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March 26, 2006
Watching "Super Size Me"
I guess I was wrong about Americans being unable to laugh at themselves. The documentary "Super Size Me" pokes fun at Americans and it was a big success; McDonalds really took a beating, and actually made changes in what they served after the movie took off. It showed more disgustingly bulging stomachs and thighs than I've seen in a while. The narrator was obnoxious though. Maybe his being thin (at the beginning, anyway) made it worse: do we like Michael Moore (those of us who do not hate him, that is) because he's fat and out of shape just like all people he's interviewing in the Midwest? Are they more comfortable talking to him because he is chubby and wears a baseball cap?
Fast foods is one of America's gifts to the world, and McDonalds is the most potent symbol of a host of global food companies. I got into trouble once for using the word 'McDonalds' in a book when I was talking about fast foods in general: it got me, and my small London publisher, caught up in the infamous McLibel trial, and I have the dubious honor of being the only American citizen harrassed as part of that expensive effort by McDonalds to stifle criticism. Read the letter I received from McDonalds's lawyers in London.
Like many things American, fast food is something many people around the world (our Xian taxi driver for one, whose favorite was KFC) love--and love to hate. Oddly enough, all cultures have their own fast foods, usually very delicious and cheap. Eating American food is a symbolic act, I suspect, to do with modernity and economic aspiration. If only we had something better to offer the world!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2006
Comic perspectives on the U.S.A.
Americans are not known for a self-deprecating sense of humor, or even, it seems, for being able to laugh (an English colleague told me last week that she thinks Americans are far too serious about everything). But people in other parts of the world sometimes enjoy a good laugh at our expense, and seem to be able to find plenty of people in the United States to help them along. Here are a couple of clips from an Australian comedy show. First, "How about Kyrgystan?" from CNNN in Australia. Another CNNN clip made the rounds on the Internet and landed in my inbox last week. Consider it forwarded; you'll need to open this link, "Where to Attack Next" in Windows Media Player. Copy and paste the URL into the Media Player if clicking the link doesn't open the file: http://www.berkshirepublishing.com/assets_news/blog/wheretoattack.wmv
A posting on a message board comparing this show to "The Daily Show," which is one U.S. show that does get us to laugh at ourselves. It's hard for me to believe real people would say such stupid things, but perhaps I'm overestimating my country's people. Are they really unable to identify that very, very large island in the south Pacific? The interviewer has it labeled Iraq at one point (hm, Iraq? Australia?). If only I could believe that this is just a joke.
We've just set up a popculture database about global perspectives on the U.S.A. and would love to have volunteer contributors. We've put together wonderful collections on other topics, like Community and Human-Computer Interaction, and make them available free to teachers and students at our website. You'll need a password to be able to contribute, at the moment anyway, so please drop us a note if you'd like to take part, or send your list of suggestions.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:44 PM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2006
Flickr
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:38 AM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2006
A Comment From France: What's Not to Love?
We received our first comment from France. And it's quite positive. Arthur Clifton McKinley writes, "There are several other great countries out there so the US is certainly thankfully not alone."
We've posted this in the forum in case anyone wants to discuss.
Posted by Carrie Owens at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)
March 7, 2006
Do we censor responses of world opinion at LoveUsHateUS.com?
As you can imagine, naming this site was a challenge. Early on, we considered using something that would stir up debate (the suggestion I remember is "Why The World Hates Us, Really"). But we realized that we should not predetermine what people think. Americans may feel that the world hates them, but that may just be defensive, or stirred up by the media. Our goal is to listen and learn.
And we wanted to encourage broad participation. The U.S. is in some ways terribly divided. Liberals talk to liberals, conservatives to conservatives. If we were just to talk about 'hate,' we'd probably lose people we really want to hear from. Many of us in the U.S. are recent immigrants, after all, who have complex feelings ourselves about this country. We do want to learn about the things you dislike, even hate, about the United States, but it's also going to help to know what you like or admire. That knowledge may help us steer a better course in future.
Plus, it's pretty clear that everyone at least loves jazz.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)
March 3, 2006
LUSHUS Forum: Where the debate continues
Certain comments posted at LOVE US HATE US have generated threads of comments from other readers. In particular, WCG posted a riff on the beauties of America and many other readers referred to it in their comments. WCG posted again and the debate was on. A forum!, we thought, and put it together. We just posted WCG's comment (and a few others) in our new LOVE US HATE US FORUM and look forward to this global experiment expanding into a readable debate.
We've discovered that people don't want to just have their say on this subject, they want to debate and question each other, as well. People want to talk across continents and hemispheres, across cultures and countries, and around the world.
In his post, Yacine Kabbage of Japan said that "it takes courage to ask people to write what they think of 'us' (whether as individuals, groups or nations)." While we can't speak for all of the United States, at Berkshire Publishing we are fascinated and excited by each new comment. Thank you for participating.
Posted by Carrie Owens at 3:33 PM
March 1, 2006
Help define "a global perspective" at our wiki
We're always talking about global perspectives and how people should have them. But one of the things this project is teaching me is that I'm still blinkered in various ways. I think of the time someone in Australia emailed that I was being 'hemisphere-centric' by writing about the end of summer as if everyone was experiencing the same thing.
Defining a global perpective is something that needs to be done globally, not just by a group of mostly U.S. citizens in a publishing office in Massachusetts. We're using software called a wiki to allow many people to contribute ideas and edit one another's work. Please take a look at the current version, and if you'd like to join in as a writer/editor, just drop us a line for a password.
http://aglobalperspective.pbwiki.com
A recent comment says, "One word: me, me, me." If what's wrong with the U.S.A. is that we think only about ourselves, is a global perspective the opposite, completely altruistic? I don't think so, but as ever we want to know what *you* think!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:29 PM | Comments (0)
Does it matter what the world thinks about America?
A long-time author of ours, German but now teaching in Denmark, has doubts about this project. What is the point?, she asked. It isn't scientific, putting up a website and letting people--who knows who they are--write what they happen to believe about the world's most powerful country. Is this really a gauge of world opinion?
Berkshire is tiny publishing company in a very small town in the eastern United States, 140 miles (225 km) north of New York City and the same distance west of Boston. In spite of this rural location, our focus in the last decade has been the world. We have friendships and professional ties to people in many countries, and after 11 September 2001 we found ourselves, thanks to them, taking a fresh look at the country we live in. And we began an academic project, compiling an encyclopedia that would explain, historically and globally, what people think and believe about the U.S.A. (Note: we always try to use U.S. instead of American, though for the subtitle of this project, we chose to use America, because it sounded better. Our apologies!)
What we discovered is that that academic research on the subject is both active and uneven, globally. And we found that while big, well-funded opinion polls are undertaken occasionally by the BBC or the Pew Foundation, there was no one who had gathered stories, observations, and anecdotal information from individuals. So we decided to approach this the way anthropologists do (you may not be surprised to hear that my partner/cofounder at Berkshire is a cultural anthropologist). Anthropologists start by listening. They try not to have preconceptions. They may not even ask questions. They simply participate, as human beings, and listen.
That's what we're trying to do here: we want to hear what people have to say. Later, yes, scholars will be able to try to explain what it all means. But for now, we're excited by the fact that we've created a place where people can share, much more widely, a conversation that goes on in pubs and offices and homes around the world: Why do Americans behave the way they do? Who do they think they are? Or perhaps, in an east coast U.S. put-down I find funny (I come from California, you see, and am a foreigner here), "Who died and left you the king?"
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:22 PM | Comments (0)