Is American culture intentionally or organically pushed abroad?

When I grew up Halloween (as in, the modern type) was an American thing. Bringing it here was absolutely intentional, it's an event that retailers get rich off. There's an American sports store in my street and it looks like a damned casino with its flashing lights. But kids are walking in and buying a $200 cap that says "Chicago bulls". Americanism involves a lot of spending, I'm not surprised it's pushed.

It's both and it has been that way since roughly the era of mass production of consumer goods and certainly after WWII, not just in Australia but pretty much worldwide.

Many countries try to export their culture as a means of projecting soft power, some more successfully (or perhaps: aggressively even in some case) than others.

The US simply have been the by far most dominant power in the last hundred years, politically as well as culturally.

As for more recent developments, I'm not so sure about that. If anything, from my perspective due the influence of Spotify and Netflix and the wide range of these services provide, popular culture has become more diverse and less US-centric than it used to be.

That said, in the Anglosphere, American influence is more pronounced than elsewhere because of the same linguistic and cultural roots.

At least in part intentionally. The CIA supported Jackson Pollock (without his knowledge or consent) for example. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-did-the-cia-sponsor-jackson...

Something that I think might sort of provide a starting point of exploration is this 2019 article "Hollywood Films Funded By the Pentagon" https://www.liveabout.com/pentagon-support-for-war-films-343...

Depending on how in depth you want to go you can also take a skim of this https://web.archive.org/web/20011107151615/http://www.guerri... for some search terms for a deeper dive.

Australia has roughly a tenth America’s population and GDP. America has the premiere televisual media production center in the anglosphere. High bandwidth communications are essentially instant and free. Travel is short, and affordable for most.

Where is the mystery? It would take special effort not to receive such exports from a behemoth which speaks your language and lives next door. Inevitable diffusion. Consider how many Australian artists become also American, for instance.

Both. During most of the second half of the 20th Century, the United States Information Agency pushed American culture. As for Chicago Bulls caps, the National Basketball Association doesn't need government assistance for marketing. (It won't object to sweetheart deals on arenas, but that's a different level of government.)

Sensing the politics thing UK side too. Slowly but surely US style politics are creeping in. It's terrifying cause US looks like an absolute shitshow on that front.

Everything else - no, or more accurately no more than normally. US has always been good at exporting culture & soft power from Taylor Swift to corporate culture to memes.

American TV and movies had so much better quality - not only in production, but also in writing, acting than local one. It was hard to watch 95% of local stuff, and the ones that were enjoyable were mostly enjoyable due to some kind of relatability. It was like that at least until Netflix started producing local content.

The US culture is the most massively exported culture in the history of mankind.

I think it happens both organically and intentionally, with different degrees in different countries. For example Denmark has been force fed US culture for many years, due to the strategic importance of Thule Air Base in Greenland, which is Danish on paper. The US culture presents a stark contrast to the Nordic culture, the former being about expansion while the latter about containment (from public behaviour to company operations) and you can see the negative effects of those two conflicting ideologies.

And I have no evidence of US triple letter agencies conducting psyOPs in Denmark, I wish I did

It brings me to another question to ponder about: how can I imagine my life without getting influenced from Americanization? I really feel too much of it everywhere, and would like new perspectives. The issue seems that other countries are not as good as them in sales, marketing, and advertising. Hence, we live in American airs almost always.

One reason of this push is internet and communication technology. Most of what you use in computer, and phone is made in China (hardware), designed in US (software).

Depemda on your definition of those words. for example, Hollywood aggressively pushes their movies overseas. is that an intentional concerted effort, or the market moving organically?

Same thing with the Internet. People from all over the world are on the English Internet, absorbing American/British/etc memes and values. Is that 'intentional' in the sense there's some shadowy cabal behind it? No. It's just a consequence of communications technology.

This is an interesting conversation to peruse while watching an NFL (American football) game being played in Munich. [0]

I’m not sure why the NFL does a few of these games (overseas, more often in London) each year. The stadium seems full, but I don’t know if it’s more Americans who traveled for the game, Europeans who are clamoring for more American Football, or just folks curious to see what the game is like.

I think there is great value for the US in the soft power that comes from other countries adopting American culture, but I’m not sure whether it’s deliberate or just a natural consequence of being such a large economy. There’s also a deeply embedded sense of ‘manifest destiny’ in American culture. We’re out of land to acquire, because we reached the pacific coast and modern politics doesn’t allow for empire building the way it once did. So maybe the next frontier in expanding (our) civilization is to spread our culture.

[0] https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401435638

Rammstein said it best … https://youtu.be/Rr8ljRgcJNM

I've lived in Australia for 10 years. The country is one big vacuum pulling in aspects of culture from all over the world via internet, media, and immigration. That's to be expected for such a new country (Australia in the post colonial sense) but it does make for a weird melting pot of a place that ultimately is pretty void of its own identity.

There was a time when the State Department had a budget for promoting American "high culture" abroad. Low culture likely never needed any help. I've read articles complaining that the US government no longer has a program to actively spread American culture, so maybe the government is actually no longer involved and it just happens through economic forces.

Somebody mentioned American style Halloween, which I think is a rather interesting case due to its recent, extremely rapid spread. Halloween is like catnip for youth, because it combines three enticing things -- goodies, costumes, and sanctioned convention-breaking. The spread of Halloween has been very controversial, even in some Western countries, but I think it's unstoppable unless the receiving culture has something at least as appealing to compete. I attribute the rapid spread in this generation to the internet.

Exporting some aspects of American culture is not bad in itself. What bothers me, as a European, is that some people confuse some aspects of American culture as ready patterns to be implemented in corporate environments in other countries.

For example, the USA has a particular history of racial inequality, and in many companies employees need to undergo compulsory training about the so-called "white privilege" and so on. I was surprised to see this being imported in the UK. Most of my friends ignored it just like other parts of the corpoculture ("you just need to watch the video and mark the right answers") but there is something unsettling about this. And obviously there is no room for any discussion, should you be so inconsiderate to start it.

Britain + Australia is, what, less than a third the US population? So naturally Americans dominate the English language internet. On any feed driven social media your fellow Aussies and my fellow Britons are likely to be exposed to lots of American things

Every now and then i see americans surprised at how many non americans take interest in us politics. Ranging from mid terms to presidential elections. Thats because america has an influence over everything we do, both in free countries and non democracies. Be it military, politics, culture, social norms, everything is impacted by what happens there. And thats good, i personally like that country. Except i dont like its work culture and that it doesnt look after its own as much as it should and could.

Related; how militaristic all the American output has come, due to the military consulting on films, it seems like those films become a lot more pro-military.

Both, an example of policy that pushed American culture in France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blum–Byrnes_agreement

Both.

There is a large pull factor at work here also. This was a definitely a part of the reason that I recently definitely left New Zealand. US culture seems very attractive to almost sociopathic grifters, and of course such people have always been attracted to politics and managerial roles. Their worst behaviour used to be at least frowned upon, but is now seen as virtuous. So privatised health care, junk food, expensive education, homelessness, libertarian dogma and so on and so on are now viewed as a small price to pay or even a stage to be celebrated in somehow leading to better future. Push from visiting US envoys and US based think tank material have certainly always been visible, but the results have also been both visible and predictable. Enough of the local population seem to believe that they can have all the imaginary good stuff and that they - standard model human beings - are nice enough to avoid the bad stuff.

American culture emphasizes broadly human qualities and individualism, coupled with a healthy dose of materialism, greed, and a small dose of hedonism. Mixed in is a dark thread of violence. Couple this with a massive advertising and export focused business world, and adjoined with a melting pot of global culture, it’s well adapted to cultural adoption.

I see a lot of discussion of force and it feels blind to colonialism and other even more forceful cultural indoctrination. American culture isn’t generally forced on anyone (exceptions exist!). It evolved as individual humanism by a multicultural society, so it’s essentially the cultural equivalent to a donut - super appealing to our human senses, relatable across cultures, and probably bad for you in large quantities. That doesn’t require force, just availability and marketing.

The cynical view is...

Selfishness and egocentrism play well with consumptionism.

I think it starts with natural isolation and weak societal bonds in the US (haha, as far as it can be observed in Hollywood movies). People lack something then and they are offered a lot of entertainment. That entertainment is more often than not something you buy.

And then at some point the US corporates realized the US market is not so big. Or it is big, but the total world is bigger. And they can or even need to export their goods and services. And when exporting they often need to sell and market their products using feelings. These feelings are often pictured in American context, even if the content is presented abroad.

TLDR: I think it's intentional.

I went to an American funded school in India. We had a pastor who took sermons and was pro-US in terms of Israel. Some library books were kids Christian literature. Mum stayed at a YWCA. Mentioned institutes had members of all religions.

Fun fact: Freddy Mercury studied in an American school in India.

I believe America and Russia were competing for soft power. Americans and Russians allegedly funded pro-democracy and pro-communism parties in India.

There was Raduga publishers which translated Russian literature into high quality English books. I remember fairy tales, city kid in a village, Lenin's mother who had children receive death penalty for revolution. Yes, it was way later than 1991.

It's wonderbar! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr8ljRgcJNM

It is pushed by the US, both for political and economic reasons. But it is up to the target country to decide on how to preserve it's own culture. It is a cultural thing. I will give you two examples. Both related to the most visible of the American "cultural" exports: soft-drinks "Pepsi" and "Coca-Cola".

India, after independence, experimented with "limited capitalism", that is, it had private banks, foreign brand operated in India e.g. Coca-Cola, universities were formed with help from American universities, etc. But after few years, India started becoming more socialist (India is by constitution a socialist country). Banks were made public, foreign brands like Coca-Cola were asked to leave India etc. The goal was to make India self-reliant. Local brands were promoted internally. The fallout from this was India was heavily sanctioned by the west. No educational books from foreign authors, no computers, no foreign technology, no defence deals(except from Russia). In all this few Indian commercial brands started to shine within India. One of them was "ThumsUp", a soft-drink similar to Coca-Cola. After India was brought to its knees due to sanction and its own internal old bureaucratic structures, India finally agreed to "open up" and foreign brands were allowed to enter the country again. Coca-Cola came to India again. The founders of the local Indian soft-drink "ThumsUp" became jittery looking at the might of the US brands Coca-Cola and Pepsi and sold out to Coca-Cola. Since then Coca-Cola, the company, has tried many times in various was to kill the "ThumsUp" brand by changing the taste of the drink, raising prices, changing the logo, changing the bottle shape and size. Nothing worked! Even though Coca-Cola now owns the brand, it has been unsuccessful in killing the Indian brand.

Now, consider the story on the other side of the world, in Scotland. Scotland has its own soft-drink "Irn-Bru". When the American soft-drinks companies tried to beat that brand they failed. But unlike the Indian company that sold itself, the Scottish company decided to stand against the might of the American companies.

So, it is about how the locals handle the American entry. America does push it's "ideas" on to other cultures, as was the case in India, but the locals can decide whether to accept it or not.

Spain is IMHO the most American country of Europe, and lots about this happened 20 years ago.