I Wonder How Much Longer the EU Will Last?

[Pyrrho]

I can also say, without any kind of precision, that when I watch British TV and films, although it is foreign, it is not at all like watching French or German or Spanish films.  Those go a whole other level of foreign.

I find that most interesting, since for me, british, French and German are on the same lines with a strong preference for british and French. US films and tv series on the other hand are rather alien to me, since they tend to transport moral or patriotic messages. We're talking about mainstream, syndicated shows of course. The british series - or the French for that matter - don't do that usually. The evildoer gets away occasionally, the government and authorities are often painted in a shady light, which doesn't happen nearly as often in (mainstream) American shows. Also you don't find these Gung Ho patriotism shows like Navy CIS or the former Miami franchise of CSI on any European channel. At least the ones I am aware of. Certainly not the british ones.

British films are more understandable than German, French, Spanish, or Italian films.  This has nothing to do with liking them more or less; it has to do with how alien the ideas are.  There is a strangeness to foreign films that makes them more difficult to comprehend.  A more extreme example is Japanese films, because the culture is even more alien.  (The alienness can make something more interesting, so sometimes, it is a good thing.  But it does make it harder to understand everything, and often while watching Japanese films, I feel as though I am missing out on what a Japanese person was thinking while making it, and what a typical Japanese person would think from seeing it.)

My guess is, if a proper survey were done, Americans generally would feel that British TV and movies are less alien than French, German, Spanish, and Italian films.  Not that one example is enough, but without telling her first why I was asking her the questions, I asked my wife, "apart from the language, which is more alien, English films or German films?"  After she said "German films," I repeated the question with French, Italian, and Spanish.  She said that all of them are more alien than English films.  It is not even a hard question to answer.  Perhaps we should start a new thread asking Americans about this, though it will not be meaningful for anyone who has not seen films from the relevant countries, and we also have the problem of the members of this site not being representative of people generally.  But I would be very surprised if the results were not fairly consistent with what I am saying.

Again, this has nothing to do with whether a film is good or not, or liked or not.  I can also add (though I have not asked my wife her opinion on this), that the alienness of French films is less today than it was in French films from the middle of the 20th century.  There seems to be more mingling of ideas from different cultures than in the past.


(As an aside, "Le dîner de cons" [known in the US as "The Dinner Game"] is a hilarious French film from 1998, which is modern enough to be less alien than some older French films.  I highly recommend it for a good laugh.)


As for the moralistic and patriotic twaddle that one finds in many American films, they are not all that way.  They probably stand out in your mind because annoyances are more noticeable than things that are not annoying.  I won't bother with saying more on that, as it does not matter for my claims that the US is very alien to Europe.

Also, many of the more recent films from Hollywood have pushed action to the forefront, largely because it means less has to be translated for foreign markets.  A car chase or an explosion requires no subtitles or explanation, and so such scenes are ready for export without any extra work.  It is dialog that must be translated, not action.  It is also easier to write the script, to say, "the car blows up" than to write decent dialog.

I've also visited both countries and feel much more at home in the UK than in the USA.

That is perfectly consistent with what I am saying.  I have certainly not said that the UK is more alien to the rest of Europe than the US is to the rest of Europe.  I am just saying that the US is more like the UK than the US is like any other country in Europe.  I am not saying how much alike they are, or how different; just that the US is more like the UK than the US is like any other country in Europe.

Don't get me wrong, that isn't supposed to sound in any way as Anti American, since I found my encounters with the people rather pleasing. It's just alien to me. In the same way as visiting Turkey or Japan, since you brought that up. I visited more frequently in previous years, since one of my aunts moved to the States after the war. Now that she's retired she went to Canada because of better health care.

Canada also seems to resemble Europe more than the US resembles Europe.  But Canada, too, seems more like home than Europe (particularly the English speaking parts of Canada).  My impression, without having visited either place, is that Australia and New Zealand are both more like Europe than the US is like Europe.  (I have, though, seen films from both countries.)  And they seem more like the British than the US seems like the British.  But still, the US resembles the UK more than the US resembles other countries in Europe.