This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Fast Eddie: Had to laugh at "cowboys from the Deep South" as pegging the misconceptions pretty well. Yup, gonna go out and round me up some o' them London sheep-herders.
Phartman: Just goes to show that we Americans don't have a monopoly on crude generalizations, after all.
Seven Seals: "rude, crude, clueless, obnoxious, and vaguely psychotic, but still good-natured beneath it all" — wait, is this about how some television sees America or how the rest of the world actually does? :-)
Scifantasy: "Rest of the world," hell. I'm American and I tend to think of America like that. (The specific form of psychosis? Schizophrenia. Especially right now, with a double-emphasis on "schizo.")
Duckluck: It's not terribly surprising that the Japanese have such a weird view of americans. The US opened up trade with Japan by sending in a fleet of warships and our relations have been similarly bizarre ever since.
Moogi: I'm with Scifantasy on this.
Charred Knight: Duckluck, countries don't hold grudges 120 years. America #2 is based out of part actual truth (American's by and large are egotistical, but that's true of most developed nations like the UK, China, and even Japan) and part putting our foreign policies as charaterising our people. The reason its so common with Japan, is that nearly all japanese are culturally the same. They don't have a variety of people so they base their views on people on pop culture.
Andyroid: da_nuke, we are not going there. Anyone else with me on this one?
Phartman: Hear hear. There are approximately 5,686,949,485,743,002 places to go on the internet that are full of hyperpartisan foolishness; let's at least have one place that isn't.
Scifantasy: Amen.
Phartman: By the way, has anyone else seen the Ghost in the Shell episode I mentioned? I don't remember which one it was, but I clearly remember seeing two "American" guys who looked like stereotypical Japanese businessmen - complete with the short, dark hair, Asian eyes and coke-bottle glasses - coming in and screwing everything up. I saw it a couple of years ago, and I found that portrayal to be weird as all get out.
And yes, I know I said I'm not an Anime fan, but that doesn't mean I hate all of it.
Adam850: The episode was "A Perfect Day for a Jungle Cruise", I believe. In the dub they (The two American CIA agents sent to "capture" the ex-navy killer) spoke stilted English, bowed a lot, but were very manipulative. Also, in another episode (I think) where they used the American spy sats to track the someone, and mentioned "Good ol' Big Brother".
CactusWren: Might there be room, or reason, for an entry on "Capitol, D.C."? The city that consists entirely of Capitol Hill and the Mall, the city where the Washington Monument can be seen from twenty miles away and absolutely nothing ever happens that does not involve the Congress?
Fast Eddie: Most assuredly. It can be linked to from Television Geography and American Political System, for starters.
later: pulled ...
- "Medium," "Large" and "King Size"? What the fuck is that? How the fuck can "Medium" be the smallest? Do you even know what the word "Medium" means? This is why you're all so fat, you bunch of road sign-shooting Yankee pillocks."- Yahtzee in an article at the end of his trip to Seattle to visit Valve Corporation upon seeing a Burger King at the Seattle Airport.
... one quote too many and sort of off-point.
Thausgt: Is there any possibility of a page discussing reversals of this trope? The one that leaps to my mind immediately is Chief Todo of the AD Police in "Bubblegum Crisis". I think that the RPG had a reference to Japan opening its borders to anyone in the world who was willing to move there and work after the Second Kanto Earthquake, and that Todo (a.k.a. Todd) came over from Chicago. But I also recall seeing similar individuals of highly variant ethnic origin speaking perfect colloquial Tokyo Japanese in other shows. Comments?
Yellow Yo-yo: Does the scene in Lucky Star where Konata beats up the foreigner who was "attacking" her when all he was really doing was asking for directions (run-on sentence for the win) count as a subversion?
Burai: Removed...
- *** However, the Prime Minister does end up ordering the Torchwood Institute to blow up the ship with an energy weapon reverse-engineered from a crashed alien spacecraft, after it turns out that the aliens are neither benevolent nor willing to negotiate. At this point the aliens are already retreating, and after initially arguing the attack to be a message that Earth would defend itself to other would-be invaders, the Prime Minister turns to regret on realising just how violently the Doctor's opinion of her has changed for the worse.
Charred Knight: At what point in time did it seem like a good idea, to put a FUCKING HUGE QUOTE on the page. I am just wondering because it looks like who ever add it doesn't know what quotes we use. We use small quotes that perfect capture the page.
Jordan: I wonder if Code Geass' Britannian Empire would count- they don't have any "American" mannerisms, but it has been argued (I wouldn't agree mind you) that their imperialism and social darwinism were meant as a Take That! against the United States.
Eponymous Kid: Wouldn't it be much more likely in reference to the colonial imperialism of the British Empire (you know, as in "Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves...")?
Yarshy Yarblocks: The modern U.S. and its core values are hardly like those of Britannia's. The imperialism aspect, maybe—the United States had a stint with imperialism after the Civil War under President Mc Kinley, but I strongly disagree with anyone who claims American actions during the cold war and modern days are imperialist. There's major differences between America's "Imperialist Age" and now.
I've also seen a lot of people assume Britannia is just the U.S. with a name change because it occupies the same areas as the U.S. and is a superpower, but supplementary information on Code Geass gives a pretty good reason as to why Britannia rules the American continents but doesn't have control of the British Isles as one would expect of an alternate-timeline United Kingdom.
Somewhere on this site there's a claim that this history was actually forged and is not the real history of events in Code Geass, but they gave no indication as to where this was written in said supplementary information.
Large Blunt Object: Cutting a bunch of demagoguery and flamebait crap. New Media turning into "Real Life" we do not need.
Fast Eddie: Those items do point out that there is a trope about American uniformity of opinion. The fact that the country is more about diversity of opinion rather than it is about uniformity of opinion is overlooked, especially among non-Americans and people who have issues with diversity. They (the items) go somewhere, just not here. Hmm. I'll kick them over to YKTTW and see what we can see.
Yarshy Yarblocks: Removing the entries on "Jesusland" was unnecessary. That is a "New Media" trope as it was circulated on the internet, and involved online sources such as blogs. The point of adding it to the trope list was to show that there are groups of Americans who, rather than seeing themselves as part of a country of diverse opinions, instead believe in an "Us and Them" mentality with clear-cut borders.
It was an example of a group of Americans seeing themselves as an entirely different country from the rest of the nation which they see as Eagleland Flavor #2, with all the implications of ignorance and bigotry on part of the beholders who see the United States in that light.
Fast Eddie: Seems reasoned. Put her back in.
Large Blunt Object: Perhaps without the painful editorialising and weasel-word bullshit? Yeah, we're not Wikipedia with the NPOV stick up its arse, but it's nothing but flamebait at the moment.
Fast Eddie: Yeah, I'll flip-flop on the Jesusland thing. The Red States/Blue States thing doesn't really line up very well with the two perceptions being contrasted in the trope. It's an example of a different trope, really. One we don't have. That's why I threw on YKTTW.
Yarshy Yarblocks: Large Blunt Object, is the only difference between "weasel-word bullshit" and a fairly accurate description simply a lack of unsourced statements and a viewpoint you don't want to agree with? Because if that's the case I can show you
that it wasn't bullshit like you claim. "New York City braces to be invaded by the red-state hordes?"
Large Blunt Object: It's you using the wiki as your personal soapbox, it's annoying, it's flamebait and, like your petty, irrelevant ramblings about Yahtzee's political opinions, it really doesn't belong. I don't have a stake either way on what American extremists call each other, I just don't like seeing some moron fill pages up with tracts about how "them liberals are obnoxious".
(on a basically unrelated note: you can find some cretin saying any nonsense you like if you look hard enough, I laugh at your "sources".)
Yarshy Yarblocks: I'm pretty certain I pointed out both sides do it even if I said that the liberals are arguably more obnoxious.
And pardon me, but I thought the whole point of TV Tropes was to list phenomenon in media and examples of such. You've decided to take a swing at me for my edits on Zero Punctuation in this discussion, so fine: A game reviewer setting aside the object of his review to make a parade of Take Thats on Americans, causing a portion of his fanbase to have a web browser Wall Banger and the other portion to treat it like Fanservice—how is that "petty and irrelevant?"
I consider that quite significant to mention, thank you very much! Jeez, I was under the impression that There Is No Such Thing As Notability on this wiki, and that we're not meant to act like a Wikipedia Updater. Maybe I'm wrong, though.
Either way, Fast Eddie already put forward his intentions on what to do with the removed example, so the ball's in his court.
Large Blunt Object: Yeah. We also, importantly, have the Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement.
Yarshy Yarblocks: And as unbelievable as it may seem to you, I did not come to TV Tropes looking to start a fight. Unbelievable as it may seem to you, I'm not a partisan conservative OR liberal with a portable soapbox. I have no interest in playing one side up and bashing the other when it comes to politics.
Suffice to say, I am not happy that you've singled out all my edits as partisan soapboxing,
I added my bit in the ZP article to list an example of a phenomenon catalogued on this wiki, which I thought was the whole point of this site. I added the New Media examples on this catalogued phenomenon for the same reason—because they were examples of said phenomenon. I didn't do it to bash or defend Politican X or Party Y.
I sure as hell didn't come to TV Tropes to get mercilessly snarked and mocked for contributing, either. And yes, I did see what you had to say to me before you edited it out on the ZP discussion.
Large Blunt Object: And then I looked again and decided I didn't need to say it. You sure don't sound like someone trying to avoid a fight.
Whatever your intentions, your edits so far have struck me as nothing but soapboxing and badly masked politically-motivated opinion (calling Religion is Magic a "strawman" and saying it's (when religion is denounced as "magical thinking" and portrayed as such. Otherwise known as Somewhere A Theologian Is Crying)? Tell me you're joking...). This shit starts fights. So please try and keep it to a minimum.
Yarshy Yarblocks: If I don't sound like I'm not trying to start a fight, well, I've had my feathers ruffled quite a bit. Given my first encounter with you consisted of your summarizing my edits on ZP as "baaaaaw flamebait more baaaaw" I'm not placid at the moment.
Since you're going through my previous edits and bringing them up in discussion pages, maybe it's time this discussion was taken elsewhere where it won't derail those meant for specific articles. However, to answer what you said about the Religion is Magic addition I made to the War on Straw: Referring to it as "Somewhere A Theologian Is Crying" is a reference to the Somewhere A (expert) Is Crying titles I've seen around TV Tropes, and I see it used as a phrase for examples of egregious understanding of the subject in media.
When that misunderstanding is used to attack the subject, we've got a straw man on our hands, right? That's what straw men are; a misrepresented form of the subject to argue against and easily defeat. The Religion is Magic trope is about religions that get seen less as what they are and more as magic. Now, theologians are experts that deal with the study of religion, and they'd probably cry as much as a Palaeontologist would when their field of study is so grossly misrepresented.
I'm not really sure what you think I'm joking about by adding what I did, actually, so I'll let you explain. but there you go, that's why I did what I did. It's not meant to offend religious people at all, far from it.
Large Blunt Object: Put simply, if you're into potholing, put Suffers Newbies Poorly under my name. Apologies for the kneejerk. I just hate hate hate political shit and kill it wherever I see it with massive prejudice.
I'll go and say why I don't think it belongs on The War On Straw Discussion, then. Want to cut and paste most of this to there?
Charred Knight: I am american and I find this entry stupid. No America did not win World War II by itself, and stop acting like they did. I will also point out that America ignored Britain and France's plight and only acted when Japan declared war on them. Real Life
- During WorldWarII America made a very impressive display of the first flavor, using all its might and resources to fight dictatorships (one of them ruled by THE OmnicidalManiac, no less), helping the original Resistance and giving a genuine meaning to the expression "Free World"
- A minor subversion...the Japanese-American internment camps.
- Of course the Japanese American internees survived their experience. The same cannot be said for the majority of concentration camp prisoners or Europeans interned by the Japanese.
Noaqiyeum: Counter-argument. Much like today, "America" of the time was polarized between the warmongers on the one hand and the Nazi sympathizers and know-nothing-do-nothings on the other. Without unified opinion (and, unlike modern presidents, unwilling to start a war without declaring it first), the US government was restricted to supply shipments - which they did with great gusto. Pearl Harbor only managed to convince everyone to attack Japan; Germany was still up in the air until they declared war on the US.
That said, the entry is flamebait (here we are arguing about it) - although it's a pretty good description of how America was depicted in the media for quite some time afterwards - and at least needs objectivization. And natter extraction surgery.
Off Side 7: What about the Texan tourist couple from Flushed Away?
" an angry German immigrant who is disenchanted after the loss of his American dream (Arnold Igashov)" (From the Prince Of Tennis entry)
Is this correct? "Igashov" doesn't sound very German to me. But I haven't watched the show, so I don't know if it is. ~ Melloncollie
