I'm not sure that intent is what matters - instinctively, I'd say that, as with all matters of taste and offence, what counts is how people react to it. That said, it seems inevitable that any sufficiently public action is going to upset somebody.
Cultural appropriation
- Thread starter NovaKart
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_random_
Jewel Runner
What are you getting at here?
This may not be true. Didn't I hear a tale about Michaelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, all the while muttering that it was all nonsense?
He did, after all, do it just for the money.
Spoiler :
Michaelangelo, by all accounts, was pretty exceptionally devout. He just didn't care much for painting.
Erm, yes but all thos Polish things like stuffing yoruself are general party material and shoudl be encouraged whenever possible.
Quite a large part of the OP's predicament I'd say.
Borachio
Way past lunacy
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I'm questioning the unquestioned assumption that if something is good then the US will inevitably adopt it and make it part of its own culture.
The corollary is that everything in US culture is automatically good, too. It isn't. I'll cite McDonalds, Coca-Cola, gun culture, capital punishment, Guantanamo, Presidential elections, Stormfront, the absence of Universal Healthcare, and too much of a difference between the richest and poorest; just for a very few and probably biased random examples.
I don't want to dwell or defend the point unduly. Simply because I think it's unnecessary to do so. But I did feel obliged to draw just a little attention to it.
_random_
Jewel Runner
McDonald's is delicious and presidential elections are wonderfully entertaining. But I think the idea was more that the US is a cultural melting pot, which might not be as readily apparent to the rest of the world. But take pizza. You have Pizza Hut in the UK, right? Well that started with Italian immigrants importing their native dishes and Americans taking them and doing something awesome with them. And Pizza Hut really isn't a good example of that, but if you ever visit Dayton or Memphis, I could treat you to good stuff that's also totally unrecognizable from its Italian roots.
Borachio
Way past lunacy
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The UK is truly no stranger to cultural melting pots, since forever. And the rest of the world is fast becoming multicultural too, like it or not.
I don't dispute that the US has traditionally been a melting pot. (At least. officially so.) It's also incredibly narcissistic and parochial as well.
As for something not being recognizably Italian, that's hardly a good thing, imo.
Italian cuisine is up there with French, and consists of so much more than pizza and pasta. Are you sure you're not missing out on something here?
All of which isn't to say that US cuisine doesn't have something to offer the world. It does. Just that McDonalds, PizzaHut and KFC are certainly not it.
I don't dispute that the US has traditionally been a melting pot. (At least. officially so.) It's also incredibly narcissistic and parochial as well.
As for something not being recognizably Italian, that's hardly a good thing, imo.
Italian cuisine is up there with French, and consists of so much more than pizza and pasta. Are you sure you're not missing out on something here?
All of which isn't to say that US cuisine doesn't have something to offer the world. It does. Just that McDonalds, PizzaHut and KFC are certainly not it.
While I agree that much Italian food in the US (or in most places outside of Italy, really) isn't "proper" Italian food, I'd also argue that it would take someone as cretin as the woman who wrote the OP article to be offended by that. I've never met a single Italian who was offended by the pseudo-Italian food of most Italian restaurants in the US, and I know a whole lot of Italians, being half Italian myself. It's just funny, and as someone already mentioned it's even kind of flattering.
Here is an example of things going full circle:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/20...r-introduce-american-chinese-food-to-shanghai
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/20...r-introduce-american-chinese-food-to-shanghai
ParkCungHee
Deity
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To be fair, I would call what Chicago does to Pizza seriously offensive.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
First generation Vietnamese immigrants here also usually complain about 'Murican food being too sweet... or too salty, or greasy, or oily too, for that matter. It doesn't seem to affect second generation Vietnamese, or 1.5 generation Vietnamese who came here young enough. Although personally my tolerance for sweet/salty/etc. in American food doesn't go all the way, though, there are still some things I feel are a biiiiiit overdone.
A lot of the things you mention are government policies and not really culture.
Well, government policy requires some base in culture. Representatives are people, after all, who grow up surrounded by the same images, narratives and values as everybody else. Keeping capital punishment, for example, requires a majority of the current representatives to think it's a good idea, which usually means that a majority of their voters think it's a good idea. You can't really separate culture and policy in a country where ordinary people make the rules.
It's self-evident, though, that America's culture at large, or at least that subset of it represented in the legislature, includes a support for the death penalty and an opposition to universal healthcare.
I think that "US culture" had a far more positive (despite the myriads of issues) image in the near past (for example in the early 90s and so on). It seems that after 2001 it got eroded to the point that now virtually all talk of US culture appears to be about ugly stuff or decadence (i know that Wilde quote, but it is far worse now).
I doubt this happened on its own, either. I mean surely many parts of that culture are/were very low (as in other current cultures), but in most countries there wasn't a focus on all the negative elements to this degree.
A similar thing possibly happened in the UK (at least i recall thinking so while i lived there), and in my own country as well, beginning with the 90s and the opening up of private electronic media.
I think that the internet can reverse that, at least when we have moved past the current global situation. I also hope it can change without mass chaos or anything of that kind, and just arise as the will of the people for a better oulook on their own life.
I doubt this happened on its own, either. I mean surely many parts of that culture are/were very low (as in other current cultures), but in most countries there wasn't a focus on all the negative elements to this degree.
A similar thing possibly happened in the UK (at least i recall thinking so while i lived there), and in my own country as well, beginning with the 90s and the opening up of private electronic media.
I think that the internet can reverse that, at least when we have moved past the current global situation. I also hope it can change without mass chaos or anything of that kind, and just arise as the will of the people for a better oulook on their own life.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Do you have any concrete proposals for achieving the latter? How, for example, should the problem in the OP be resolved?
Agreed. But if offends me as a human, not as an Italian.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
That's been my position all along, pretty much. As long as your intent is not ridicule, then go ahead and do anything you want, within reason. Nobody's going to give a crap if you play a Chinese board game or dance a Polish dance, except for a select minorty who's views we shouldn't really care about anyway.
I mean, if you start doing your Polish dance and 20 Polish people show up and start complaining, saying that you're insulting Polish traditions. Hey, maybe you messed up somehow? It might be wise to rethink the dance. Intent matters, but sometimes you can do something offensive without any real intent there. In those cases it might be wise to rethink anyway - but not in the face of a silly minority that tells you to bellydance.
How do you distinguish between the silly people and people who's outrage you should take seriously? Well, you should be able to figure that out. If not, just don't do it, better safe than sorry.
luiz said:
You should meet my best friend. He was brought up in a very Italian household - basically the premises of their household might as be a part of Italy. Anyway, he has moaned and complained about East Side Mario's many times. First of all, "Mario" is never pronounced right. He will make fun of the way they say it by emphasizing the mistaken pronunciation of the first vowel in the name. He will then ridicule their pastas and that they bring you a spoon to eat it with - you don't eat REAL italian food with a spoon. It tastes like crap anyway, he says, especially the sauce, and that song is offensive to him as in his eyes it ridicules certain stereotypes about Italians and brings it out fullforce for others to laugh at.
Essentially to him East Side Mario's is a place where a bunch of totally non Italian guys got together, crapped in a cup, and served it as the food of his homeland, while gesturing wildly in the air and making random Italian-like sounds. He finds the place offensive and refuses to eat there.
We laugh at him about it, but I get it. If someone butchered Polish food and opened a restaurant where "Polish" food was being sold, but it really wasn't Polish food but rather a reimagined Polish cuisine menu that's offensive to my tastes? Yeah, I'd hate that place too. I'd insist that they don't call it "Polish food", since to me it most definitely would not be Polish food. Should they be free to do so though? Oh most certainly. It isn't offensive to me in the sense that I want it gone - I wouldn't picket against it or anything. I'd just not eat there because I'd see it as laughable crap.
So I can see where some of those people are coming from, but not really. I might get upset, but in the end I agree that people should be able to eat whatever they want, except for I guess babies. In my mind the Italian example above is very different from you actually insulting another culture - by crapping on a Chinese flag or uhh.. hell I don't even know. Celebrating Hannukah by eating bacon and nothing but bacon? It is definitely possible to cross the line, but usually there is going to be some intent there to be a jackarse.
Except the numerous states that don't have the death penalty. According to one survey I heard, 70% of the population of the UK want to see the death penalty reintroduced so its not just the US that has support for it. I could accept that these issues are influenced by American culture but are not American cultural practices or traditions on their own.
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