Culture in America or The Old New World

 MIND THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE FOLLOWING DIFFICULT WORDS:

Validity     [v{#liditi] 1) юридическая сила, юридическая действительность, законность, юридическое действие,2) аргументированность, вескость, мотивированность, обоснованность, 3) истинность, достоверность

fashion­able [#f@S{n{b{l]       модный, стильный; светский;                                                  фешенебельный

praise         [preiz]                    (по)хвала; восхваление хвалить;                                              восхвалять; превозносить,

decadent    [#dEk{d{nt]          декадентский, упадочнический,                                              упадочный Syn: depressive

degenerate [di#dZEn{,reit]                 деградировать, вырождаться,                                              обесценивать, девальвировать,                                                ухудшать (качество) ; фальси                                              фицировать; подмешивать,                                                      унижать достоинство

decline       [ di#klain]              спад, снижение, уменьшение,                                                  спадать, снижаться, уменьшать                                                     ся; убывать, ослабевать

substance   [#s[bst{ns]             содержание, суть, сущность;                                                   существо практическая значи                                               мость, полезность; реальная                                                 ценность

accent        [#@ks{nt]             акцент, упор; тон, манера, стиль

tremendous [ tri#mEnd{s]        огромный, гигантский, громад                                                ный

surge          [s{:dZ]                              всплеск; толчок; выброс; им                                               пульс

vitality       [vai#t@liti]            жизнеспособность; жизнен                                                      ность, жизнестойкость; живу                                                   честь

apparent     [{#p@r{nt]            очевидный, явный; несомнен                                                  ный; видимый, открытый

deplore       [ di#plO:]               оплакивать, сетовать, скорбеть;                                               сокрушаться; горевать,

                                                      сожалеть; горько жаловаться

weird         [wi{d]                    странный, непонятный; причуд                                              ливый, фантастический

maturity     [m{#tju{riti]          взрослость, зрелость , разви                                                     тость

mugger       [#m[g{]                  фигляр, шут

sky­scraper  [ #skai,skreip{]      небоскрёб, многоэтаж                                                               ный дом, высотное здание

giants         [#dZai{nt]             великан, гигант; титан

head­quarters [ ,hEd#kwO:te{]               главный орган управления ка                                             кими-л. структурами , штаб;                                                    штаб-квартира; орган

                                                      управления войсками

playwright [#plei,rait]              раматург

patron        [#peitr{n]               покровитель, патрон,                                                           шеф; глава, руководитель

overpowering [,{uv{#pau{riN     непреодолимый; подавляющий;                                              всепоглощающий

ensembles  [an#samb{l]           ансамбль группа множество

prestige      [ prE#sti:Z]            авторитет, престиж

prestige club                                  престижный клуб

high prestige job                           высокопрестижная работа

 little / low prestige                       непрестижность, малый                                                            вес, малое значение

to enjoy / have prestige                 иметь вес, авторитет

to damage smb.'s prestige             подорвать чей-л. автори                                                           тет, чью-л. репутацию

 to gain prestige                            завоевать авторитет

plight                     [plait]                     обязательство , помолвка

 

 

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The Historical Dimension

Although it is clearly a generalization , it useful to divide American cultural history into three broad stages. While no clear dividing line sepa­rates them, and while various influences affected different cultural areas in different ways, they do have some historical validity.

The first stage stretches from colonial times until about the Civil War. In this period, Ameri­can art, architecture, music, literature, and fashion were strongly influenced by European ideas, traditions, and trends. What was fashion­able in European cultural centers such as Lon­don, Paris, Rome, or Vienna usually set the pat­tern for Boston, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia. Some Americans followed the Eu­ropean trends unwillingly. And it often took some time for the trends to reach America. But there is little question that they were followed, more or less, sooner or later.

This did not mean, of course that America only imported her art or artists. The American painter Benjamin West, who was called the "American Raphael" in England, was a founder of the 'Royal Academy in London and. beginning in 1792, was its president for 26 years. The art of other Ameri­can painters, among them Washington Allston, John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, and Gilbert Stuart, also found favor and fame in Europe. Likewise the famous insult in the Edin­burgh Review in I820 soon lost its sting when American writers such as James Fenimore Cooper or Edgar Allan Рое became widely read and praised throughout Europe. Soon, too, that particular American gilt to mod­em music, the creation of "standards," songs that just about everyone everywhere knows and sings, had started.

The argumentative tone during this first stage is often forgotten today. As part of their revolution, many Americans also wanted a cultural break with Europe. European art, culture, and society were attacked as being "aristocratic." They were seen as a threat to the ideal of democracy. They were described as being decadent, degenerate, and debased. Benjamin Franklin, a man who had close personal ties to Europe and who had often had often been honored there for his intellectual brilliance, characterized the mother country on the eve of the Revolution as bad influence on American so­ciety and morals. A further union with Britain was not desirable, he stated because of "the extreme corruption prevalent among all orders of men in this old rotten state." The art of America, like the country, would need a fresh start.

From the other side came an argument about American culture that was also to be repeated again and again over the years. This argument, the so-called elitist or aristocratic position, was that republican America - the new democracy of the common man, that "mob of mixed races"-could not possibly support the finer things in life. Civi­lization, this argument claimed, has always been furthered and preserved by a ruling elite. The rise of the common man could only mean a decline in art and culture.

This argument was always strongest during the periodic revolutions and popular uprisings which swept Europe in the 19th century. It was most loudly voiced, not surprisingly, by those who felt most threatened by the echoes and effects of the American and, later, French revolutions. In short, those sympathetic to the ruling classes could not be expected to see America or its culture in a favorable light. They recognized - quite correctly, as history has shown-a threat to their dominance in the widespread American belief that art and culture are not the property of a privileged few.

Transatlantic Routes

The second stage, from the Civil War era until around World War I or so, is marked by tension. Americans, it can be said, had a foot in each world, and often felt that this was an uncomfort­able position. Writers, architects, and painters of 19th century still considered themselves largely part of the European tradition. Increas­ingly, however, America became subject and sub­stance of much artistic creation. Europe versus America is one of the more significant themes in American literature. In the novels and stories of Henry James, for example, Americans are fre­quently pulled between the cultures of the Old and New Worlds. James himself lived between the two worlds, claiming and being claimed by both. Yet, by this second stage it is clear that America had developed a cultural style of her own. There is no mistaking the clear American accents in the voices of 19th-century writers such as Cooper, Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, Stephen Crane, Harte, or Twain. Obviously strong national culture had been established. Eu­ropean influences were still strong but no longer dominant. However self-consciously, a specific American direction was being followed.

The third and present stage is marked by a tremendous surge of American creativity in all areas, by a growing international influence, and by a steady self-confidence. The European scholar of the arts George Steiner has described this present stage of American cultural life as "Elizabethan phase." The current American novel, he wrote in 1975, "now represents the richest, most complex interplay of intelligence and style in the language .Although this vitality and creative experimen­tation can be seen in art, architecture, music, dance, film, and fashion as well, it is most clearly apparent in literature. The first American to be honored by a Nobel Prize in literature was Sin­clair Lewis, in 1930. He was then followed, in regular succession, by Eugene O'Neill, Pearl S. Buck, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, and the two Polish-born Americans, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Czeslaw Milosz. And who reads an American novel today? If someone were to ask for a list of American writers who are read in most corners of the globe, a large number of names could be offered, beginning, for example, with Agee, Algren, Anderson, and Asimov, and ending somewhere around Williams, Wolfe, Wouck, and Wright.

 

Changing Places

It is somewhat comical that alter a century and a half of Americans worrying about foreign in­fluences on their culture, of complaining about the negative influences of the Old World, its "Ba­bylonian sins" and moral decay, the winds have seemingly shifted in the other direction.

Once criticism from outside America claimed that the United States had very little cultural influence in the world. Now it seems that America has too much, for many people on the other side of the Atlantic (and Pacific). American culture has become too popular.

One French critic, acknowledging the pre­eminence of the American novel, complains of home-grown imitations of American culture. A member of the French Academy of Medicine worries because the "English of America" has become dominant in the literature of interna­tional science. He states that "America's linguis­tic imperialism is in no doubt". The British seem to be the most sensitive to the strong influence of their former colonies. An Observer article warns that the United States now accounts for about three-quarters of all the world's books published in English. Some British authors these days are first published in America in American English The "negative effects" of American English spread by radio. TV, films, music videos on British teenagers are deplored in a never ending series of letters to the nation’s press. The writers of these letters usually forget that words like "radio," "T V," or "teenager" were оnсе con­sidered "terrible Americanisms." The (London) Sunday Times released the results of a nationwide poll which showed that almost 60 percent of the British think that there is "too much" American cultural influence on British television. And almost a third think that America has too much negative influence on' "British morality"! If Benjamin Franklin - who two centuries ago complained so bitterly about negative British in­fluences - could come back today, what would he think when he heard that his brave New World had become, for many, the "New Babylon"? Until rather recently, Paris in American middle-class minds was the source of all sin and wild living. That it has been replaced by the corrupt, artistic vitality of New York City or the weird, wild "sex, sun, and drugs" scene of southern California is, historically viewed, ironical .It is fair to say that if some Americans are insensitive to charges of "cultural imperialism," they are, first, simply returning a historical com­pliment. And secondly Americans are for the most part unconcerned about a discussion that takes place beyond their shores. On the more positive side, they have become more willing to admit to their cultural ties and borrowings. They will, in fact, often point out with pride the advan­tages of having so many, and such varied, cultural traditions. It is cultural maturity has made them less concerned about what can be labeled "foreign" or "made in America," what is im­ported and exported. Internationalism and plu­ralism are expected and welcomed.

New York, New York

Let's be honest: New York often irritates people in the rest of America, and a good many people in the rest of the world as well. New Yorkers take for granted that their city is the financial, business, as s well as news and communications center of the world. New York, however, is also "the art capital of the world" and the "foremost modern dance and ballet metropolis." It is the "leading book and publishing center," "the earth's entertainer," and a place "where actors outnumber muggers." It is also, as one foreign guidebook excitedly points out, "the home of the world's most famous opera," the Met (that is, the Metropolitan Opera).

A visitor from the city that likes to think of itself as "the nation's capital," Washington, D.C., might point out that the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. Or, someone from Harvard might explain that theirs is the world's largest university library. But a New Yorker

would simply say that the New York Public Li­brary is, "I believe," the largest library in the world that is not a national collection. What irri­tates so many people about New Yorkers is that they know where they live and who they are. Often they don't seem too concerned about what the rest of us anywhere else think. In New York alone, for example, there are some 12,000 artists and sculptors who are supporting themselves from their work, 400 art galleries and hundreds of exhibitions and shows each sea­son. Then there are the great museums .Among them is the Museum of Modem Art (MOMA) which houses the most complete collection of modern art in the world. There is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in its range comparable only with the British Museum and the Louvre. There is the Guggen­heim, The Cloisters with its fine medieval collec­tion, the Brooklyn Museum, the Frick Collection, the National Museum of Design, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Museum of the American Indian, the American Craft Museum, and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art. With so many other museums in addition to those concerned with art (e.g., the American Museum of Natural History), a visitor would need a book to find them all. New York's status as the leading art center is not only based on the number of artists working there, its many galleries and exhibitions, or the museums. Several important movements in modern art have their roots there. Among the better known which largely spread from New York into international art, are Abstract Expressionism and Action Painting, the related “ happenings” that came out the city in 1959-60, Pop-art, minimal art, and photorealism. Similarly, Chicago is often associated with modern architecture as the home of Louis Sulli­van, sometimes called "the father of the " and Frank Lloyd Wright. Yet, it is the Manhattan skyline that is for many people the symbol of the modern big city. And the Guggen­heim Museum is one of Wright's best-know designs Because so many of the major news and media companies as well as publishing giants like Time-Life have their head­quarters in New York City, it has also been an important center for photo-journalists. Finally, so-called "street art," whether the high-priced subway graffiti and paintings or the wall-and-buildings paintings with their strong ties to Hispanic-American and southern California art, still are most often associated with New York.

Theater in America is especially healthy in the hundreds of regional and university groups

around the country. But it is Broadway with its in some 40 major professional stages and the over 350 off-Broadway experimental theaters that bring to mind American playwrights such as O'Neill, Miller, Saroyan, Williams, Inge, Albee, Jones, Simon, and Shephard. There are over 15,000 professional actors in New York alone, and another 20,000 or so in the state of California The competition is intense.

The theater in the United States, by the way, is not state-supported .It does not survive because is financed by cities or states. Many Americans tend to see culture and the arts as areas that the government should not interfere with. They do not see government as the patron of the arts. In addition, people who like jazz, for example, do not see why their tax money should be used to support the pleasures of those who prefer classi­cal music (or vice versa). And those who like rhythm and blues aren't very impressed by the argument that opera will make us all more civi­lized. Americans feel that each person should be willing to support and help pay for his or her own favorite cultural activity, whatever it may be. While New York is almost overpowering in its cultural offerings, it is just the major, not the only, cultural center in the United States. The fact that three times as many Americans attend symphony concerts as go to baseball games can be explained by the fact that there are some 1,500 orchestras throughout the country (Los Angeles alone sup­porting about 20). Some three dozen orchestras in the United States can be termed "major," or world-class. Obviously, there are many Ameri­cans who like classical music and support it. Of the five American symphony orchestras which are usually included among the world's top ten or so, only one is from New York (the Philhar­monic), the other four being from Boston, Chi­cago, Cleveland, and Philadelphia. School and university ensembles and orches­tras also play a very important role throughout the country. They act as training academies for musi­cians and dancers. There are hundreds of city, state, and nationwide music competitions. University schools of music, theater, and dance provide scholarships and professional training, and the best of their orchestras, groups, and per­formers are very good indeed. Here a pyramid system can also be seen, with an increasing quality and level of competition evident as one progresses from school to university, to city or regional orchestras or stages, to professional careers. In addition, the universities provide cul­tural offerings in many areas of the nation, espe­cially in smaller cities, which would otherwise find it difficult to support a major symphony, theater, or concert season on their own.

The community open-air concert which is free for all also has a long tradition in America. The Central Park concerts in New York City, for example, are famous for their variety, with everyone from the Philharmonic to Simon and Garfunkel willing and wanting to appear. Similar open-air concerts in other cities attract tens of thousands throughout the nation. There are two reasons for this tradition. First they are good public relations, a way of thanking the com­munity for its support and making new friends. Secondly and simply, it's fun, with or without classical music.

So-called serious music is therefore very healthy in the U.S. On the one hand, it has the tradition of quality associated with Menuhin , Stern, Horowitz, and Rubinstein, or Tucker, Mer­rill, Price, Sills, and Home. On the other hand, it has the promise of future quality with the large

number of musicians ,singers, and dancers being trained.

 

Film

The world of American film and film-making is so far-reaching a topic that it deserves, and often receives, volumes of its own. Hollywood, of course, immediately comes to mind, as do the many great directors, actors, and actresses it con­tinues to attract and produce. But then, one also thinks of the many independent studios throughout the country, the educational and do­cumentary series and films, the socially-relevant tradition in cinema, and the film departments of universities such as the University of Southern California (USC), the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), or New York University which have trained directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. However, to speak only of "the American cinema" is misleading. For over 50 years, American movies have conti­nued to grow in popularity throughout the world. Generations have grown up watching American films (and viewing America through them!), for better or for worse. Television has only increased this popularity. What most national television systems across the globe have in common is the large proportion of Americans films they choose to run. In many cases, these American films, old or new, are shown more often than are the home­grown variety. The great blockbusters of film entertainment that stretch from Gone with the Wind to Star Wars receive the most attention. A look at the prizes awarded at the leading international film festivals will also demonstrate that as an art form, the American film continues to enjoy considerable prestige. Even when the theme is serious or, as they say, "meaningful," American films remain "popular." In the past decade, movies which treated alcoholism, divorce, the danger of nuclear power and weapons, inner-city blight, the effects of slavery, the plight of Native Americans, pov­erty, and immigration have all received award and international recognition. And, at the same time, they have done well at the box office.

Happy Birthday to You

The main problem in discussing American popu­lar culture is also one of its main characteristics: it won't stay American. Regardless of what it is whether films, food and fashion, music, casual sports or slang, it's soon at home elsewhere in the world. There are several theories why American popular culture has had this appeal, especially since the 1920s. One theory is that it has been "advertised" and marketed" through American" films, popular music, and more recently television. But this theory fails to explain why Ameri­can films, music, and television programs are so popular in themselves. They are, after all, in com­petition with those produced by the other countries.

Another theory is that because America is "a nation of nations," its popular art and culture find it easier to "return home," to appeal to the traditions and tastes of other countries. This fails to clarify why school children in Italy wear cloth­ing saying "baseball" and "football," why cow­boy boots are on Japanese feet, or Afros on Swed­ish heads.

Still another theory, probably the most common one ,is that American popular culture is internationally associated with something called "the spirit of America." This spirit is variously described as being young and free, optimistic and confident, informal and disrespectful. The final theory is less complex: American popular culture is popular because a lot of people in the world like it.

Regardless of why it spreads, American popu­lar culture is usually quite rapidly adopted and then adapted in many other countries. As a result, its American origins and roots are often quickly forgotten. "Happy Birthday to You," for in­stance, is such an everyday song that its source, its American copyright, so to speak, is not remembered. Black leather jackets worn in American movies by James Dean and Marlon Brando, too, could be found, a generation later, on all those young men who wanted to make this macho-look their own. Potato chips are sold as "crisps," "real American hotdogs," also called "wienies," ap­pear in Vienna, and Thousand Island salad dress­ing is found on the tables of people who might not be able to find them on a map.

Two areas where this continuing process is most clearly seen are clothing and music. Some people can still remember a time when T-shirts, sweatshirts, and jogging clothes, the light wind-breaker, "letter jackets" and tennis shoes, denim or "Levi" jackets, shirts, and plain old blue jeans were not common daily wear everywhere. Base­ball caps, trackers' hats and vests, quilted hunting jackets , football jerseys, "the college look," and the classic Humphrey Bogart style have all become familiar. Only twenty or thirty years ago, it was possible to spot an American in Paris by his or her clothes. No longer: those bright colors, plaid and checkered jackets and trousers, hats and socks which were once made fun of in car­toons are back again in Paris as the latest fashion. American in origin, informal clothing has become the world's first truly universal style.

The situation with American popular music is more complex because in the beginning, when it was still clearly American, it was often strongly resisted. Jazz, as is well known, was once thought to be a great danger to youth and their morals, and was actually outlawed in several countries. Today, while still showing its rather humble American roots, it has become so well established that it's almost a member of the middle-aged, middle-class set. Swing, rock'n'roll and all its variations, rhythm & blues, soul, and, most re­cently, country & western music, all have more or less similar histories. They were first resisted -often in America as well - as being "low-class," musical trash, and as "a danger to our nation's youth." The BBC, for example, banned rock and roll until 1962, forcing the pirate radio stations to smuggle in Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, the Big Bopper and all their shocking American friends. And then the music became accepted, local var­ieties based on the American originals took hold, and the new genre or style was established. The music is translated, often extended and de­veloped, and then commonly exported back to the U.S.

Sometimes it is difficult even for an American to distinguish between the original and the gifted imitation, whether that man or woman singing the blues was born in Birmingham, Alabama, or Birmingham, England, whether that cowboy moaning about his sweetheart or pick-up truck is home on the range in Kansas or on the road to Calais.

 

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