Reply #40: true [View All]

[realisticphish]

he's the "lone wolf" archetype that action movies love. It's funny how the "average joe" in a movie is not really average; he's what movie producers think the average joe WANTS to be. Sometimes they're right; most of the time, they're wrong. And right there is the HUGE problem. Often, the only contact people have with Americans is through movies and TV. I have known people who came to the US honestly expecting everyone to be armed.

Watching a LOT of British and Irish television, I have identified a few "Americans"

1. Californian

2. New Englander

3. Cowboy

4. New Yorker, of Italian ancestry

Almost exclusively, those are the Americans I see portrayed in non-American media. Makes you realize the archetypes we have of, say, British people. Either a 50's banker-type, wearing a bowler hat, or a cockney working class guy from the 1920's. It's the problem of living so damn far away from each other. Even within America, we have that problem; every time someone who has never left Southern California portrays those of us from the midwest as overall-wearing semi-literate farm laborers, or people from the south as inbred hicks, I want to punch someone. The media is run by people who only experience a small slice of American culture, even as Americans, and make the rest up as they wish.

Hopefully that wasn't too rambling :D