When I first told my best friend’s 6 year old daughter that I was coming to America for a whole year this time instead of the usual weekend or 3 months, she looked up at me with those big green eyes, wrinkled her button nose and said “Why do yur want ta go there? You always go there.”
It got me thinking. Why do I always go there?
I blame ‘On the Town’. All that singing and dancing around New York in vibrant Technicolor while I sat in rain saturated middle England scoffing Heinz tinned ravioli and dreaming that one day I would be on the top of the Empire State Building with a sailor of my very own.
This was obviously before I knew any sailors.
What is our fascination with you guys? Is it simply that your representatives are everywhere? Hollywood, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Michael Jackson and Mickey Mouse add up to a ‘brand’ that for better or worse has spread throughout the world, a brand that inspires love and hate even if you never make it through homeland security. The very fact that this ‘brand’ is so omnipresent cultures resentment. Countries feel they have to battle against it in order to keep their own identity. Whether it is France taking a percentage of American film revenues to pump into their own industry or the movement against globalisation (read Americanisation), anti American feeling is not confined to extremists even within your closest ally.
Britain’s ‘special relationship’, with the other side of the pond, as with any relationship, has had its ups and downs and is not quite as equal as the partners like to think it is. At first we had to get over the shock that this new country didn’t want to be part of our glorious empire. As time has gone by our relationship with the land of the free seems to have turned from that of proud parent to a slightly disgruntled second cousin who tried to carry on the family business only to be shown up by a flashier relative who got their success independently and now shows off at every family reunion. It’s not that you don’t like the guy, how could you not. He’s charming, funny, smart. It’s just that he makes you wish you had bigger balls.
Except when his prowess gets him (and you) into trouble. That’s when things get nasty.
Maybe the problem is your envoys. As my cousin’s partner who put it so succinctly. “Every American I’ve ever met has been an arrogant arsehole!” I’m not sure how many Americans he has actually met but it’s an opinion a lot of people share. Most Brits encounters with Americans have been at our tourist spots where we trail around silently basking in our nation’s history only to have our reverence interrupted by a loud cry of “Oh my God! Look at that cute castle! Chad, get the camera! It’s all so quaint!!” This may be slightly stereotyped but whether it’s though less p.c. media or our own experience this is the impression an awful lot of us are left with.
And when faced with these stereotypes or your exulted Commander in Chief aging our sovereign by 200 years or a small town that has no other eatery bar McDonalds, it is understandably easy to forget that Arthur Miller was spawned from the same country as The Pussy Cat Dolls. Even someone like me, who loves this country and has defended it on numerous occasions, finds it hard sometimes, especially over the past eight years.
Then I remember my first trip to New York, racing towards Manhattan in a Yellow Cab, my first glimpse of the Empire State Building across the river and I grin. It is the very duality that I find so frustrating that fascinates me so much. Like family, it is despite or maybe even because of the flaws that I brave Homeland Security once more and plunge head first into America, again.
It got me thinking. Why do I always go there?
I blame ‘On the Town’. All that singing and dancing around New York in vibrant Technicolor while I sat in rain saturated middle England scoffing Heinz tinned ravioli and dreaming that one day I would be on the top of the Empire State Building with a sailor of my very own.
This was obviously before I knew any sailors.
What is our fascination with you guys? Is it simply that your representatives are everywhere? Hollywood, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Michael Jackson and Mickey Mouse add up to a ‘brand’ that for better or worse has spread throughout the world, a brand that inspires love and hate even if you never make it through homeland security. The very fact that this ‘brand’ is so omnipresent cultures resentment. Countries feel they have to battle against it in order to keep their own identity. Whether it is France taking a percentage of American film revenues to pump into their own industry or the movement against globalisation (read Americanisation), anti American feeling is not confined to extremists even within your closest ally.
Britain’s ‘special relationship’, with the other side of the pond, as with any relationship, has had its ups and downs and is not quite as equal as the partners like to think it is. At first we had to get over the shock that this new country didn’t want to be part of our glorious empire. As time has gone by our relationship with the land of the free seems to have turned from that of proud parent to a slightly disgruntled second cousin who tried to carry on the family business only to be shown up by a flashier relative who got their success independently and now shows off at every family reunion. It’s not that you don’t like the guy, how could you not. He’s charming, funny, smart. It’s just that he makes you wish you had bigger balls.
Except when his prowess gets him (and you) into trouble. That’s when things get nasty.
Maybe the problem is your envoys. As my cousin’s partner who put it so succinctly. “Every American I’ve ever met has been an arrogant arsehole!” I’m not sure how many Americans he has actually met but it’s an opinion a lot of people share. Most Brits encounters with Americans have been at our tourist spots where we trail around silently basking in our nation’s history only to have our reverence interrupted by a loud cry of “Oh my God! Look at that cute castle! Chad, get the camera! It’s all so quaint!!” This may be slightly stereotyped but whether it’s though less p.c. media or our own experience this is the impression an awful lot of us are left with.
And when faced with these stereotypes or your exulted Commander in Chief aging our sovereign by 200 years or a small town that has no other eatery bar McDonalds, it is understandably easy to forget that Arthur Miller was spawned from the same country as The Pussy Cat Dolls. Even someone like me, who loves this country and has defended it on numerous occasions, finds it hard sometimes, especially over the past eight years.
Then I remember my first trip to New York, racing towards Manhattan in a Yellow Cab, my first glimpse of the Empire State Building across the river and I grin. It is the very duality that I find so frustrating that fascinates me so much. Like family, it is despite or maybe even because of the flaws that I brave Homeland Security once more and plunge head first into America, again.
1 comment:
An excellent beginning column on this topic, leavened well with humor and some pretty wry observation.
No I spelled wry correctly, you critics out there reading this.
It has a nice touch of the personal (starting with a 6-year-old) and perhaps the best writing is in the first three grafs.
A measure for me of how good the humor is related to what I call the coffee spray.
If I am reading a line and laugh so hard I end up with coffee (or in my case, Earl Grey tea) vaporizing through the air because I have laughed hard, well, it's a success.
Here's the entry that sent Earl flying:
"I sat in rain saturated middle England scoffing Heinz tinned ravioli and dreaming that one day I would be on the top of the Empire State Building with a sailor of my very own.
This was obviously before I knew any sailors."
The writing can be tightened in this, but overall, nicely done.
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