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To start off with I think we need to define some territory. Firstly, I was born in Australia, as were my parents, my grandparents, and their parents, and I’m proud of that and Australia is my home.  But, like most Australians, I’m also British – my relatives were from Scotland (on both sides), Yorkshire and Cornwall.  Scotland’s in my blood and comes out in lots of good ways (I can hold my drink, like the cold and know how to have a laugh) and bad ways (I’m tight with money and have a strong tendency towards stomach fat).  I also make a mean pasty.  Aside from this I’m also a flag waving socialist.  Put it down to too many Labor sub-branch meetings in my formative years and a penchant for Billy Bragg records.

Secondly, there are lots of things I like about The United States of America (hereafter referred to as America to save my wee fingers):

1. The Met
2. The New York Review of Books
3. Pavement and Bob Dylan

… are just a few. Thirdly, there are also lot of things I don’t like about America:

1. Many of the accents (yeah, I know, like I can talk).
2. When their governments are conservative they’re conservative.
3. Their lateness in joining the war (I get this one from my father).

…. are also a few.Fourth, I have had only two American friends in my life, but they were good friends.  One when I was living in Paris, and one when I was living in London, so on both occasions they were out of their natural habitat.  I have never been to America.

So there we have it.  That’s my cultural baggage.

I would also like to note when I talk about ‘America’ or ‘American’ here, I’m talking about the machine of government and industry.  Not you, not your dad, not your best friend, not the guy in the office you talk to over coffee.  Just like when we talk about Cambodia and the killing fields, or Australia and Indigenous health.
But now I’m going to talk about something totally separate from American, or Australia.  The Euro (stick with me here).  I know that travelling through Europe is now easier with a common currency and trade is easier and all is well and happy with the world.

I hate the Euro. Really, really hate it.

And despite the fact I know it’s unhealthy to hate a currency, I have total faith in my reasons.  For me, as the tourist, the joy of looking at the new money, and getting the feel of it, ordering my pizza with lira, my escargot with francs and tapas with pesos is gone.  But I really do believe there will be a flow on effect for Europeans.  I bet if you ask a Brit, or a Chinese or an American or an Australian what’s on their 10 dollar/pound/yuan note – they can have a fairly good stab at it (ours is Banjo Paterson wearing a rather sterling hat).  When the Romans wanted to impose their rule on conquered nations one of the first things they did was mint a Caesar on the coins.  It imposed their reference points on the empire and removed something that everyone used every day that helped to define their collective identity.

So, when AFM asked me what I thought of American consumerism in Australia there was a lot to consider – and trust me I’ve written a million drafts of this.  But I think the Euro is a nice illustration.  I see large, multinationals trying to do to us what the Romans did to Gaul.  But instead of sesterces they’re using burgers, cola drinks and Muzak infused shopping centres.

Obviously not all multinationals are American, but I can see Australia changing.  What we eat, what we wear, how we amuse ourselves, what’s on the telly, the music we listen to etc etc – and America does seem to be the dominating influence.  Not surprising: it’s a big, powerful nation full of human beings and human beings are innately greedy.  Sell! Sell! Sell!  I believe strongly in the old adage about camels and needles.  Money is the route of all evil.  And American consumerism seems to put the accumulation of money above all else.

Then there’s our heath care and education systems, lordy help us if we go down the user-pays path there.  Our PM following the man who seems to be roundly considered by Americans to be the worst president ever into conflicts of dubious origin is not a positive indicator either.

But how do companies, any company, convince us to spend our hard earned cash on their particular gee-gaw or doobie-what’s-it.  As far as I can tell marketing seems to regularly focus on the fact that we’re not particularly good/cool/thin/attractive/successful if we don’t have their product.  To me, the might of America seems to be doing this to poor, dim-witted Australia.  The pimply, lanky kid in the corner, we’re being convinced our lifestyle, products and habits aren’t up to scratch.  Kids don’t want to go the chippy for Friday night dinners anymore.  Advertising has convinced them that McDonalds is more fun.  God knows it can’t be the food that’s the drawcard.  We have lots of things uniquely Australian and yet we’re passing them over for stuff from somewhere else.

And so Gaul becomes less Gaulish and the whole world is slowly becoming Roman.

And the only people we have to blame are ourselves.  Stand up for yourselves Australia. Don’t let that other guy convince you that our way is not good enough.  Stop being so lazy, and easily lead and look around you and recognise that what you have is worthwhile.  Not always perfect, but worthwhile.  I say the same thing to the residents of India, Ethiopia, Turkey and Peru.  Diversity is what makes the world wonderful, don’t let it be stamped out by a couple of NYC suits with mansions on the coast.  And when America falls (as it will, reference again the Caesars) don’t let the next guy do it either.

You’ll notice there are a lot of food references in here.  It’s tea time and I’m starving.  I also write a food blog so it’s quite ironic that I’m writing this now.  But anyway you’re all invited around to my place on Australia Day for BBQ snags, a slab of Coopers Pale, and a big fat pav for dessert.  No burgers allowed!

But as this post is now almost as long as an undergraduate tutorial paper I will end by saying that I saw an advertisement on the telly recently for cake mixture.  With new and improved ‘frosting’.  I rest my case.

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Well there you go. Americans? Australians? What do y’all think? Is America the Rome of the 21st Century?

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This live version of Pavement’s “Unfair” comes from a show in Missoula, Montana in 1997. Buy the studio album from whence it came – “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” -  from .

Image credits:

Australians

More Australians

Australia’s Interior

Aussie Food

But I’m pretty used to this kind of thing. As an American expatriate this is a common – and in this case, rather innocuous – type of exchange. My co-workers, colleagues, friends and random acquaintances often forget that I’m an American. I endeavor to be, with apologies to Graham Greene, a quiet American. Having made the decision to be a permanent expatriate – a migrant – I try hard to fit in to the culture that I’ve chosen. I don’t fit the caricature of the typical American that most of my colleagues have in their heads, so it’s easy for them to forget my citizenship and to express their true feelings about we Yanks in casual conversation.

A question I often get from my readers when describing these sometimes frustrating encounters is “Is that really what they think of us?” I always try to make people feel better. “No, only some of them. It’s not really that bad”, I soothe. The grim reality is that, in general, people in the countries which I have visited or lived  do not like Americans. There are exceptions – the occasional Americanophile, the folks that have lived in the States or met a number of American expats – but most of the rest of the Western world have quite strong feelings of antipathy toward us. The exchange I described at the beginning of this post is a mild one. The worst are when I’m faced with a strong-willed local and asked to justify American culture – one that I’m not really that happy with myself – or lectured at length about the wrongs perpetrated on the world by the U.S.A.

This is based in large part on our nation’s behavior in the last eight years. George Bush’s sledgehammer-as-diplomacy has alienated many of our allies. But it runs deeper than that. If you read the comments on my last post, a lot of non-Americans recoil at the spread of American culture and consumerism. This new brand of commercial imperialism has been more pervasive than Bush’s military incursions in the Middle East. The rest of the world is angry that there are probably only two or three countries in the world that lack a McDonalds, the fact that American chain stores have moved into Europe and Australia – cutting down local businesses in their wake. People in Perth, Manchester and Galway are disgusted that most of their television and movies now come with an American accent. Folks in Aberdeen and Adelaide are angry that American-style privitization of public services has gotten them more expensive and lower quality services.

Unfortunately it’s not just our political and economic policies. If you asked someone on the streets of York, Darwin or Christchurch what they thought of when they thought of an average American they would use words like fat, obnoxious, close-minded, high-maintenance, and – above all – ignorant. If you asked that same person how many Americans they knew, how many were in their close social circle, they would likely say zero to two. So where does this impression come from? TV, movies and tourists.

You see, we are doing ourselves a disservice. By exporting our crap television and our increasingly derivative movies, we are presenting an image of ourselves to the rest of the world that does not reflect reality. The bilge that we’re spewing into the world – and not just the environmental toxins – are a source of a lot of resentment from the rest of the world. Are Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Brittany Spears typical Americans? What about Bill O’Reilly, Neil Cavuto, Keith Olbermann and Ann Coulter? What about George Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin? Are any of these people like you or me? The tourist thing is a tricky one. I find a lot of my fellow Americans annoying when I run across them as tourists. There seems to be something in our psyche (the British are guilty of this as well) that demands that when visiting a foreign country it be as similar to our home as possible. What this means is that we get the reputation, fairly in my experience, of being loud, intractable, demanding and

But enough self-loathing. Here’s the thing, the thing that you (if you’re an American reading this blog) and I already know – we’re getting a bad rap. There are Americans that fit the stereotype – absolutely. I’ve met them. I’ve seen them in the Wal-Mart, yelling across the shop at their kids, waddling through the aisles filled with giant bags of potato chips in “No Spin Zone” or “These Colors Don’t Run” t-shirts, clinging desperately to their jiggling mounds of fat. You see them on the news – the media loves the extremes – you see them parodied in films and on the TV. But stereotypes are a dangerous thing. For example, if you based your opinion of Australians on what you’ve seen on films and TV you may think that Steve Irwin or Mick Dundee or The Sheepherders were typical Aussie blokes. Based on TV and movies, the streets of London would be populated with Mr. Beans, Edwinas and Pattys and Simon Cowells.

And this is what I find frustrating about living abroad – stereotypes. I’ve got as good a sense of humor as anyone, and if I’m talking to someone who has spent time in the States or has American friends, then I’m happy to play around with the stereotypes and throw them right back in their face. We used to have a great time in my lab in Oxford teasing each other about cultural stereotypes. With people from seven or eight different countries (depending on whether you consider Scotland a country) there was ample material to work with. But, when confronted with people that have never set foot in the United States, have never spent time with Americans yet have firm ideas about what we are like and who we are – that’s not in good fun. That is dealing with ignorance and ignorance is something for which I have very little tolerance, regardless of citizenship. I had a friend in Oxford who used to say that when you found something that you didn’t like in another person – “if you spot it, you got it”. In other words, we dislike in others what we dislike in ourselves. I think that this applies to this whole national psyche debate. Australians are getting fatter – blame the Americans pushing McDonalds down their throats. Brits are getting irrevocably into debt – blame the loose American-style credit regulations.

There is an old cliché about familiarity breeding contempt.  I think the converse is true here. Dr. O’C said it well in her comment on the last post – her experience in America gave her greater respect for Americans. My experience in Britain gave me greater respect for the wealth and depth of British culture. Meeting, working with and making friends with normal people from different countries has helped me transcend my personal stereotypes and prejudices about those nationalities. The only way to get past a stereotype or a prejudiced opinion is to get to know the people about whom you’ve formed a false opinion. That being the case, I’m like a frickin’ cultural ambassador for the U.S.A. – traveling the world showing just how mild-mannered, thoughtful, intelligent and modest Americans really are. I think that the State Department should consider giving me a stipend for spreading the truth about Americans – that we’re not all that different than anyone else – no better and certainly no worse.

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Image credits:

Typical American

Typical Aussie

Typical Brit

Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” is available from .