aliens believe the country is about to decline.

2. The assumption that a person has the right to take the law into their own hands if they aren't happy with the results - such as DeathWish. This seems quite American, and I see it less in other cultures such as here in Canada.

3. The assumption that American can do what it likes overseas with no respect for International law.

4. Gun focus - this seems very American. We have far less guns here in Canada and less deaths from them. A study found that gun homicides in the US are 8x the rate in Canada vs 100,000 people.

Of course many of the cities and landscapes in American movies and TV shows are from Canada and other countries. As a former Vancouver resident, I find it very interesting to see parts of my old home city in shows like Stargate, Highlander, X-Files, Butterfly Effect, Fantastic Four, and many more. And the new Superman movie is being shot right here in Nanaimo.

It is interesting to watch anime from Japan as there are other cultural assumptions (such as loyalty to the company you work for) and they aren't so American focused.

So yes, I do think there are some American tropisms, just not all the ones outlined in the original post.

 

[Laer Carroll]

2. The assumption that a person has the right to take the law into their own hands if they aren't happy with the results - such as DeathWish. This seems quite American, and I see it less in other cultures such as here in Canada.

3. The assumption that American can do what it likes overseas with no respect for International law.

4. Gun focus - this seems very American. We have far less guns here in Canada and less deaths from them. A study found that gun homicides in the US are 8x the rate in Canada vs 100,000 people.

Erh. Have you read nothing about what's going on in the third world?

 

[Laer Carroll]

Other annoying American tropes?

What about the Manic Pixy Dream Girl? She's perky, childish, sexy and for some idiotic reason hooks up with a boring guy and transforms him. Here are 26 from movies (listed as A-Z).

http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/10/04/kirsten-dunst-manic-pixie-dream-girl/

Penny in the TV show The Big Bang Theory is a perfect example.

So is Jess (Zooey Deschanel) in her sitcom New Girl. She transforms not one guy but three!

Then there are the male version of the MPDG. I call him the Sixpack Rapist Rich Guy, who we first see as Stolid but it turns out he's Steady. He sexually harasses some mousy loser girl but it's all right because he's gorgeous and has a big, erh, bank account.

 

[txshusker]

Well, partly because your demanding that proof is sort of cultural, too, in the first place..

?
I'm not sure I understand this obfuscation.
Is asking for proof and not taking a ranter's belief on faith strictly an American thing?

I watched 3 movies this weekend - all foreign. A newer Jackie Chan/Hong Kong produced: kung fu, lone hero, very Hong Kongese. Bullets flying, fists pounding and some good, though not great, Chan moves.

Arahan - humorous Korean kung fu. Lone hero, with help, beats the bad guy. Lot of fists flying.

Valhalla Rising - wow, violent anti-hero. Unusual cinematography. Interesting flick.

Strictly US tropes? I don't think so.

I mean, perhaps the violent Lone Wolf sterotype gets identified with the US because of the history of westerns and the US's more expansive/expensive history of film, but as has been said before, it certainly didn't start here, nor are they not used in other places. (was that a dbl negative?)

It's not a matter of it being strictly U.S. ideas.

But it is... - "In Short, I'm tired of being invaded by US culture. I'm tired of US tropes as being cited as the norm."

It's the concept that U.S. storytellers (by which she meant pretty much all kinds) tend in the majority or at least in a big way to be drawn to and use particular storytelling concepts because those concepts are part of the American cultural psyche, particular spins and types of characters, and that the prevalence of U.S. storytellers doing this, particularly in SFF, is drowning out other types of spins and encouraging European authors, for instance, to copy it instead of alternatives, diluting European and others' ideas into American remakes, etc.

How many American filmakers can use the psyche of Africans? Or Australians? Or Swedes?

here's the movie line up at one local theater :
50/50 - will it be exported ? no.
Contagion - will it be exported? yes. violent no.
Crazy, Stupid, Love - no
Dolphin Tale - no
Drive - yes
Machine Gun Preacher - hope not
Real Steel - yes
The Help - no
The Lion King - well, duh.
Abduction - ?
Corageous - no
Dream House - spooky.. yes
Killer Elite - yes
Moneyball - no
Spy Kids 4 - goodness... more sequels?
The Ides of March - no
Thunder Soul - documentary - no
What's Your Number? - no

More good stories get left in the US than make it out. And I'm sure that's true of everywhere else. Almost 300 films of all sorts are shown at the Sundance Film Festival, nearly none make it out of the US to foreign watchers.

You could easily ask, why do Europeans only want to see the violence and the action? The ones that make it out of the US are the ones that sell, not the best ones, nor even the ones that display the most accurate American ideas. (Death Wish is NOT an American ideal, nor the only international vigilante movie. But revenge is a universal trope.)

It's about the money. There are more paying movie fans in the world that like explosions, and that's what sells the best. (Discounting the disater that is Titanic). I promise you, when Hollywood decides to produce a movie, they take into account the possible foreign sales nearly as much as they do the domestic or the rental/DVD sales.

Or she can blame it on the European writers she claims can't come up with unique ideas on their own and must bandwagon jump upon other countries' stories because they're greeedy little bs. Which is a horrible rant as well.

I get her rant on violence. But it just seems she simplifying a blame game. Must you look for an external influence within a continent that has 2 milennia+ of violence in its own backyard, and a multitude of literature about individuals? Just rant on violence alone.

And riddle me this - because I can only compare movies since beyond Umberto Eco, I haven't read translated SFF:

"that people outside the US are actively aping them in search of the so-called “universal stories”."

Is this really happening? I find it hard to believe that a multitude of writers in an area as uniquely divided in national beliefs as Europe, simply lose their way for the easy cash. She seems to be really shortchanging a lot of people. I've no some doubt folks write simply to sell and want to appeal as broadly as possible, but...

 

[Laer Carroll]

Is asking for proof and not taking a ranter's belief on faith strictly an American thing?

I suspect that was Dawnstorm being naughty!

A more objective source of info on how well American movies are being exported is a site called Box Office Mojo.

It includes all sorts of statistics which can be used in many different ways. For instance, if you list the top movies of each year (they list the top 150 for each year), you find that the top 10 biggest box office movies since about 2000 are almost all sci-fi/fantasy, about half in animated form.

On the subject of domestic/foreign BO, here are the statistics for 2010.

1. Toy Story 3 - $1,063,171,911
2. Alice in Wonderland (2010) - $1,024,299,904
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 - $955,417,476
4. Inception - $825,532,764
5. Shrek Forever After - $752,600,867
6. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - $698,491,347
7. Iron Man 2 - $623,933,331
8. Tangled - $590,721,936
9. Despicable Me - $543,113,985
10. How to Train Your Dragon - $494,878,759

The foreign BO part of each ranged from about 50% to 70% (specifically 61.0%, 67.4%, 49.9%, 57.0%, 69.1%, 64.6%, 53.7%, 68.3% , 56.0%, 66.0%).

Those are films made by American studios, and we in this forum read English. So we think Hollywood is big business. And it is. But even bigger is India's "Bollywood" – but their perspectives don't show up in this forum.