Americana

The British Are Thinking About Americans? Well, probably not as much as we fear. But the last issue of Critical Miss had a great article about the skillions of misrepresentations of Britain in the popular movies and media of outside cultures. This is a response of sorts wherein I will try and clarify, for the benefit of those readers outside the U.S., what Americans are really like. It is a chance to reclaim our National Dignity and finally correct all those British stereotypes of Americans! Yeah! But there's only one problem. There are stereotypes? The only one that leaps to my mind comes from an old Fawlty Towers episode, and in truth my attention is more drawn to a certain disbelief of 70s fashion ideals. In a beautiful display of irony, it seems the bulk of the stereotypes held by the British stem from the media (movies, television, etc.) we merrily ship out. Now that a source of the misperceptions has been defined, the guessing game has become slightly more refined. I'm still keenly aware of the risk of insulting the intelligence of British readers by explaining with unnecessary deliberateness and care some facet of American culture about which they were already aware.

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