If you're an American and don't know what it's like to have your country and culture reduced to about three wildly inaccurate stereotypes, I think the Top Gear USA Special episode may enlighten you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNrybXt-_J0&list=PLWpVvJ8o7w...
That said, this kind of thing doesn't come from a position of racism or malice. The writers of these films have a story they want to tell, and taking the time to portray a given country accurately might very well hinder that storytelling.
On a somewhat related note, re-watching one of my favourite childhood TV shows (Mission: Impossible, the original series) now gives me several jaw-drop moments per episode -- each one involves a team illegally entering another country and committing a series of crimes or fraudulent activities, frequently to free someone who was caught doing the same activities earlier, often against various generals, leaders and shieks belonging to a relatively narrow set of ethnic stereotypes. 1960-70's sensibilities did mean that storytelling was much less of a minefiled than it is today, but it still gives me pause.
The political climate needed the public to be aligned with meddling a lot with foreign countries (and the Vietnam war was still happening), and passing it as something that isn't just happening, but needs to be done.
The more modern equivalent would be 24h (the tv series), which basically shoved to the public the notion that torturing and going extra-legal ways was something heroes had to do.
> The more modern equivalent would be 24h (the tv series), which basically shoved to the public the notion that torturing and going extra-legal ways was something heroes had to do.
24 was developed before 9/11. The pilot was filmed in March 2001 and production started July. It was just a freak coincidence that it was released around the same time as 9/11.
Moreover, heroes going outside the rules is a longstanding trope in American film. Most American law enforcement movies in the 1970s-early 2000s portrayed “the system” as holding back the good guys with bureaucracy and rules. Dirty Harry was 1971. It’s just because we’re Americans, not Europeans.
I didn't have 9/11 in mind regarding this, so I guess we're in agreement ?
> It’s just because we’re Americans
This is a specific political ideology that I don't think defines the country. In theory, in 20 years the USA could have a completely different political landscape.
> didn't have 9/11 in mind regarding this, so I guess we're in agreement ?
9/11 was when the “War on Terror” started.
> This is a specific political ideology that I don't think defines the country.
But it’s not a “specific political ideology.” My friends and I loved “24” in college and most of us had supported Al Gore. “Break the rules to get the bad guys” is just Americanism.
This was just slapping a name and an official policy on something that has been going on for way longer. In a way, 9/11 was the point where it could be put as is on the public place and be accepted politically ?
> Break the rules to get the bad guys
I'd offer you "agencies that have their own extra-legal rules and only need some higher up's approval" as a better description.
The CIA doing it's own drug trafficking to balance its sheets would be a real life example of this.
Absolutely. It's part of a very elaborate society-wide system that went online during the 2nd half of the XX century, for the purpose of establishing a global ingroup. You can see it working today as the participation-ensuring building block of the contemporary "attention economy", which is based on the democratization of the same technology, namely the tools for creating convincing intermedia narratives.
What's new about it is that as the means of creating the requsite affective environment of hyperreality ("engagement") gradually became available not only to nation-states but to private parties (down to the individual amateur influencer starting with no political agenda), they managed to interpose themselves as the very means of our critique of themselves.
Which on the meta level is a genius, as it establishes whole new channels for inter-reality exchange (a.k.a. cultural osmosis) on a first-come-first-serve basis, knowledge arbitrators love those. Not everyone necessarily finds it too comfy to find themselves in the same ecosystem as said ingroup though. Hence also the equally elaborate evolution in faux-antisystemic reaction since the turn of the century (while they try to bury the potential of technology as means of critique and bottom-up social reengineering.)
Have you read the book? “Manufacturing Consent” is about how incentive structures align to achieve the effect of coordinated propaganda without actual formal coordination. The classic example offered in the book is establishment media giving favorable treatment to information leaked by the White House in order to ensure future information coming their way.
24 isn’t an example of “Manufacturing Consent” because there’s no alignment of interests of incentive structure. It’s an example of a different thing, that is an underlying cultural pattern that’s reflected both in media and foreign policy. Americans love their heroes to shove weenie bureaucrats in the locker. 24 is just Dirty Harry in a more contemporary law enforcement setting.
It's all storytelling. And when a good story is being told, the audience understands that it's a caricature with a lot of truth and a bit of simplification.
US TV is endlessly about reducing a certain subset of the US to a bit of a caricature to entertain. Real housewives of (insert town), Jersey Shore, Sopranos, Duck Dynasty. I don't think anyone here believes all Italians in Jersey are mafia.
Real maturity comes from being able to laugh at yourself without getting offended at every second line.
I wouldn’t put The Sopranos in that list. It was telling a story about a small subset of New Jersey people (Jerseites?) but it specifically deals with the complexities of cultural identity, stereotyping, and how the majority of Italian Americans view mafia. Tony attempts to deflect accusations by claiming stereotyping. Dr. Melfi’s ex husband is derisive of the mafia destroying Italian American’s image and is hypersensitive about perceptions. Many normal Italian Americans are collateral damage to the mafia’s parasitic activities.
I wouldn’t put that in the same category as reality tv shows selling hyper dramatized personalities to conform to, and make fun of, stereotypes. Its like saying The Wire and the Real Housewives of Atlanta are both caricatures of black people.
> Real maturity comes from being able to laugh at yourself without getting offended at every second line.
To a point. When the entertainment market is flooded with wildly inaccurate stereotypes (produced by a majority/mono culture) then it can become a punching down situation. That's not OK.
> the audience understands that it's a caricature with a lot of truth and a bit of simplification
I suspect a whole lot of TV fails both parts of this test. The audience doesn't understand and there is only a little bit of truth and a lot of simplification.
There's merit to your suspicions. For example, the 1996 movie A Time to Kill depicts a black father avenging the rape and attempted murder of his ten-year-old daughter by two white men, using it to depict the evils of white racism, and justifying vigilantism. The rape (but not the vigilantism) is based on a true event, when the author witnessed the "harrowing" court testimony of a 12 year old rape and assault victim, with two simplifications: there were two victims and one assailant, instead of two assailants and one victim, and the races were reversed: the perpetrator was black, and the victims were white: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_to_Kill_(Grisham_novel)...
Similarly, the film Bad Ass features an older Latino that beats up white skinheads that were harassing and threatening him. Based on a real event, where an older white man was being harassed and threatened by a black man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Ass_(film)
The film River's Edge is about a boyfriend that kills his girlfriend, both white teens. Based on a real murder, but the perpetrator there was black: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River%27s_Edge
In Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Nazis have free reign in Egypt, and the locals support and cheer for the British and Allies, to the point of breaking into song lauding British sailors. In reality, Egypt at that time was effectively under British occupation, which the Egyptians fiercely disliked, and hated the British (they would have a revolution against them in 1952).
I don't think Borat works as well for this. Borat was made for an international audience, including many Americans, and involved Sasha Baron Cohen meeting Americans in person to wind them up, so there had to be an element of accuracy in his satire. Top Gear, on the other hand, was made primarily for a British audience, so the jokes in that episode are very much lazy stereotypes that the British have about Americans without having to be too rooted in reality. I imagine that the production crew spent some time looking for a filling station where they could provoke the 'throwing rocks' incident, for example.
That said, this kind of thing doesn't come from a position of racism or malice. The writers of these films have a story they want to tell, and taking the time to portray a given country accurately might very well hinder that storytelling.