A great example of the degradation of culture through Americanization. The modern bright-white cardboard stiff western hat is a facsimile of a facsimile mass produced so a bunch of oil tycoons could play-act as working class cattle rustlers with the oodles of money they harvested from the native population.
It was derived from prior art, but it turned into something uniquely American
When you watch a crowd of old white businessmen in cowboy hats talk about how we need to round up all those illegal border dwellers and send them back where they came from, you’re getting an American aesthetic on a very classically European attitude towards native people.
The US has a very unique culture, and that culture is constantly evolving.
The pastiche changes, but the underlying white nationalist nature of the culture endures. What you’re witnessing isn’t evolution so much as digestion. Foreign bodies picked clean of the meaty bits, broken down into their baser elements, and reincorporated into something the body finds palatable.
The modern Pop Music scene - where it sources material, how it packages and distributes the media, and who ultimately benefits from the windfall of popularity - hasn’t meaningfully changed in nearly a century. There’s a movie - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom - that does an excellent job of illustrating this phenomenon. The harvesting of talent from disadvantaged communities, the flattening and homogenizing of the content, and the subsequent profiteering by corporate magnets that have only grown fatter and more burdensome on the industry to this day.
You get fed the same recirculated slop decade after decade via a narrow channel of hyper-sensationalized advertising. You’re going to listen to Dolly Pardon at the Super Bowl until she’s too old to walk, and by god you’re going to like it. You’re going to watch the Amy Winehouse biopic thirteen years after the industry chewed her up and spat her out and then you’re going to buy tickets to the next Britney Spears world tour right after that.
Culture evolves and is constantly adapted and changed
The wheel can’t spin forever. Eventually this thing America has built is going to break. But until it does, the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Christmas special will be airing in the same CBS timeslot its occupied since 1964.
A great example of the degradation of culture through Americanization. The modern bright-white cardboard stiff western hat is a facsimile of a facsimile mass produced so a bunch of oil tycoons could play-act as working class cattle rustlers with the oodles of money they harvested from the native population.
When you watch a crowd of old white businessmen in cowboy hats talk about how we need to round up all those illegal border dwellers and send them back where they came from, you’re getting an American aesthetic on a very classically European attitude towards native people.
The pastiche changes, but the underlying white nationalist nature of the culture endures. What you’re witnessing isn’t evolution so much as digestion. Foreign bodies picked clean of the meaty bits, broken down into their baser elements, and reincorporated into something the body finds palatable.
The modern Pop Music scene - where it sources material, how it packages and distributes the media, and who ultimately benefits from the windfall of popularity - hasn’t meaningfully changed in nearly a century. There’s a movie - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom - that does an excellent job of illustrating this phenomenon. The harvesting of talent from disadvantaged communities, the flattening and homogenizing of the content, and the subsequent profiteering by corporate magnets that have only grown fatter and more burdensome on the industry to this day.
You get fed the same recirculated slop decade after decade via a narrow channel of hyper-sensationalized advertising. You’re going to listen to Dolly Pardon at the Super Bowl until she’s too old to walk, and by god you’re going to like it. You’re going to watch the Amy Winehouse biopic thirteen years after the industry chewed her up and spat her out and then you’re going to buy tickets to the next Britney Spears world tour right after that.
The wheel can’t spin forever. Eventually this thing America has built is going to break. But until it does, the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Christmas special will be airing in the same CBS timeslot its occupied since 1964.