Political Opinions of the SB - New England Patriots Forums

***Leave No Doubt*** · 02-10-2011, 08:27 PM

I came across this op-ed in Counterpunch and thought I'd share it and see what you thought about his comparisons between the NFL, corporatism, and global American influence. Here's a snippet but read the whole article.

Quote:

America is beautiful, but so is every other country. None can match her in mass media allure, however, in collective hypnosis. In a 1997 article for the US Army War College, Major Ralph Peters sums up America’s cultural edge, “Hollywood goes where Harvard never penetrated, and the foreigner, unable to touch the reality of America, is touched by America's irresponsible fantasies of itself; he sees a devilishly enchanting, bluntly sexual, terrifying world from which he is excluded, a world of wealth he can judge only in terms of his own poverty.” And, “The films most despised by the intellectual elite--those that feature extreme violence and to-the-victors-the-spoils sex--are our most popular cultural weapon, bought or bootlegged nearly everywhere. American action films, often in dreadful copies, are available from the Upper Amazon to Mandalay. They are even more popular than our music, because they are easier to understand.”

Linh Dinh: Exporting the Super Bowl

***Nikolai*** · 02-10-2011, 10:43 PM

That snippet reminded me of a conversation I had with a German professor. I told him I was thinking of going back to the States to live and teach. He looked at me in disbelief and wondered how I could live somewhere where violence, car chases, explosions, and the like were common occurrences. This is an extreme example by a somewhat sheltered person, but I think the point stands. For many people outside the US, they see so much of our media that they think they know what it's like to live here, never mind that our projections of ourselves and our culture in the media is a far cry from the truth (even, and perhaps especially, "reality TV").