spent MONTHS looking for this stupid tumblr post bcuz i constantly want to reference it and it wouldn’t come up no matter what i searched despite it being (what i thought) was a popular well-known tumblr post only to find that the original blog turned off reblogs and deactivated and that it only got 12k notes total. but im posting it anyway to preserve its legacy
Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Let me tell you a story.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a “master-planned community,” constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don’t exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
So many people are “leftists” until Indigenous people/rights/activism/inclusion is brought up. Not even land back specifically, just “we don’t deserve to be murdered by cops and doctors, have our children taken by CPS for no reason, and be forced by society to remain in generational cycles of poverty and trauma” is a hot take that a lot of “ACAB, be gay do crime” leftists just can’t handle
I’ve learned the hard way to ask the hard questions straigh away and avoid working with leftist organisations like these unless absolutely necessary. I encourage non-Indigenous people to do the same. Challenge them on their ignorance, but if it doesn’t work, find somewhere else. They’re not worth your time and they won’t get anywhere without solidarity.
“Americanization” is a real phenomenon, and how non-Americans should be cautious of it is taught in different countries at school. It’s taught in Greece and people from other countries told me their elementary or middle school teachers (using the American grades, to make it make sense to the majority on the site) talked to them about it.
It’s common sense here, except for USians, so I’ll analyze it a bit more for the dominant demographic here. In a globalized setting, the most dominant culture affects the others and sets the trends. The way our language works, how we think, our levels of politeness and intimacy, and our levels of respect. (flash news, they are going down 😂)
I don’t want to imply that there is nothing good in the US. There are plenty of positives in the country. It’s just that for the rest of the cultures online it’s a constant daily fight to not forget our roots, with the degree US media and brands have permeated our lives. In Greece at least we watch more US American media than Greek media nowadays, and many of our shows are rip-offs of USian ones, with little adaptation to Greek reality and culture.
And to demonstrate the amount of this exposure, a 22-year-old Greek asked me the other day “if something happens we call 911, right?” This might have literally cost them their life, in a dangerous situation! Because all the movies and songs they consumed (not an unusual thing for the Greek youth) were what they knew. And I found a similar comment in this comment thread.
Lots of Americans in the notes failing to understand this post. It’s not about not liking the US. It’s not about you feeling ashamed or guilty for being American. It’s not about you.
It’s about American media drowning out native language media all over the world, and workplaces requiring the English language in your repertoire more and more. It’s about proper translations and foreign language dubbing of films disappearing because “everyone speaks/should speak English anyway.” All of this is leading to the deterioration of native speaker groups of languages worldwide.
In my country, Dutch language courses can’t find enough people who want to study the language, while English language courses are overflowing with people who want to study the language. There is even widespread distaste for the Dutch language for being crude or sounding rough or what have you. That’s our native language!!! That is our culture in its purest form!!! That is knowledge we inherit from our parents as they did from theirs!!! That is how we learned fairytales and folk stories and myths!!! That is the language that shapes our communication and our way of thinking!!! To hate your native language is to hate yourself at the deepest level.
And yet it’s so normalised. Droves of foreigners living in the Netherlands will never learn a word of Dutch, because “everyone speaks English anyway.” We are the world’s leaders in non-native understanding of English, but it comes at a cost. A grave cost we will continue to pay.
If you’re looking to support your non-American friends in any way that is not performatively shouting “I hate being an American” into the void, first of all, unlearn that hatred of yourself and your culture. You are of no help self-flagellating, and there is a difference between holding your country accountable for its issues, and denying yourself your culture because your country is doing and has done bad things.
(I am not going to get into arguments about whether or not US American culture exists. It does, and if you think differently you are welcome to change your mind.)
Secondly, learn about other countries. Learn a bit of Chinese. Take an interest in the Italian political system. Ask your friends about their countries’ folklore. Watch documentaries about art from Nigeria. Absorb information that is not fed to you by American media.
And thirdly, quit expecting your non-American friends to communicate in a way that appeals to you. The French and Dutch will always seem rude to you because our way of communicating is far more direct than the way you communicate. People from other cultures may seem vague to you because their way of communicating is far more indirect, and you’re not used to that either. Quit being frustrated when you don’t get what we mean exactly. Quit assuming we mean the absolute worst thing you could imagine just because you didn’t get what we meant the first time. Ask us to explain if you need us to, and learn to accept that we are different from you.
We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It’s your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.
We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It’s your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.
Also like people who say “just leave tumblr if you don’t want to see american stuff” it’s fucking everywhere it’s not just online, it’s offline too, our politicians keep trying to copy the USA, your tarrifs bankrupted small sellers all over Europe, your proxy wars and ability to just stop wars with a phone call also influence us, in south america Venezuela is currently risking being bombed to distract people from the fact that your president is a paedophile.
Emerican Johnson once had a good video (which I can’t find any more) about how he moved from being a capitalist into a socialist, which involved leaving the USA and then realising that people outside of the USA can’t choose to ignore politics from the USA because of how much it affects everyone.
There’s a good video by Jack Saint on cultural cringe, and how even unintentionally when there’s a culture which is considered modern (like it fills the cinemas) it can make your own culture seem boring and shitty meaning you go towards the other culture and abandon your own history and sometimes even language. Like an interesting example of this is how ‘white walls’ are considered cool in Indian social media because of how there’s so many people from the USA who have just plain white walls for their videos, rather than traditional Indian house designs. Especially because IKEA is expensive and out of reach for most people in India, so having a plain painted white wall with IKEA furniture is actually a status symbol!
There’s been so many times I’ve tried to get through to a bunch of people from the US the sheer amount of stuff we can’t avoid. But I think the indoctrination which people in the USA do go through has been made quite clear in some of the recent videos from Evan Edinger, where he can point out where the absolute nonsense he’s recieved in his comments is mentally from, as he grew up in the USA but once he lived in another country he realised all the wool which had been pulled over his eyes.
Many people from the USA when confronted with the truth seem even unable to unwilling to actually listen to people from outside the USA. They just get angry and combative. Like arguments like “We have problems inside too!” Like yeah of course you do, we know, we can show you paths to help. “Why are you attacking us, there’s lots of POC in the USA” do you think there’s only white people outside of the usa? do you think there’s only white people even in Europe or something? Very racist argument to make. “I’m not listening to an X” if the place someone comes from means you won’t listen to them, never mind the xenophobia it just makes you look like a child if you say an argument is based on who someone is rather than what it says.
My favouritest sport fact ever is that in 1990s 2 cardiac surgeons watched an f1 race to save the lives of countless kids. The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH) kept losing the lives of patients after successful heart surgeries. Specifically the 10-15 minutes after a bonefide clinically successful surgery patients would die:
And so the two surgeons filmed a handover after heart surgery and sent it to the Ferrari pitcrew who were told to critique and improve handover process
And from this:
we got this:
The error rate during patien handovers dropped from 30% to 10% with the F1 informed protocol.
I literally love this fact so much because being an pitcrew member is such a thankless job because theyre underpaid and overworked mechanics and they literally saved lives in this instance.
“Cassandra woke up to the rays of the sun streaming through the slats on her blinds, cascading over her naked chest. She stretched, her breasts lifting with her arms as she greeted the sun. She rolled out of bed and put on a shirt, her nipples prominently showing through the thin fabric. She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards.”
‘
She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards’ is the greatest fucking sentence I have ever read.
THE ORIGINAL??
(smh) Never thought I’d see it in the wild. Yet here it is. :)
Hm. So apparently people with epilepsy can learn to sense when they have a seizure coming. I wonder if you could use that as a plot device thing in a story somewhere.
Like there’s some big-ass Great Public Council Meeting about some important politicial issue, Roman Senate style, and there’s two opposing sides about the issue, but also a big chunk of undecided people who could be persuaded to vote either way. And there’s someone in attendance, who hasn’t spoken out loud about the issue anywhere but sides strongly with one of the options. And just when the dispute is about to swing to the wrong direction, they sense a seizure about to happen, and it’s too late for them to try to get out of there or really even warn anyone.
So instead they just stand up, boldly announce, “I, for one, am sure that [option they do not want] cannot fail! If I am wrong, let the Gods smite me right where I stand!” and then the fucking seizure hits.
I used to get really bad nose bleeds but sometimes could feel when they were starting. One day in middle school this guy in geography class wouldn’t shut the fuck up about that conspiracy theory that Delaware doesn’t exist, so when I felt one coming on I loudly interrupted the rant our teacher was inexplicably allowing to derail the class by saying “if you don’t stop I’m gonna have an aneurism!” The guy of course just kept going so a second later a small torrent of blood gushed out of my head and, being a dramatic bitch, I collapsed face down onto my desk into a nice little puddle of blood. Anyway apparently outside of intense Roman Senate-esque debates, these stunts apparently induce panic attacks in educators and end up with you getting lectured about how traumatizing it is for your classmates when you “fake your death for dramatic effect”
I believe this falls into the “I don’t think people should be punished for objectively funny crimes” category.
ALT
