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Gun control and the USA's tragic lack of any culture worth speaking of.

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I often think about American culture, in that its real tangible cultural strengths are how it's developed media like music and movies. Even though slavery was really really awful, it brought a conflicting African culture for things like music. Pretty much every single form of popular music we have was invented or 95% influenced by black people. White America will still take credit for the nation for our advances in musical culture, but it's really mostly just the black people that make innovations in that regard. Looking at things like jazz and rock 'n roll, white America's always tried to prude-ify whatever abrasive, crazy thing that's popular at the time. I retain that music that say, objectifies women, is a step backwards, and a lot of home producers (especially here in the St. Louis area) crank out generic, underproduced, uninteresting music, but I think that's more that the accessibility of music production has saturated the market with a lot of average stuff. Soulja Boy, for instance, used a probably-pirated copy of FruityLoops to make his one-hit wonder song, and pretty much escalated in popularity because of a dance (Gangnam Style...) that doesn't have anything to do with how good the music is.

 

For things like dubstep, for instance, yeah, it's got a really really douchey culture, though there's nothing inherently douchey about the music. But I have to think, wasn't this always the case for the hip new offensive music genre on the block? We have kids who exclusively listen to dubstep because they think they're hardcore, but there were people who dedicated their lives to jazz and rock and techno and hip-hop and classical music. We judge this kind of culture based on its icons, the people who supposedly made them great. In America, we have this consumerist, entitled culture, where we'll pirate music and not find anything wrong with downplaying its monetary worth. "I wouldn't pay money for this", "The person who made this thing should kill themselves".

 

Although I have to look at the context of our own culture from a long-term lens, though I have to consider that I might be making the same close-minded judgments of the past generations, I've made up my mind that America is really screwing over its popular musical culture. Since so many people aren't buying music, they just pour money onto whoever can become the biggest idol. Whoever, statistically, will make them the most money. Whoever can represent a culture that normal people can't have: a rich, hedonistic, self-centered and trendy rock star. We've had the music business for a long time, but I think it's the first time that the popular music business almost exclusively holds the power to shape itself. Muffin mentioned to me that the Youtube Music Awards only nominated well-known people. I'd call it a weird coincidence that all of the most popular people at the time are also all the people best-suited for the awards.

 

Movies have a long history in American culture too. I think if there's anything we hold a sort of culture monopoly on, it's film. Film is really universal, and American films in particular are the biggest productions in the world, watched by more people than any other nation's culture. So I think our cultural strength lies in our ideas, what we can communicate. That's the core of the American culture, that we express freely. Without all the cynicism, the basic idea is that we're a nation that always does what it wants. We have hiccups and bumps and temporary bouts of insanity, but the scrappy underdog ends up doing what it thinks is right, even if it's different, even if the people in charge don't want to hear it, even if the enemy is its own population. We've taken ideas that are about asserting our own ideas, and that's what we've defined ourselves on. Art, law, business, politics. For better or worse, the ideas of the minority that become more widespread, whether or not they're ethical or end up being right, are what we're founded on.

 

We take personal offense to differing opinions, because of the pride we have that our ideas define us, that we are only as right as what we believe, and it's much harder to change your beliefs, and thusly, yourself, than it is to let go of your beliefs, so we either win or we don't get anywhere. Sometimes this is for the best, and sometimes it's for the worst. But we always believe that our net progression is positive, and we always push our own insanity on other people hoping it'll work out, that the systems in play will become improved. So rather than what we've done, it's how we've done it. There are small revolutions all over the country, because we're taught never to be satisfied with what we have.

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Posted

I've made up my mind that America is really screwing over its popular musical culture.

Keyword is "popular".

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Posted

That is the kind of post I was hoping for (@Sahaqiel) <:

This thread is primarily a joke thread, but the joke-rant is taken from exaggerated ideas I legitimately came up with, when purposefully ignoring reason and letting my ignorance loose in the name of Jokes. It was half serious in that I had come up with these ideas, but jokey in that I would never actually believe these things if I thought about them to any proper depth. But yeah, I'm glad it was put with enough discernible sincerity that it incited a thought-out response.

 

I am a little more informed.

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To be honest, I'm not (and never will be) "proud" to be an American, and I've always felt uncomfortable pledging allegiance to a freaking flag.

 

There's not a country on earth that I can call my home, though. I pledge allegiance to a country without borders and politicians. 

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Keyword is "popular".

 

I deliberately used that word, yeah. I understand the difference between a culture's popular and its fringe musics, since I also belong to a niche group. I still think popular music influences an overall musical culture just as much as its underground. One just tends to come before another.

 

@Teto, yeah, I wanted to elaborate more on the cultural icons thing. Like part of the reason we think dubstep is douchey is that our largest dubstep icon is Skrillex (who I don't really mind anyway) and he does this thing called brostep, which sounds really douchey, and to the veteran dubstep crowd, his stuff sounds really douchey. I actually had a long conversation with a guy who had been deep into German techno from living in Germany, that had actually watched dubstep evolve to where it is now from the UK, and he gave me a pretty interesting talk about it, said it's become really dumbed down.

 

For the US, we have icons like Andrew Jackson, and he was the embodiment of doing what you want, who would defend his honor, his ideas, to the literal death, enacting duels and generally not caring about the outcome or how people would look at him. His confrontational, irrational, and aggressive attitude is praised in our culture. We think that guy was awesome. Teddy Roosevelt said "Speak softly and carry a big stick"-- we're taught that specific quote in history books. It's called Big Stick Ideology. We think that guy was awesome. We have more respect for patriotic and violent icons in our history than we do the peaceful ones. The Vietnam War was entirely a war about ideas, and since we lost, no one ever talks about it. I don't ever remember being taught about it in depth in history class. But we also praise people like Martin Luther King Jr., who died defending his ideas, someone who fiercely knew in his heart what was morally right.

 

@Chase, yeah, pledging allegiance is pretty much indoctrination. We have to do it every morning in school all the way until college. We're required to. It's dumb to be proud of where you were born as a matter of complete and unavoidable chance, and it's unhealthy for human progression to divide everything--particularly people--into imaginary boundaries. But we do it, because it's easier for the human brain to think in categories. We still have too many differences to sort out.

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The irony is that Skrillex is actually just a big dork.

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Yeah, and I don't even think his stuff is really that bad.

 

But like I said, popular music is primarily about marketing at the moment.

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Yeah, and I don't even think his stuff is really that bad.

 

But like I said, popular music is primarily about marketing at the moment.

 

An interesting documentary that BBC did was about these two Scottish rappers from Dundee who tried to get signed, but the folks in London just took the fact they were Scottish and laughed in their faces. So in their irritation with the fact that being Scottish meant that they would never be taken seriously, they made up alter egos as Californians, built characters and backstories and lived as their characters, and eventually conned their way into a deal with Sony, because Californian dude rappers is much more appealing and easier to market than a couple Scottish dudes. I don't know what happened after, but evidently the game was up one way or another. They had made it onto MTV and everything. Pros.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silibil_N'_Brains

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Posted (edited)

@Chase, I am from Texas and the US. Both of those places are usually associated with being proud of where you're from. I always thought that I wasn't proud of either of those places. But after going to a few places in Europe, I found that maybe I did have something that resembled pride after all. Maybe not pride, but I definitely felt something. I mean I felt like I lacked solidarity or something. I read on a cracked article that it's kind of a phenomenon that when abroad, anyone you meet from your home country instantly feels like your friend. It's weird. I kind of felt that with a guy from Arkansas who was visiting Edinburgh. I didn't know why I felt it.

I never felt like I identified with a group, organization or state or anything. So it was weird to realize that I did on some level. I would have written that off as stupid before traveling abroad, and I still kind of want to, but I can't deny that for some illogical reason I felt comfort with things that were American. I ate more KFC and McDonald's over there than I ever have in the US.

For the record, all kind of pride is dumb, IMO. Your location on a map is a dice-roll at birth. So being proud of dice-rolls is stupid to me, whether that's sexual orientation, nationality or whatever. I can kind of understand being proud of like a career or a school if you earned your way into them. I don't know what pride is for, though, besides embarrassing yourself

Edited by °ᵕ° (see edit history)
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I think that it has just been conditioned in us for so long that we can't help but feel after effects, even after taking the blinders off. You probably also just felt some sort of comfort in meeting someone from a place close to yours. You both identify with each other more than you do with the people abroad, because your experiences in life were relatively the same compared to everyone else you were meeting.

 

I immediately identify and feel closer to someone who likes Zelda, but it doesn't mean I'm proud of the fact I like Zelda. It's just nice and comforting to know that someone shares an interest that I do. But, the longer and more in-depth you talk about Zelda, the more you'll realize how different your interests are, even over the same subject. 

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I feel the same way about Zelda and people who like Zelda

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There's not a country on earth that I can call my home, though. I pledge allegiance to a country without borders and politicians.

God bless the Moon

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