blamebrampton | A case in point ...

A case in point ...

So, there we were, having a chat on a friend's LJ about the differences between the US and the UK for purposes of a self-Britpicking list, with participants from both sides of the pond and beyond and frequent diversions into baiting and comedy from all sides, and apparently it has become a source of Flocked Drama.

Consider the argument very carefully: At least one American is very upset that British people prefer to be depicted in accurate ways.

And if you can't see why that's a bit dodgy, replace the word British with any other nationality.

I don't want to overstate the case, because really, it doesn't culturally oppress us the way that some other cultures have been oppressed by this sort of thing, since we don't deeply care and we had an Empire first. And while the original source of the complaint is a preference, it's certainly not a sine qua non, and we read heaps of stuff that gets us wrong, and some of it is good and some is crap, and really, at the end of the day we still pronounce and spell aluminium in ways that are scientifically logical, which in itself is enough. But, honestly ...

Interestingly, one of my points of difference was a tendency to soap-opera-like over-reactions in fiction. Clearly I drew the line too narrowly.

AND I left off the fact that it the entire United States has been the subject of mass-brainwashing to accept caffeinated flavoured beverages as coffee. Though I see Starbucks has dropped the word from their logo, truth in advertising at last!

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Fascinating, and will still make people cry!

I really find smoking a backbutton issue for me, outside of wether it's on one side of the cultural divide or not. I think it's used as a shorthand for some sort of cool sophistication, and I don't see any of the HP characters as having that. They're not that glossy.

And I don't like smoking.

All my fault, really.

I’m sorry, I’ll read that again: the note handed in by a Dr Kiosk in fact reads, ‘We are all guilty!’ (bar, of course, the 25-stone, iron-watch-chained, crag-visaged, grim-booted Alderman Foodbotham).

I suppose that if one person in ten within fandom had the faintest glimmer who in buggery I am, I should be regarded as the Dire Exemplar of those who Insist Sternly Upon Brit-picking (there are advantages to being obscure, it appears). The characterisation, if made, were no less unfair for its being pardonable, but, there you are.

I don’t, actually, give a tuppenny dam about Britpicking as a matter of Respect for the Culture or as a Defence Against Yank Cultural Hegemony, and I have read with pleasure stories that were otherwise good enough to withstand a basic failure to Pick Brit. I do think, however, that it’s a matter of Respect for One’s Craft and for the Canon: if you, O Writer, cannot be arsed to make a decent effort towards getting your characters and their canon right, I cannot be arsed to read you.

Howsoddingever, I can to some extent see a justification for the raised hackles of American Writers – why is why I have done my bit towards making Britpicking a crowd-sourced effort (well, that and the Secret Orders I am charged with by Hannan, Carswell, Redwood, and the 1922 Committee). The problem of course is that so many of those who pronounce upon these matters – and no, I don’t mean anyone here present – are those who, wherever they live and move and have their being, mentally inhabit, and have their mental horizons firmly bounded by, Islington and Notting Hill. They are the sort who speak of Britain and the British in a way that clearly and reflexively excludes the Scots, the Welsh, the Norns, most Jews, most Asians of whatever background, non-Tablet RCs, serious Chapel-goers, Black Britons, anyone rural, any Tory who’s not so Wet you could shoot snipe over him, Orange Bookers, and Mrs Gillian Duffy of Rochdale. And they do tend rather to lecture foreigners in a discernibly de haute en bas manner. Worse still, their pronouncements, so far as I’ve seen, are greeted with cringing gratitude and ritual self-abasement by the sort of American who spends her life barracking (or Baracking) her own country and apologising for its existence (just as the upper-middles of Islington and Notting Hill go about atoning for Britain). I tend to despise any subject or citizen of a civilised nation – the Anglosphere, at bottom – who creeps and crawls in that fashion, and I’m not surprised that the coincidence of London chattering-class condescension and culturally-cringing fellow-countrymen exasperates any self-respecting American, although it’s a pity that this leads to their rejecting the concept of Britpicking because some of its advocates and practitioners are oiks, poons, and yoghurt-knitting Grauniad-istas.

But, then, one wants never to trust anyone who thinks Resisting Right-Deviationism more important than the Ashes.

I think I got distracted by the undies from properly replying to your post. I think you're right -- I actually am able to generalize more about the U.S. than other places, although my weather class in college taught me that England and Seattle have precisely the same climate (continental marine) and I suspect that I would really like England for climate. As to sport... I must confess that your posting on cricket excitement just sails over my head. I've wanted to understand cricket since Lord Peter Wimsey did so well with it in Murder Must Advertise. I don't suppose you know a site the equivalent of "Cricket for Dummies"?

I'm fascinated by your "soap opera" claim. I'm ready to believe it, but would add that it actually came about by the first nighttime soap (which I think was Dallas) which became a mad hit. The corporate machine saw gold -- and an acquisition of a larger female audience -- and deliberately set out to make the television equivalent of "date movies." Some of the best (like Numb3rs) take the good from soaps, which is relationship-building, seldom seen in nighttime tv till then except for male bonding (and yay for Strk and Starsky and Hutch, and so on, premium slash material).

The bad... well, I think the soaps led to reality tv, which is truly the worst thing ever to hit the airwaves. Have your read Eng's "Watching Dallas" or Jane Feuer's work? Or your "empire's" best export imnsho, British Cultural Studies (starting in the Birmingham school)? I think you'd enjoy them...Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams are the originating names, and now there are lots of people who spend their lives watching horrific tv and talking about its social consequences.

Putting in my $0.02's worth, here in Germany we have something called "coffee cream" that has anything between 8 and 16% fat content. Full milk has 3.5/3.8%, full cream 28 - 32% fat content.

At a restaurant, you'd get this "coffee cream" for both tea and coffee; Starbucks here uses either full or semi-skim (1.5%) milk, IIRC. (Nobody would even THINK of offering or asking for anything below that; skim milk (usually 0.3%) has become even rare in the shops.) In private homes, it varies -- pretty much anything goes from milk over condensed milk to full cream.

"Who are these people..." Ah, good question. I have known quite a few. There are enclaves even in Seattle, and many in the rural areas and small towns of Washington, but they're pretty marginal in large cities.

The Bible Belt however has been taken out a few more notches. Evangelicals have learned not to say "Catholics and Christians" in public, but that this is a common phrase will show just how... daunting discussion can be. Because I was active in the peace movement much of my life, I had a positive attitude toward Christians, who tended to make up a large part of peace and pacifist movements and are willing to go to jail for them.

Then I moved to Iowa, and found that I'd been cloistered.Where fundamentalist Christians are in the majority, they're more like Atwood's Handmaid's Tale and a lot less like MLK (who was also an evangelical). It's the second strain: our history is on one side a tale of poor but honest farmers who took their guns and defended their land; on t'other one of waves of immigrants enriching the cities in every way. That struggle exists beneath every surface conflict to this day: Frontier or City of Gold?

Meaning no harm, as I'm not at all versed on this except for Brammer's post (and truthfully I haven't read all of the comments here), but I feel the need to interject that I, personally, defriended hp_britglish because I was tired of the contradictions and the generally snotty-ness that often occurred, largely between UK folks.

The last straw for me was a conversation regarding icing vs. frosting that degraded into the ridiculous. Two or three Brits. It was ugly and stupid.

All I'm saying is that just like any place, one thing can be perfectly true say, in the north, and completely wrong in the south, or city vs. farm country. Research is great and I certainly wouldn't say don't do it, but a person could put weeks of research into something and still completely miss. Especially if they rely on hp_britglish, which can be rather UN-helpful at times.

Oh yeah, I remember the icing vs frosting kerfuffle. That was pretty funny -- at least to me; I didn't think it got particularly ugly, but yeah, it was stupid.

I don't follow that comm for the members' sparkling personalities, though, but for the information I can obtain from the posts and comments. Five contradictory replies based on regional differences is also information, namely that there is no One Right British Way to a thing (and that's certainly true about a lot of things, not just in the UK). If a thing is true in the north (but is true in the south) and my fic is set in the south, well, I won't use the north person's advice. It doesn't make it incorrect advice, just useless for my purposes. :)

I think it's very sad that the American publishing industry assumes that its market can't deal with exposure to alternative English usage and all the wonderful little details that ground a narrative in its locality. It denies people the opportunity to discover things about other cultures. I was appalled when I first heard about the Harry Potter books. I may be naive, but I don't know of anywhere else that demands this.

We can only hope that those people (like yourself, bless you) who are open to exploring the differences will start to purchase english and australian books from overseas (I know I buy all my uk books directly from the uk, because quite often the US edition is released here and I refuse to buy them). And spread the word to friends, so that maybe, one day, you'll have access to works in their original form. :)

Someday I'm going to do (another) lj post on this. I read a fic everyone was raving about, and it had both an abusive relationship presented as romantic AND everyone "cool" smoked like a chimney.

No one over 21 or so actually respects smokers, former smokers least of all. To me, it's a signal that the person writing is almost certainly immature. I don't backbutton many fics, because I'm anal retentive that way, and also I suppose because the occasional adrenaline rush combined with swearing is good for my soul.

I'd love it if people came to visit me in public housing and saw all the desperate smokers in wheelchairs sitting outside the building, many with oxygen tanks. They're mostly over 65, and obviouslyl not exactly wealthy. Cool? Hah.

Hmm. Well possibly my memory of it being ugly was influenced by my general opinion about what it turned into, and that it happened at all.

I think research is a fine thing. I've just personally found hp_britglish mostly unhelpful and generally irksome and I wouldn't want it to be an author's only resource, but yes if nothing else, at least go there to check things out if you're uncertain.

I guess I don't think of shared history as culture. The British and US have a significant shared history over the past 200+ years (on both sides). I also don't think of socio-economics as culture either. I would definitely agree that socio-economics have significant influences on peoples lifestyles and that proffessionals with solid salaries in London share a lot in common with similar professionals in New York, and probably metropolitan areas all over the world.

I think of culture as the food we eat, holidays we celebrate and the ways in which we celebrate them, the clothes we wear, activities we participate in, art, music, festivals, etc. Sure, political views and attitudes as well do creep in there.

Because of the huge multicultural and immigrant atmosphere in various regions of the US, there vast differences from state to state and region to region. The food, vernacular, sports that are popular, entertainment that is popular, music, popular art, decor, ways in which people celebrate holidays are extremely different in various regions. Attitudes towards sex, religion, and yes, politics, vary enormously region to region and state to state. (Certainly they vary person to person, but we're talking about trends and what's popular - I get that)

I find myself wondering if what you're seeing in the 'deflowering' motif is an aftefact of author age and not American vs. British culture. Or maybe too many Jane Austen Novels. (oh wait ;P) Just a thought.

edited to add what I meant write to tie into your point: Yes, I think there is commonality between Europeans just as there is commonality between Americans. The culture of various regions and/or states more akin to the culture of distinctive European country. I see what you might call American culture more akin to European culture in that there are some common threads but overall I don't see it as a distinctive culture (and you do, that's fine) but more of different cultures and looking at the commonality, but the variances in being rather great (food, customs, celebrations, music, art, etc.).

Edited 2011-01-09 01:14 (UTC)

In Switzerland Milk is 3.5% fat, normal runny cream is 35%. Gruyere cream is the "creme de la creme" and I think is about 40%.

woo, it's heating up in here!

i've read through the bulk of the comments and, embarrassingly, my first reaction centers on myself (i should just go ahead and declare solipsism a religion): i have worked/lived for decent chunks of time on three continents (north america, europe and australia) and have been a coffee drinker (who takes milk) since i was 16, but i never, ever noticed differences in the milk! i am a diehard foodie and yet my apparently non-discriminating palate never noticed a darn thing. though, hopefully in my defense, i always bought whatever had the least fat, so maybe that explains it...

all this interesting cultural debate and all i can think is: different milk?! o.O

on a more serious note, it's quite difficult to engage "as an american" as against "a british person" on the subject of cultural difference (or as any person of one culture as against a person of another - but, again, i'm speaking from my perspective only). there is no monolithic claim to american identity or an american way of being, imo. i imagine the same holds true for brits. so the "american-ness" i'd be hailing in such a discussion pertains solely to me and my experiences of the world around me (which i necessarily interpret through a subjective lens) in contrast to the subjective british-ness of the person with whom i'm engaging. each of us is speaking of generalities when dealing with particularities. it's a bit of an epistemological crap shoot.

what's more, it strikes me that as regional differences in the us can be quite polarizing, it might be the case that i share more in common with a particular british person in terms of religiosity, sense of humor, education, political ideology etc than with someone from the us deep south (being a northeasterner through and through). as pie rightly pointed out, all three of us may still be more alike than not as compared to someone from a non-western culture. so, yeah. dealing in generalities is necessarily messy, limited and limiting business.

to come full circle and end on another me-centric, non-serious note, i am grateful to this debate for allowing me to contemplate all things sleepwear. it's given me the chance to mentally re-visit all those i've shared a bed with to search for patterns. plus, i now know some lovely things about pingrid and scarves, lol.

Edited 2011-01-09 01:36 (UTC)

Well, you can get "crème double" here (ca. 40% fat, very custard-like consistency, but not quite as firm as the French product of the same name) -- and it's COMPLETELY different from the UK's double cream.

I will say something about public healthcare and distract them all away from you!

Well, it's a real beverage ;-)

If you could describe any good dreams in detail, that would be lovely!

I do know that, my point was that there is a trend in American writing to works that are overly influenced by the tropes of soap opera.

As examples, Lost in Translation: Not Influenced -- writing based on characters and situations that come about organically, people think about their actions at length, then rethink, minimal change occurs, but that change resonates in the audience because it seems real.

Law and Order: Highly influenced -- plot searches for the bigger shock and bigger twist to a point where it becomes almost pornographic, highly unlikely chances are commonplace, no one notices when an actor who previously played character X comes back as character Y (that one you can sort of look past because people deserve work), melodrama rather than naturalism being the model. I have to say that I haven't watched enough episodes of L&O anything to know whether it picks up on the trope of misunderstandings and half-overheard things being the basis for significant disasters, but I would not be shocked if it did. Change does not really resonate in the viewer because you are fairly sure it will not be lasting and the same disasters will be back next week.

Does that make more sense? Greys Anatomy would have probably been an even better example for the second, but I am not at all convinced it's not an actual soap, despite its claims to be an adult drama. kestrelsparhawk said something very clever above, which was that soap opera may also been a strong influence on the way people react on reality TV, because that is what they are used to from people on TV. It has reached the point where if I was flicking past Survivor, or even Ellen or Oprah, and saw someone reacting with quiet modesty, I would be surprised ...

(edited because I forgot to actually write a sentence, oops!)

Edited 2011-01-09 04:36 (UTC)

I think that my reply to Rickey is what you're looking for, which I will C&P to save you time looking. I begin by answering her comment that defined an actual American soap opera:

I do know that, my point was that there is a trend in American writing to works that are overly influenced by the tropes of soap opera.

As examples, Lost in Translation: Not Influenced -- writing based on characters and situations that come about organically, people think about their actions at length, then rethink, minimal change occurs, but that change resonates in the audience because it seems real.

Law and Order: Highly influenced -- plot searches for the bigger shock and bigger twist to a point where it becomes almost pornographic, highly unlikely chances are commonplace, no one notices when an actor who previously played character X comes back as character Y (that one you can sort of look past because people deserve work), melodrama rather than naturalism being the model. I have to say that I haven't watched enough episodes of L&O anything to know whether it picks up on the trope of misunderstandings and half-overheard things being the basis for significant disasters, but I would not be shocked if it did. Change does not really resonate in the viewer because you are fairly sure it will not be lasting and the same disasters will be back next week.

Does that make more sense? Greys Anatomy would have probably been an even better example for the second, but I am not at all convinced it's not an actual soap, despite its claims to be an adult drama. kestrelsparhawk said something very clever above, which was that soap opera may also been a strong influence on the way people react on reality TV, because that is what they are used to from people on TV. It has reached the point where if I was flicking past Survivor, or even Ellen or Oprah, and saw someone reacting with quiet modesty, I would be surprised ...

I'm still horribly confused about your point. So what American writing are you talking about? Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Dean Koontz, John Grisham? (picks names off current NYtimes best sellers list) or are you specifically talking about fan fiction? Or talking about screenplays?

The night time dramas definitely evolved from day time soaps. The first big push was in the 80's w/Dallas and Dynasty then it morphed into the serial dramas like LA Law and hospital shows like ER. So yeah, it's serial tv. I don't watch it, but it's a guilty pleasure for a lot of folks. I don't watch too much tv, but tend to lean towards scifi and fantasy - but a lot of that stuff has that serial/episodic with seasonal running plot format also. Does serial TV have an effect on current American writing? I don't really see it in current American literature. Some longer fanfics do feel a bit more like serials to me than novels, but I think that's it's own genre and don't see it only w/American ff authors.

I'm talking about American writing as a whole. So if we are looking to the bestseller lists, I would definitely lump Twilight, Carol O'Connor and probably Jeffrey Deaver into the overly influenced camp. Charlaine Harris and John Grisham teeter on the edge, sometimes falling over, more often having enough irony and political subtext to stay clear of anything but a referential usage of the tropes. Tom Clancy is old-school American writing of the 1940s and Stephen King varies wildly depending on which book we're talking about. Haven't read enough Dean Koontz to say.

Serials are a different issue because they lead to a certain genre of writing, which grew out of 19th century publishing trends, so the TV model followed the writerly one, which has been around for so long as to be wholly entrenched in the way that we think about narrative in the English speaking world. This is not the same as the soap influence, which shares some elements with the late 19th century fashion for melodrama, but is distinct in enough ways to make it not just a repeat.

Oh, you make me laugh! Yes, I do think it is all but impossible to say that Americans do X, British people do Y and be 100% right, because both countries are just too diverse. I think it is possible to say that American writing has problems with X tropes, which is what I was saying, and also to pull some 'in Britain, we ...' differences out, which is what the original poster was going for.

anthimaeria is hosting a sleepwear poll for this very issue, do go over and add your 2c! http://anthimaeria.livejournal.com/212347.html

You were agreeing with Obama just the other day! On Julian Assange -- I remember it all clearly. I was going to say something but was so startled I lost the ability to speak for a short while.

Ironically, no one was calling for a pogrom on all un-Britpicked fics. Though I did state my absolute displeasure of some of the worst tropes of current American writing -- thinking more of the RL variety than fanfic as it turns out. Clearly, it is all my fault for making the schoolboy error of assuming anyone who was outraged would seek to engage me in debate before making assumptions they knew what I meant. I've sent myself to detention and will be serving it answering many, many comments.

That is hilarious.

I am very sorry I was so cranky earlier, but that logical fallacy is one of my most hated things in the world, as it leads to all sorts of disastrous ways of thinking. Nevertheless, I was rude, and you did not deserve that at all. I apologise unreservedly for my failure in manners and hope that you won't hold it against me.

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A case in point ...

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All my fault, really.

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Religious mysteries

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Smoking

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PS -- sorry!