On the prevalence of US tropes in storytelling

[Dawnstorm]

I'm not sure I understand this obfuscation.

Hey, you read usertitles.

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

No. Yes. Maybe. What I said is that it's a cultural thing to do, and so discussing the semantics of culture is actually highly relevant, because our reactions to such a blog are informed by culture.

It's complex. Here's what I, an Austrian, am used to in real life. An unfair rant is usually not questioned; instead it is countered with an unfair rant of your own. You shout at each other for a bit, and then, when you're spent either everything's fine, or you're walking away pissed at each other, but make up later. Now, my temperament doesn't allow me to shout. I have a hard time to counter a rant like that. Instead, I have mastered the art of the ironic take down; shoot a barb into the gaps. This usually diffuses the situation (but can come off as arrogant, if I time it wrong, or if I misjudge the ranters capability of detecting irony).

The ironic takedown is much less reliable online, which is partly due to the difference in medium (no tone of voice, etc. - and people can take smileys as insencere and cowardly), but also because of cultural differences (maybe: such as a tendency for irony that was intended to be goodnatured to come across as sarcasm, because that's much more common in the target culture).

Now, this is a rant. I read your phrase "taking a ranters belief on faith", and I chuckle to myself. I don't feel that a rant ever expresses your beliefs. It's a reaction to your frustrations, and often you pick a target. You let off steam.

A writing related example: There are plenty of silly rules about grammar, and they often incite rants. Sometimes, such blog posts inivite the readers to share their own pet peeves. Raging at grammar mistakes is fun. When I was new to the internet, I would have gladly joined these rants, saying things like, "'I could care less,' is an abomination. It makes no sense..." without a second thought. But hanging out at writing boards has shown me that people actually take that seriously. That is: if I say "I could care less," is an abomination, then they will believe that I'm serious. Well, I dislike the usage, but it's no big deal. It's only slightly younger than "couldn't" version, and it has its defenders. If you'd take my rant seriously, then you'd misconstrue my position. You'd be right about me disliking the usage, but wrong about me thinking it's a grammatical mistake - that's just the nominal form of a rant. So, now I stay away from such rants, to avoid that misunderstanding.

So, back to the issue at hand:

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?)

That is true. But my guess is that you're being more general than DeBodard is. I'd say the Lone Wolf stereotype is an archetype; you'd find it in every culture, and it would usually tap into how that culture views the way an individual fits into society. Thus you will always be able to find examples of that type, anywhere. And that's exactly why I think that DeBodard isn't actually talking about it on such a broad level. What she's talking about, she doesn't say in great detail at all. So: judgement pending.

Because it's a rant. Look at the comments, and you find that many people agree with her. That's sort of what rants do. They hint at frustrations. Being non-specific is not necessarily a fault in a rant. It turns out that most of those who reply to that rant can relate. That's sort of the point. Since they all have slightly different frustrations, they might even be clearer about what bugs them after reading the rant. Who knows? But the people (Americans among them) share a certain set of frustrations.

It is a huge simplification. They, Ms DeBodard and her favourable commenters, know that. But since they share a certain frustration they don't feel the need to clarify. See?

It's not just the "violent Lone Wolf"; it's how the figure is treated in context. If your habitual values differ from what you keep seeing (mostly) in Hollywood movies, then you'll notice something is off. But describing what is off is incredibly difficult, because things you take for granted and have no need to talk about won't be readily formulated on the tip of your tongue. Expressing cultural differences is fiendishly difficult, because we're all biased.

Any given culture is incredibly complex. Any statement you can make will also have deniers. Cultural differences are not yes/no questions. It's not a question of whether "violent lone wolves" exist in other cultures, but of how frequent are they in what contexts and how are they treated, and is it possible to see the same story in different ways, and are these different ways culturally specific to any degree, and...

Thus you finding examples of lone wolves in Hong Kong movies proves little. To get to the core of the matter, we'd have to actually look at the movies in question, then work out a cultural model which we can use to determine what movies are comparable to what, and then we... Argh. My head swims just thinking of the work necessary. Clearly, it's up to DeBodard to make herself understood, but - if we care enough about what she has to say - we ought to be co-operative and tell her where we don't quite get what she's saying.

Intercultural comparisons could help, here, maybe. For example, I'm thinking about the Hollywood film Ronin, an American film using a Japanese Lone-swordsmen word ("ronin" = Samurai without a Lord to serve) for its title (and tying it into characterisation). The results could be interesting, but I'm not qualified to make that comparison.

 

[Fung Koo]

Bang on, Dawn. For both previous posts on the issue.

The points that a culture is not yes/no and nor is it a question of either/or when comparing two or more cultures are especially important. Culture is fluid, dynamic, and above all, interactive.

My theoretical position on culture is that culture is most readily identifiable not in itself (internally), but in how two or more cultures interact (externally). If we describe a culture as being a certain way -- say, "expansionist" -- then the question that follows is "relative to what?"

Once we have established the thing to be compared -- expansionistic-ness -- we then look at two or more cultures and put them on a spectrum we define as being ←More, Less→, ↑External, ↓Internal (just an example of how we might plot the thing). Once we have established that general sense of where a whole culture falls relative to another on that thing, we can turn to the internal elements of a culture to understand that position.

It may turn out that a given assessment isn't really accurate, so its position on the spectrum may shift as a result of the examination. Likewise, it may turn out that while a culture appears one way in one comparison, it doesn't remain so in another. Such is the nature of bias, discrimination, prejudice, cultural scripts, observer position, etc..

In general, it is true that it's a good idea to start by looking at specifics and building up to a more general conclusion -- but I suspect for culture this simply isn't a reasonable way of going about it. There's simply too much data, so it's more practical to run it the other way. There's also a very large problem with cherry-picking data that way, or begging the question. True, the same problems exists the other way of going about it, but it has the luxury of relying on established "general sense" that can be run through a process of falsification. "General sense" is an excellent data source for culture -- it is based on a wealth of collected opinions that are highly compressed, so it can be unpacked and checked.

Every culture can be measured on anything -- no culture lacks entirely any given quality. Thus, it's not either/or and it's not yes/no, but more/less.

We can definitely say that America tends to produce more entertainment media per capita -- both fiction and non -- than most other single countries in the world. We can certainly say it produces more single-language entertainment media than most other countries in the world (there are a variety of languages and dialects in India, which is about the only place giving the US a run for its money). We can also say it enjoys the largest foreign audience worldwide than any others nation's entertainment media.

So, assuming that art carries culture, and assuming that the interaction of cultures is what's important to understanding them, then the reaction of the blogger is an example of culture-in-action.

There is, therefore, a "general sense" of America's entertainment media tropes around the world. There are most certainly counter examples internal to the US culture, and there is most certainly a interpretable/debatable middle set of examples too. But the sense is that America tends to favour the hero with a code (not necessarily the "ideal" code, thus the prominence of the anti-hero) who volunteers him/herself into action. There are excellent reasons why this exists that arise from the aspects of the US culture that differ from other cultures.

We always need to be aware that our sense of another culture is incomplete, and probably biased. But that doesn't, to my mind, make the conversation so-simplified-so-as-to-be-irrelevant.

 

[txshusker]

No. Yes. Maybe. What I said is that it's a cultural thing to do

You're obfuscating again. You're subtitled well, master. So no other person outside the US requires proof of a thesis? Isn't that like guilty before innocent?

Or are you saying a rant doesn't require proof, since it's a bit on the loony side anyway. (all of mine are).

It's complex. Here's what I, an Austrian, am used to in real life. An unfair rant is usually not questioned; instead it is countered with an unfair rant of your own.

I'm American - of no hyphenation... I counter rant as well - and much too often, my work colleagues say.... nothing wrong with that!

But that's what I'm trying to avoid. I'm attempting not to come across as a crazy rantman. I'm just wondering where the justification for such a general claim comes from. I thought that's what hippokrene was asking for.

There is, therefore, a "general sense" of America's entertainment media tropes around the world.... But the sense is that America tends to favour the hero with a code (not necessarily the "ideal" code, thus the prominence of the anti-hero) who volunteers him/herself into action. There are excellent reasons why this exists that arise from the aspects of the US culture that differ from other cultures.

So no other hero movie made anywhere else in the world has a hero with a code? Well, that's not right, is it? Kung fu has no code? Taoists have no code. Korean anti-heores have no code? (watch The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. great flick) EU medieval knights have no code?

You can argue that the foundation of that code is based upon a subsubculture and so leads to tropes (as the OP I posted below) and I'd agree with you there.

But that's not what the OP's quote of the rant states, nor my assertion.
I guess I should have stuck with KatG's comment (forgive me if it's misconstrued) that the problem with the Debodard writing is that it's clearly undefined. Violence, the use of guns, individual heros with egos, "casual acceptance of violence", main character's belief in a moral high ground.... these are not uniquely American. And I would love to see an explanation of how they are, because I still haven't seen one in 9 pages of this thread. I'm not discounting they are part of the whole hero-trope, only that they are not unique to the US.

That is true. But my guess is that you're being more general than DeBodard is. I'd say the Lone Wolf stereotype is an archetype; you'd find it in every culture, and it would usually tap into how that culture views the way an individual fits into society. Thus you will always be able to find examples of that type, anywhere. And that's exactly why I think that DeBodard isn't actually talking about it on such a broad level. What she's talking about, she doesn't say in great detail at all. So: judgement pending.

I'm asking for more definition, actually. She is totally general, with no defining qualities other than the ones above and of which you know my opinion.

Here's an intersting OP which hits what you're saying here. And I can see this... which is much more defined than anything DeBodard wrote.

http://blogs.cbn.com/thewebblog/archive/2009/01/22/americas-second-largest-export.aspx

(don't judge it because it's from CBN... it's objective.)

And if DeBodard is tired of this type of trope, well, then, she is. I think it's a pretty accurate description of an American ideology.

But again, I'll say it (hero/blockbusters) is what the audience wants. It's the most popular fad and what brings in the cash. Again I'll say while the monetary rewards of exported entertainment are huge proportions of the US entertainment industry, the quantity (and more of quality) of exported movies to those not exported is only a small proportion. How many US independent films lead the way in quality and fresh tomatoes (see rottentomatoes.com) but aren't seen outside the US. Way too many, unfortunately. And again, I'll guess she's likely shortchanging European writers' ability to think on their own.

 

[Fung Koo]

So no other hero movie made anywhere else in the world has a hero with a code?

I take it my whole point about it not being yes/no or either/or didn't come across.

Lots of other movies elsewhere in the world contain that trope, as well as every other trope you could identify as being American. It's not a question of America being the only people who do it -- it's a matter of being people who do it more than others.

Take a film director like Luc Besson (5th Element, Taxi, Nikita, Revolver, The Transporter, The Messenger, From Paris with Love). He is, in a lot of ways, the ultimate example of what we're talking about here. He works in genre film, for one. And he's a French film director who purposefully creates his films in a homage style to Hollywood -- precisely the sort of dude de Bodard is complaining about.

Aesthetically his work is slick and stylistic (cribbed from 70s-80s American action films), choppily shot (cribbed from music videos, made famous in American media by MTV), and almost garrishly colourful (a nod to technicolor, and colouration in revisionist film). His films are predominantly action based, typically quite violent (though almost comically so). His characters are relatively flat in terms of depth with fairly simple motivations, representing a classic set of archetypes.

His works, in a nutshell, capture the external sense of what American culture is all about. His influence comes from a long list of American films that embody the tropes he employs. We're talking everything from Rambo to Rumble Fish and The Outsiders, Star Wars, classic American noir with your Bogarts ad Baccalls, Chuck Norris flicks, American-popular Hong Kong cinema (see David Bordwell for an excellent film historian/academic for the differences between domestic Hong Kong cinema and the stuff that made its way to America), and on and on.

His ass-whopping super-active heroes with semi-compassionate stories that fit tidily into little cliched boxes are what de Bodard is complaining about. She's really not on about America itself, nor its media, so much as the European culture that "exploits" American narratives, narrative techniques and aesthetics.

And let's be honest -- if "American culture" was encapsulated by the films of Luc Besson, America would be in a damned sorry state. Besson's films are about as deep as a sheet of paper -- he doesn't even load them with irony. They're basically French faux-Americain kitsch.

But, his sense of the aesthetics of American film and story tropes do arise from veritable American sources.

I personally think de Bodard is reacting more to works like Besson's than to American film itself, on the whole. She points at X-Men, specifically, because it's sort of the pinnacle of the story type Besson is fascinated with -- but it's infinitely deeper than most of Besson's works (The 5th Element being perhaps his deepest flick character-wise and most auteurish direction-wise, while Revolver is his most obscure attempt at something deep writing-wise and wrapped up in Guy Ritchie's likewise faux-Americain stylized direction). X-Men has pathos, whereas most of Besson's stuff has bathos.

A director like Roland Emmerich likewise fits in here, and Wolfgang Peterson and Paul Verhoeven (though Verhoeven is different in that he often purposefully satirizes America while imitating its tropes, like in RoboCop, Basic Instinct, Show Girls, Starship Troopers, Total Recall, etc., though he got flack for it so made drivel like Hollowman instead).

As to the trope of the Hero with a Code that is peculiarly American, we're talking Batman, Wolverine, Iron Man, Punisher, Rambo, all the characters Steven Segal has ever played, Top Gun, The Goodfellas, the Die Hard franchise, Dirty Harry, Deadwood, Wyatt Earp, Luke Skywalker, Sam Spade, Jason Bourne...

Do I really need to go over a whole list of these? We know the kinds of characters here and the movies/shows they appear in, yeah? The issue here is trying to think of a good number of films from other cultures to match them all tit for tat. There are examples, and many of them. But there aren't as many, and they're often fairly dissimilar. Even comparing Jet Li's epic Hero to a comparable American analogue like The Last Samurai you get a totally different treatment of character. The heroes of these two films are utterly different yet the underlying story of their characters bears several similarities.

Wuxia, as a whole, has an entirely different message of the role of the hero and heroism's place than it does in the comparable American epic form. Jackie Chan couldn't be less wuxia these days. Compare Drunken Master to Shanghai Knights, and there's the difference (highly compressed) between the American trope and the Hong Kong/Chinese trope.

So again, not yes/no, and not either/or. It's more/less and how.

 

[txshusker]

I have plenty of other replies, but I don't think we need to usurp the thread any longer.

"whereas most of Besson's stuff has bathos" - by this you mean that they should be flushed down the toilet and lost forever, I assume...?

And no bagging on Hollowman... I've got a good buddy in that who gets killed by Kevin Bacon. If you want a bad Verhoeven movie, use Showgirls.... yuck.

 

[Fung Koo]

Here's an intersting OP which hits what you're saying here. And I can see this... which is much more defined than anything DeBodard wrote.

http://blogs.cbn.com/thewebblog/archive/2009/01/22/americas-second-largest-export.aspx

(don't judge it because it's from CBN... it's objective.)

And if DeBodard is tired of this type of trope, well, then, she is. I think it's a pretty accurate description of an American ideology.

Just took the time to read that piece. Accurate, sure. It's well written, has good examples, and I generally agree with it... until the end. Objective? Not so much.

"Indeed, the whole world thinks about liberty and civil rights today in terms crafted by the United States. The world may not always agree with us, but we have defined the terms of the debate. The legacy of civil liberty secured by our Patriot ancestors is not only for us; it is in fact America's gift to the world."​

This piece is a perfect example of exactly the sort of American rhetoric Dawnstorm suggested that de Bodard is reacting to. The idea that these American cultural values are good for other cultures is basically the fuel in the fire.

I agree that due process and equitable justice really aught to be values we encourage in the world. But the peculiarly American concepts liberty and freedom are absolutely not something that we all need to conform to. The American way is the American way, and that's great for America. But that doesn't mean it's the best way for the rest of the world.

The significant level of irony here is that he is right about the American bad guy trope -- he's the one demanding conformity and limiting the right to be different. Yet, as exemplified by this piece, America/Americans pretty much look down on the rest of the world, believing their own brand of liberty, freedom, and individualism is the best and the rest of us should aspire to be so awesome.

Every bad guy who encourages conformity does so precisely because he believes his way is the best way. According his own argument, his conclusion renders America the bad guy.

The fact that the conformity he is suggesting is a "gift" is a kind of liberty and freedom based on non-conformity doesn't argue against the fact that it's an expectation of conformity. Others in the world don't have that value -- that doesn't mean they are wrong or less-than.

America's brand of individualism isn't the only sort of individualism there is. Nor is it the best -- it's just one amongst many, not necessarily any better or worse.

 

[KatG]

Well it's all a bit of a loop.

"America tends to favour the hero with a code (not necessarily the "ideal" code, thus the prominence of the anti-hero)" -- All protagonists have codes, world views that effect their behavior. If the code doesn't have to be ideal and heroic and runs all the way to anti-heroes with criminal codes, then we're basically saying all protagonists and all codes. Which just remains a vague mish-mash. Then we have the qualifier: "volunteers him/herself into action" which is supposed to be presumably the American favored choice, but what constitutes volunteering? If a young person is dragged into a life and death situation, as is often the case, is that volunteering? If you're the destined person, is that volunteering? And so forth. So that phrase is multi-purpose -- you can apply it as specifically and as vaguely as you like at the same time.

What makes an action film is that a protagonist is thrust into action. It may be in the course of doing his or her job, it may be accidental, and frequently it's not by choice or preference. So that's the basic aesthetic and structure of an action film -- action involving a person. And it's true that America makes more action films than other countries except perhaps Asia. Action movies including thrillers are the most popular or one of the most popular types in every country that shows movies, which is why they get the big budgets. Action stories were perfect for film from the beginning because there was no sound early, so the early emphasis was on visible and impressive action rather than dialogue.

But America makes more of most kinds of film, as you also note. It makes more romantic comedies than anyone than perhaps India. It makes more comedies, more kids films. It produces more books, all kinds, more t.v. shows and channels. It produces Spanish language product around the world and to a much lesser degree has other language sub-cultures. Its English films are dubbed and subtitled, its written works translated into other languages -- it is not substantially more mono-language than other countries in its exports. And it takes in a huge amount of foreign product, a good chunk of it not in English or translated/dubbed/subtitled.

So we can say that America has more items and indeed everyone was in agreement about the juggernaut aspect, but if we're doing the comparison simply from numbers of items, that's not really a matter of aesthetics or approaches. It's the America is a big exporter and thus a threat in the marketplace idea, which wasn't clear as what de Bodard was ranting about.

If we look at films and in general, we can see the aesthetic that is rather unique to America and it's not action films; it's Disney. The cartoons with their princesses who make friends with cute talking animals and have to be rescued, the wholesome comedy hijinks, the technicolor musicals, the sentimental family tales, Leave it to Beaver, amusement parks, the roller diner, etc. Other countries did not use their arts for family entertainment and cheese anywhere near to the level that America did, not even Canada with its cultural connections. The only country that comes close to us in inventing toys, for instance, is Japan, and that was America's fault too really. So that touches on the jingoism image -- the idea of Mom, baseball and apple pie that did spell out American culture, American film and American ideals. And with that Disney aesthetic were also strong limits on graphic violence and violent imagery and sex and nudity.

And starting in a heavier manner in the 1950's and burnishing large in the 1960's and 1970's were film-makers chafing against that Disney American aesthetic, against the musicals and teen dance movies, against the proscriptions against violence and sex -- things that filmmakers in other countries got to do. The movie audience had shifted with the advent of television and the main audience were young people, more of them college educated and into foreign films. So they pushed the envelope by aping European and Asian films. They made their own version of Godzilla. They turned The Seven Samaurai into The Magnificient Seven. They incorporated Hong Kong gunplay and fighting styles into blackexploitation films. They borrowed film techniques and violent images from European films for things like Psycho and Bonnie & Clyde. They copied the French New Wave, the Italian films, the Scandanavian films, and stuffed them with violence and/or sex like those directors did. They would do Americanized stories but they were stories of essentially commentary on America's bourgeois Disney culture, like Five Easy Pieces and Rebel without a Cause.

By the 1980's, a lot of American film was geared to get an R rating, popping in a bare breast or excessive shooting for it because adults wouldn't go see PG films, and the violence and sex were old hat. We had raunch comedies, horror slasher films and serial killers and drug war thrillers, all using European styles of odd camera angles and lingering imagery. (Which would be later replaced by the more American jump cut, meaning that my daughter would find Bladerunner slow.) Moral doubt, noir depression and sex -- like European films -- were then standard. So if Luc Besson is copying those excesses, the loop is that he's copying American films that were copying European and Asian ones. Finding the very American thread in there -- the thing that Americans favor versus others -- gets very tangled, especially as the wants of the international audience became more and more important.

In 1984, Temple of Doom came out and it was a PG spectacle film that got dark. So the PG-13 rating was proposed and this gave Hollywood an out. They could load a film with violence and attract a wide age range of adults, teens and older kids; they just had to cut out some of the sex. Changes in television in the 1990's also, where cable went from the very European Cinemax and HBO into a full scale line of channels, all of which needed product, had an effect. Disney had a channel, there was Nickelodeon and combined with the improved toy distribution, development of video games and the rise of the Internet, meant a massive market for kids and teens. The Disney aesthetic rose back to prominence (prepping us well for Harry Potter.)

What also happened in the 1990's was an increase in international exports and imports and a branching out -- the 200 channels with their own audiences approach. So even though the Disney aesthetic increased in popularity again, the rest of it didn't go away or lose popularity. (Because culture tends to add stuff for more products, not decrease, which is why threat of the Other is usually not a very productive fear.) America has a multitude of different aesthetics which they pump into all their entertainment products. Comics has had heydays in the 1930's (Disney,) late 1950's-early 1970's period (a mix,) and 1980's (European R.) In film, though, superheroes were never very big. Superman did best and it was the Disney aesthetic. The concerted effort of Warner/DC and particularly Marvel lately has attempted to save the comics market through film and toy franchise, bringing us way more than usual banking on familiar names. Some of it has the old Disney aesthetic and some of it goes into the dark moral places of Dark Knight and X-Men. And in SFF over a hundred years a different and always far more varied trajectory was going on that had very little to do with comic books or, for that matter, action films.

De Bodard throws together everybody and every aesthetic and tries to represent them as a basic American idea in action films. And the rant is that Europeans are now copying Americans in their tendencies in large numbers and were not before or were but they really shouldn't ever have done so, or something like that. As Dawnstorm says, it's a rant, so there doesn't have to be any evidence for it, much less clarity, but my assessment of its interest is do I think that's the sort of cultural interaction that's going on and I really don't. I think, as you note, that it's a very shallow reading of a lot of the art, X-Men and all the rest. And I also still think that given that she writes a fantasy series that is about a hero with a code who voluntarily goes into action to save the world with moral certitude that her railing about writers doing that sort of story is strange.

The threat of the Other is that one set of culture -- whatever it is, wherever it comes from -- will in its popularity squash other culture, remove it or reduce it to empty, hollow pap, etc. De Bodard mixes this with the view of American psyche as militant and jingoistic with American art reflecting that militancy and jingoism and reveling in sex, violence and moral superiority as its central thread. She contradicts herself, she bashes her own work, she tries to lump four different mediums together as tending toward all one thing, tries to say American thrillers all pretty much operate the same as opposed to some other non-American way, and scolds non-American SFF authors for very unclear sins. She's not trying to encompass everything, and yet at the same time she's using those terms. If it were an actual comparison of any two things, it might be interesting. If she was talking about her position as a multi-racial American-born French citizen for more than two seconds, it might have been interesting. If it was a look at story structures, it would be interesting. But it's basically just a complaint about American action movies that she tries to extend. What European SFF writers are supposed to take from that, I'm not sure. Don't play with superheroes?

I understand that it's a feeling that she has and that others may also have. I just don't find it a very interesting feeling or one that actually speaks to SFF writers.

 

[txshusker]

lkjhkjiupo

 

[Fung Koo]

I understand that it's a feeling that she has and that others may also have. I just don't find it a very interesting feeling or one that actually speaks to SFF writers.

OK.

All of that is good stuff, but (as usual) I'll point something out. The way you describe Asian action films lumps all sorts of stories that feature some kind of physical confrontation into one collective "action" group. The presence of physical confrontation in Asian martial arts films doesn't necessarily make it an action film. You've mentioned Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon previously -- this is an example of the Chinese genre wuxia. There is action in the film, but it's not an action film.

Slotting it in to an "action" genre category would be akin to slotting all westerns into the action genre. Not all westerns are action films, though a good majority of westerns will contain some action.

Calling it an action film is to class the film within the Western (society, not genre) cultural genre sets. The characteristics of wuxia place it closer to the Western (genre) and the Romance (capital R Romance) than action -- this is an excellent example of using culture as a lens.

Culturally, relatively speaking, wuxia fits closer to the kind of narrative you see in films like Legends of the Fall or No Country for Old Men, or in a longer-form narrative like Deadwood (all westerns, not really action flicks). It's part of the tradition of the Epic, and it's a Romance. The action is a secondary byproduct of the culture's storytelling tradition, rather than a feature of the film.

Or, to state it another way -- Kill Bill Vol. 1 is a martial arts action film, whereas Kill Bill Vol. 2 is a wuxia.

I only point this out because you've simplified another culture's storytelling tropes to make a point about the lack of simplicity in your own culture's storytelling tropes.

 

[Laer Carroll]

It seems that in this thread we are becoming amateur anthropologists!

Every culture can be measured on anything -- no culture lacks entirely any given quality. Thus, it's not either/or and it's not yes/no, but more/less.

Good point. And this is one of the techniques used by cultural anthropologists: comparing and contrasting the similar cultural artifacts.

Wuxia, as a whole, has an entirely different message of the role of the hero and heroism's place than it does in the comparable American epic form.

I was a Chinese (Mandarin) linguist once, so I've a passing acquaintance with wuxia. But that was many years ago, so I Googled the term to refresh my memory. Here is the best reference I found.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia

If we take the article as accurate (always a question with wikipedia), stories about the "martial moralist" (one possible translation of wu xia (pronounced sya with a rising tone)) have been around for going on three thousand years.

And they are a various bunch. Saying "wuxia, as a WHOLE" is an oversimplification. Often they are loners. But sometimes they are part of a small group, somewhat like the seven samurai from the Japanese film of the same name or Tolkien's Ring companions. Often they work outside the bounds of the local legal system, especially if that system is corrupt. But sometimes they are brought in by or have an allegiance to the local system.

Any American film or fiction cliché (a term I prefer to trope) can be found in wuxia. The Star Wars Jedi could have been a direct steal from wuxia. The Force, for instance, is a sci-fi version of the wuxia protagonist's "inner energy."

Anthropologists consider there to be two processes which produce similar cultural artifacts. One is diffusion, whereby a meme from one culture infects another across the cultural barriers created by differing languages, geography, and so on. Another is parallel evolution, whereby a meme is independently invented.

Each cultural artifact is shaped by its parent culture. The French version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is sometimes a prostitute, sometimes a gamine-like orphan.

tarting in a heavier manner in the 1950's and burnishing large in the 1960's and 1970's were film-makers chafing against th[e] Disney American aesthetic, against the musicals and teen dance movies, against the proscriptions against violence and sex -- things that filmmakers in other countries got to do. The movie audience had shifted with the advent of television and the main audience were young people, more of them college educated and into foreign films. So [Hollywood] pushed the envelope by aping European and Asian films. They made their own version of Godzilla. They turned The Seven Samaurai into The Magnificient Seven. They incorporated Hong Kong gunplay and fighting styles into blackexploitation films. They borrowed film techniques and violent images from European films for things like Psycho and Bonnie & Clyde. They copied the French New Wave, the Italian films, the Scandanavian films, and stuffed them with violence and/or sex like those directors did. They would do Americanized stories but they were stories of essentially commentary on America's bourgeois Disney culture, like Five Easy Pieces and Rebel without a Cause.

And so the clichés and the themes and delightful or compelling characters from each culture loops back and forth across cultural boundaries.

 

[Dawnstorm]

Or are you saying a rant doesn't require proof, since it's a bit on the loony side anyway. (all of mine are).

Sorry for being late; quite the week I'm having. But, yes, that's pretty much where I come from. And you can take the where I come from part seriously: Where I come from gives me certain experiences. It is possible that I'm at odds within my own culture here; it is possible that I'm within a subculture, but I'm unaware of it; it is possible that I'm taking a stance in a cultural development around me, and I'm unaware of. What is impossible is that the culture around me is irrelevant to my position on that.

Of course, the entire range of positions on the topic whether or not rants require proof is possible, but there will be some sort of default, the attitude you revert to when you're not really thinking of taking a stance.

It is possible that requiring proof for rants has a social dimension in America that I'm missing, (just as it's possible that there's something about my own culture I'm missing). Noting that "rant" is not a word in German, I may even be misconstruing the word in the first place.

Finally, this particular rant is an internet rant, which is yet again another situation.

So, while rants not requiring proof is indeed my position (me being more interested in the groundings of the rant - who, when, where, and why), what I'm really saying is that whether or not a rant requires proof has a cultural dimension to it in itself. Thus being forced to provide proof for a rant of mine could make me feel further "invaded" by "America", however wrong I could be both about American and Austrian culture.

So, ultimately, what I'm saying is: to get at the truth (whatever that may be, and whether or not its even accessible) you need to be prepared to wade through a whole lot of confusion. That's inevitable in inter-cultural discourse, as you need to step away far enough from what you're usually taking for granted that you can see things from an alien perspective, but not so far that things stop making sense to you altogether. Confusion is an inevitable part of the process.

***

Example:

Quite a lot of English speakers subscribe to "-ize is American; -ise is British". It's "polarize" in America, and "polarise" in Britain. This has an identity aspect: I'm British and I demonstrate that with my "s". I'm American and I demonstrate that with my "z".

This identity aspect is latent; it can always be topicalised. It's of different importance to different people, and enters into questsions whether you'd object to "cultural translation" of your books. Optimally, would you like your s/z to be retained? Do you care enough to object?

The fun thing about "-ize is American; -ise is British" is that it's not, actually, true. America has only -ize; that part is true. (Again, this doesn't make Americans who write "polarise" or "topicalise" impossible; its just that they'd be going against a consensus.) But Britain has both "-ise" and "-ize" (I don't have the numbers; Wikipedia says 3:2 in favour of "-ise"); the OED (and with it Oxford University Press) is one prominent example of -ize users. They're argument has nothing whatsoever to do with America; it's classicist. They're going with the original Greek, refusing later French influence.

So what about a Brit who feels invaded by American "-ize"? American coolth might well further the spread of "-ize", mightn't it? So, how do we tell if a British -ize user is influenced by classical Greek, or American usage? Does he even care?

This is the situation we're dealing with, only it's a bit more complex, because "-ize" and "-ise" are a lot easier to distinguish than most of the things DeBodard talks about. Also, the "z" or "s" themselves are only secondarily morally relevant. It's not a moral issue in the least; it just potentially topicalises a distinction which has a moral dimension.

There are no easy answers.

 

[KatG]

OK.

All of that is good stuff, but (as usual) I'll point something out. The way you describe Asian action films lumps all sorts of stories that feature some kind of physical confrontation into one collective "action" group. The presence of physical confrontation in Asian martial arts films doesn't necessarily make it an action film. You've mentioned Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon previously -- this is an example of the Chinese genre wuxia. There is action in the film, but it's not an action film.

Slotting it in to an "action" genre category would be akin to slotting all westerns into the action genre. Not all westerns are action films, though a good majority of westerns will contain some action.

Calling it an action film is to class the film within the Western (society, not genre) cultural genre sets. The characteristics of wuxia place it closer to the Western (genre) and the Romance (capital R Romance) than action -- this is an excellent example of using culture as a lens.

Culturally, relatively speaking, wuxia fits closer to the kind of narrative you see in films like Legends of the Fall or No Country for Old Men, or in a longer-form narrative like Deadwood (all westerns, not really action flicks). It's part of the tradition of the Epic, and it's a Romance. The action is a secondary byproduct of the culture's storytelling tradition, rather than a feature of the film.

Or, to state it another way -- Kill Bill Vol. 1 is a martial arts action film, whereas Kill Bill Vol. 2 is a wuxia.

I only point this out because you've simplified another culture's storytelling tropes to make a point about the lack of simplicity in your own culture's storytelling tropes.

Well no, that's not really what I did.

1) I never brought up wuxia. TSX did. (And there was some relevance for that from the type of character of the wuxia film movement, rather than the fighting, related to what you are declaring as a wide range of American main characters in action movies that de Bodard is riffing on.) Not all Asian martial arts movies are wuxia, though some may be (since as you note, that action is a cultural value of Asian filmmakers.) They certainly aren't all the same as they come from a number of different countries. They have, though, the many different types, strongly effected American filmmakers.

2) I brought up Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon not as an action film example but as an example of a foreign film that was not in English, with subtitles that was incredibly successful in the States, re the rant of us being isolationist and unable to watch stuff not about Americans or not in English, and was something of a game changer in Hollywood as well. Part of its impact was related to the martial arts action in that it used balletic flying on wires choreography, which was old hat to Asian films and American filmmakers were well aware of but did not often use. After the film, though, it became a regular tool in American action films (and epics with action ) re the Matrix, Resident Evil, Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill, etc. But a bigger part of the film's success was simply an expansion of the international market both import and export, an influx of Asian films of all kinds, and similar ripples. And I will point out that a lot of the movies you've brought up as American action pictures are not really action pictures either -- they may be thrillers, epic sagas, etc.

3) The fighting choreography is not the only thing that Americans have borrowed from Asian martial arts films and Asian films -- they've borrowed the saturated color imagery and operatic movement, camera techniques, rubber suited monsters and city models, code of honor themes; the way they do family dramas have effected American films, particularly those concerning American immigrants. Such stuff gets Americanized (me U.S. use the "z") and also Europeanized and sometimes we start throwing in other things like South America or Africa bits. It's all imperfect, a mix, but Asian films have had an enormous impact that you really can see in American films of different stripes and not just when John Woo releases his doves. If you look at a movie like the first Twilight movie, for instance, which is also a not action movie that has martial arts action, with its field of wildflowers, etc., you will see that Asian romance epic color imagery imprint mixed with other stuff. And Kill Bill of course was a homage to both Asian films and Americanized adoptation of Asian film aspects. And of course deliberately used in Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, etc.

So it's many aspects of Asian films, including the tendency of many of them to have a hero who lives by a code, holds to that code in certainty and voluntarily acts to save the world. The samaurai and the U.S. lawman have connections, which you can specifically look at if those are the two things you want to compare. So I was not lumping types of film together except to say that they come from Asia and that the martial arts group particularly has had an impact. De Bodard paid lip service to Asian films but was not really focused on them and I think if she had, it would not have helped her rant much, though the Asian cultures are all quite different.

So, ultimately, what I'm saying is: to get at the truth (whatever that may be, and whether or not its even accessible) you need to be prepared to wade through a whole lot of confusion. That's inevitable in inter-cultural discourse, as you need to step away far enough from what you're usually taking for granted that you can see things from an alien perspective, but not so far that things stop making sense to you altogether. Confusion is an inevitable part of the process.

And this is true, but the problem is that de Bodard is an author making this rant on the Internet. And many will accept her word as gospel for SFF -- even if her message is confused -- because she is an author. And because she is tackling action movies and then claiming that this applies directly to SFF writers, it simply contributes to myths about SFF writers, myths that can cause harm to SFF writers and make opportunities difficult for them, including herself. That is of course part of culture and the confusion and not unusual. Certainly you don't want to make SFF authors shut up. But that doesn't mean that their rants can't be challenged for applicability and other things if they are going to make them on the Internet. Members of the SFF community -- American or not -- never stop arguing about stuff. So a gospel proclamation will always be met with challenge, especially when you come at SFF written fiction in such a haphazard way.

Again, and I'll stop my ranting about this, de Bodard raised a number of interesting topics in her rant, any one of which would have made a good cultural comparison, even a cultural comparison of American culture being the marauding horde of dominance. But she didn't really try to explore any of them, to my mind, and lumped them together into an unfocused complaint. Which of course you can do in a rant. But for me, it's not as interesting.

 

[Laer Carroll]

Creative Stealing

A lot of the discussion so far centers on the negative side of the "invasion" of foreign influences on art. But the smartest artists CREATIVELY steal from each other. We use a foreign work to break up our perhaps too-narrowly focused mind sets. Then we take those parts of the style and substance of various foreign works which suit our vision of a new work.

And we reject those parts which do not – for that particular work. (In our next work we may accept parts we earlier rejected, and reject parts we earlier accepted.)

One example is the "Asian" film Seven Samurai – which is Japanese, actually, and different from films culturally Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. Akira Kurosawa was greatly influenced by American film-maker John Ford when he made the film. Part of what he took from Ford was substance, including the stark realities of farm life. Part of what he took was stylistic elements such as framing and lighting scenes, cutting of action, and use of close-ups and long shots.

Yet in the end Japanese critics and audiences felt that Seven Samurai was deeply Japanese. Not some sad stew polluted by American influences.

Another example is the French new wave of the 1960s. It was deeply influenced by both American and Italian cinema – or parts of the two foreign cinemas. The Novelle Vague writers and directors rejected those foreign influences which did NOT suit them, including the classical tightly plotted narrative.

In this way they and Kurosawa created works of art which inspired the world, inspiring yet more loops back into the foreign cultures from which they stole - a creative process which de Bodard might well claim she uses.

 

[txshusker]

One example is the "Asian" film Seven Samurai – which is Japanese, actually, and different from films culturally Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. Akira Kurosawa was greatly influenced by American film-maker John Ford when he made the film. Part of what he took from Ford was substance, including the stark realities of farm life. Part of what he took was stylistic elements such as framing and lighting scenes, cutting of action, and use of close-ups and long shots.

Yet in the end Japanese critics and audiences felt that Seven Samurai was deeply Japanese. Not some sad stew polluted by American influences.

And more than that, many US film makers site Seven Samarai as a great influence upon their works. It kind of came full circle.

So, while rants not requiring proof is indeed my position (me being more interested in the groundings of the rant - who, when, where, and why), what I'm really saying is that whether or not a rant requires proof has a cultural dimension to it in itself. Thus being forced to provide proof for a rant of mine could make me feel further "invaded" by "America", however wrong I could be both about American and Austrian culture.

Asking for proof on a thesis is a rather scientific idea. It's not cultural.

The point of hippokrene's original post, I believe, is to discuss what she brought up. If you give her a free pass because it's a rant, then that basically undermines the point of the thread HK started. What's there to discuss then? So you kind of need to suspend that attitude like you suspend your disbelief while reading SFF in order to discuss it.

 

[Hereford Eye]

It kind of came full circle.

For example, The Magnificent Seven, one of the finest "western" movies ever made. But, then, that spawned the sequels and sequels became their own curse on the American cinema industry.

 

[KatG]

Yes, but there is actually still the issue of U.S. dominance of film and particularly the big budget action spectacular films. We can't say the 800 pound gorilla in the room isn't there and has no impact in cultural interactions, especially because the U.S. borrows so much from other cultures. But with the mix of international production companies and distribution firms, what is and isn't a U.S. film gets very blurry for the last fifteen years or so. And there is the question of whether the bulk of foreign films or the bulk of foreign suspense and SFF films are really Americanizing -- borrowing from, aping, etc. in large basic ways from what they were before, creating a U.S. tendency monoculture. That's the fear and it's built on the U.S. Hollywood industry being the 800 pound gorilla.

SFF written fiction is dealing with a whole other set of factors, so lumping the two together makes little sense to me. But is there really a set American heroic mold of action, a philosophy if you will, that is being absorbed into the gold standard for film? I don't think that's what's going on, but de Bodard perhaps might.

 

[Fung Koo]

10,002 posts.

Whoa.



I don't see how you wouldn't associate a culture and its values with its heroes. A hero embodies, typically, what is best about a culture. Not what is "good," necessarily -- the anti-hero is still a hero, but still embodies that aspect of what is best in a culture. Regardless, a hero goes hand-in-hand with the culture that produces it.

If we're allowing that American media dominance is indeed a fact, then does it not follow that the American media that is dominating also is exporting, and therefore dominating with its particular brands of heroes?

 

[KatG]

10,002 posts.

Whoa.

Oh I missed it. Ah well. It doesn't really count with the long time mods because about half our posts are administrative. So we're going beyond de Bodard's piece here, and just shooting the breeze?

I don't see how you wouldn't associate a culture and its values with its heroes.

I don't see why you would do that. Culture being present, yes; stories about heroes cut across cultures but particular heroes are draped in the culture they come from, especially folk heroes not concocted by any clear author -- Paul Bunyan as American frontier woodsman, Robin Hood, etc., but they don't necessarily encapsulate the values of the culture, or even the values of a culture at a given time. They can include some of the values of some of the culture, they can reflect on certain issues, satirize them, refute them, etc., but it seems rather facile to me to claim that hero stories in particular encapsulate the values of a country's culture. The concept of the hero is someone who rises to the occasion in a crisis circumstance, small or large. Again, most stories from all cultures are hero stories and there is usually a wide range of types produced from every source, as we've discussed before.

The countries are large, they contain a mix of cultures and international influences. The stories are written by one person from many different backgrounds in the case of written stories and again about fifty different people for a film and these days very seldom are all fifty of them of the same culture/country. Books are not embraced by whole cultures and movies very rarely get a large segment. Political oppression and censure effect how stories get out into the world, but that's not all of a country's values, etc.

As authors explain to us again and again, the decisions they make in their work often has to do with very mundane issues and not with making reflections of culture. We can explore those ideas anyway, even if the author did not deliberately intend them, as part of our cultural reaction to the work (which itself is part of culture,) but there will be many such reactions to look at. It's not the straight line that keeps being slapped on.

A hero embodies, typically, what is best about a culture.

Again, I'd have to disagree.

Not what is "good," necessarily -- the anti-hero is still a hero, but still embodies that aspect of what is best in a culture.

It depends on the type of anti-hero. An anti-hero is a protagonist who lacks basic qualities that generate heroism. An anti-hero may become a hero through seeking redemption, changing his values, and may succeed or fail at it. An anti-hero may not change his values, and yet still this ends up helping others in a positive way because of temporary shared goals. Or an anti-hero may not change his values and wreak destruction. By putting anti-heroes and heroes together and saying that the full gamut all encapsulates the culture's values and mindset, no difference to the orientations, you're basically talking about protagonists, not heroes. That's an even harder proposition to track than just heroes, who are not all of one type either.

Regardless, a hero goes hand-in-hand with the culture that produces it.

Not really, as we borrow each other's heroes and anti-heroes, make stories for each other's cultures and the basic components are pretty universal. We will culturalize stories so you can look at things, but saying that X encapsulates America's values misses many layers in a story, it seems to me, and requires, again, the jettisoning of a lot of data. I can say that the Disney aesthetic is there in many stories and approaches of U.S. artworks and at various times, I can say that I think it's a distinctive style that many American artists adopted and played with, and why culturally it was shaped and how it's interacted with other cultures. But to say that the Disney aesthetic encapsulates America's values is an entirely different thing and way, way too inaccurate an idea for me to accept. It's a caricature of Americans -- or Germans, French, South Afrikaners, etc.

If we're allowing that American media dominance is indeed a fact, then does it not follow that the American media that is dominating also is exporting, and therefore dominating with its particular brands of heroes?

Again, the notion there is that American is exporting a distinctive monoculture with set brands of heroes and that you have successfully defined those brands and done so across multiple mediums, from action comedies to gangster films, kid films to slasher films, written SFF to television sitcoms as a clear, repeated pattern that is more frequent in the U.S. not just because of its size and business role in various markets, but because of its cultural value unifiers, also supposedly clearly defined as communal psyche, and the desires of American audiences, and further that the pattern is not nearly as frequent in other cultures but is becoming more so as those storytellers seek to copy the American pattern, a trend at some particular point in time never really defined. This is an enormous cultural claim. And that pattern idea simply becomes like a horoscope -- you can read anything you want into it because it is basic character concepts.

Where we are more likely to see more measurable cultural influences and interaction -- not domination -- is in style, not the more general theme, as themes and plot structures attached to them are pretty basic and universal. In written works, use of language is very cultural -- word choice, sentence structure -- and that is something that you can track over time and see if it's influencing. In film and to some extent t.v., it's camera technique, film editing, lighting and visual imagery, and you have a lot of cross-going there, but there are trends of tricks that crop up in films. Dialogue -- language use style again -- is a factor; American humor does not always translate well abroad whereas British humor is very familiar to Americans. And there are cultural factors like gender and racial roles -- and those can have big impacts over time. In comics, visual art styles and framing are big things.

But all the types of heroes and anti-heroes are repeated so often all over the world that saying Americans like Hercules kick ass and the rest of the world likes intellectual strategic Theseus is to me not really accurate. It does not reflect the art being produced, nor the interactions that are going on. And saying that there is no difference between heroes and anti-heroes on this particular issue of character behavior I just don't think works.

 

[Fung Koo]

particular heroes are draped in the culture they come from, especially folk heroes not concocted by any clear author

And following from this very good point, I would assert that those "real" folk heroes within a culture define the basic circumstances of heroism for later productions of fictional heroes. Cultural mythology being what it is -- storytelling -- the two are pretty much the same thing.

The concept of the hero is someone who rises to the occasion in a crisis circumstance, small or large.

Correct -- and the culture defines a) the qualities a person needs to become the hero, and b) the kinds of circumstances that may require a hero.

And in the case of a capitalized market for fiction, the hero is often someone who c) embodies the sensibilities of the consumer who will determine commercial success.

I've never said heroes aren't varied. I've only said some are more common than others in a particular culture's offerings.

...about fifty different people for a film and these days very seldom are all fifty of them of the same culture/country.

See c) above. The film & television industry in particular, with its emphasis on test audiences and focus groups, very specifically tailor many of their works to what the audience will accept. And audience tolerances are what define a show that gets a good Nielsen rating and one that doesn't, and what defines box office success or not, all versus critical success.

Look at the changes to Matheson's I Am Legend for the I Am Will Smith version. It's a total reversal, in the end, and an outright alteration of the hero model to a more audience-acceptable one. The common line for such changes typically has something to do with the "sensibilities" of the modern audience -- which is to say, in this case, the palatability of the hero. Neville goes from having the revelation in the novel that he, the hero, has become the monster, to the film's noble saviour of humanity operating with the Hand of God.

In fact even with the changes, in this case the original film ending had to be altered further because the audience virulently reacted against the humanization of the zombies -- so that bit was stripped, and they were returned to a safely dehumanized threat.

Which brings me again to Starship Troopers, which likewise failed because the otherwise Ra! Ra! Ra! uber-American characters are shown to ultimately turn into Nazi's who shove probes into the vaginal faces of the now-humanized enemy -- "It's afraid!" cries Doogie Howser. Audiences couldn't take it -- though they blame all sorts of other foibles of the film, the two greatest controversies that arose from the film were a) the mixed-gender shower scene (offending the audience's sense of propriety) and b) the film's conclusion which turns the heroes in Nazis.

Group writing practices may indicate a variety of intellects that go into generating the story content, but that process is importantly product-based for a capital market usually within a specific culture. That's why dudes like Roland Emmerich can make some of the most blatantly Americana-style films (like Independence Day) and find such success in doing so. These films are carefully tailored to the audience's cultural expectations. As such, it's the audience and cultural reactions that tell the real story. That's why I Am Legend was in the top 10 highest grossing films in its year, and why Independence Day is bafflingly one of the top grossing films of all time.

It's not simply about story value, but about cultural palatability. Who is doing the writing often matters less than who it is being written for.

Books are not embraced by whole cultures and movies very rarely get a large segment.

Yet when they do, they tell us something. And we know pretty well which ones do. Check out this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films#Highest-grossing_films_by_year

Over the past 95-odd years, the majority of the most successful films in each year are classically American hero-type stories (and I'm even including Canadian James Cameron in that pile). And plenty of Disney.

We can explore those ideas anyway, even if the author did not deliberately intend them, as part of our cultural reaction to the work (which itself is part of culture,) but there will be many such reactions to look at. It's not the straight line that keeps being slapped on.

So here is the nail to be hit on the head: when enough people see something that looks like a straight line, is it there or not?

Again, the notion there is that American is exporting a distinctive monoculture

No one is saying monoculture. That's how you're reading/reacting to what she had to say, and I don't think that's an accurate description of what she is saying. She pointed out certain tropes -- tropes: as in, a use of something not in its exact literal meaning -- that she feels are particularly American. She didn't say "this is all that America does," but rather that it does it a lot in a peculiar way, and that others in the world are more or less required to do the same thing in order to compete with the American media juggernaut.

Basically, she's against the implications of conformity that go along with "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

 

[Laer Carroll]

Ah, yes, the weak-minded French, who are being brainwashed and made-over by the King Kong of American films.

Funny how I somehow missed this phenomenon in all the years I've watched and loved French films. Of course, the French have much smaller budgets with which to make their films. But are car chases and fire-fights really all that expensive if you use ingenuity in shooting and editing the films? Apparently not, from the French action films I've seen. (Check out one of the latest which is widely available in the US - The Transporter.)

But it seems French film-makers could have at least stolen American heroic stereotypes and re-used them in their stories of solving problems of (say) family interactions, or making one's way in the world after finishing college. Or dealing with stolen water-rights in a French village (a la Manon of the Springs).

Turning to literature, specifically SFFH, a massive source of information is the two volume French Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Pulp Fiction by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier. It is summarized on Wikipedia.

According to this source, the cultural influences on SFFH between the two countries was first from France to America, starting as far back as the 17th century. This includes stories of aliens and space exploration, such a big subject in today's SFFH American films. The influences have gone back and forth in several waves to the present day.

For a more now-focused view of French SFFH there's a very readable short survey by Jean-Claude Dunyach. It clearly shows the unique character of SFFH lit, one clearly not dominated by American SFFH films and fiction.

_________________________________________________​

The problem with a lot of the discussion of national culture is that most of it throws around easy generalities and depends on vast interlocking edifices of reasoning. But perhaps that's almost dictated by the complexities of the subject.

Any national culture is a huge, richly complex tapestry. It has bright primary colors and subtle blends, wide swatches and delicate filigree. It has a long history and (we hope) a long future ahead of it. Almost any generality about any culture has plenty of exceptions and variations.

The problem I had with de Bodard's commentary was that it was aimed at such a wide target. I would have been happier with her if she had instead said something more like "Here are SOME American stereotypes and themes I find especially irritating". I might even have enthusiastically jumped on some of them. Instead she fired a shotgun. And shotguns require more not less skill in their use than a rifle.