4 ms·
>There is perhaps nothing more quintessentially American than the fish stick. uh....
by ouid 6y ago
>There is perhaps nothing more quintessentially American than the fish stick.
uh....
- mcv 6y agoThere must be hundreds of things that are the most quintessentially American thing while also being popular in the rest of the world. The only thing I can come up with about which you could credibly say that "there is perhaps nothing more quintessentially American", is American Football. Literally the entire rest of the world plays regular football instead. There are American Football leagues outside the US (or there is at least one), but my impression is that they rely very strongly on American athletes who couldn't quite make the NFL. Everything else that feels quintessentially American (apple pie, fast food, ketchup, fish sticks) is less quintessentially American than that.
- michaelt 6y agoThe statue of liberty? Cowboys? Rodeos? Hollywood? Superhero movies? Gun shows? Harley-Davidson? McDonalds? For-profit healthcare? Putting flags on everything? Greeters in stores?
- mcv 6y agoYou've got a few good ones in there. The Statue of Liberty comes from France of course. I believe Australia also has cowboys, but I can imagine the culture around it, including rodeos, is very American. The others? Well, maybe. Most of them are not strictly limited to the US, but the US does tend to put a very unique spin on them. For-profit healthcare exists elsewhere, but medical bankruptcy might well be strictly limited to the US. I'm willing to settle for medical bankruptcy being the most quintessentially American thing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- I-M-S 6y agoMuch to my surprise when I moved here, Canada has cowboys and rodeos too
- dalbasal 6y agoPutting flags on everything is definitely not just an american thing.
- michaelt 6y agoIt's not exclusively American, sure, but it's far more American than fish sticks. Americans love flags.
- liability 6y agoThe best superhero movie, Dredd, is British. > Greeters in stores? Quintessentially walmart. Can't say I've seen any other store do that.
- isabelc 6y agoRodeos are Spanish/Mexican in origin.
- dalbasal 6y agoThe Spanish version is somewhat ancestral at this point. Mexico... It's generally hard to pick Mexican and American cultures apart from one another. The Rodeos didn't migrate, the border migrated.
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoCowboys and rodeos are just as Mexican as they are American.
- dalbasal 6y agoCowboys and Rodeos exist in a bunch of places (Australia, Brazil, etc.) but... For the purpose of Cowboy/Rodeo culture, Mexico and the US are (figuratively) the same country. That is, there was a cowboying cultural region and a border got put down the middle of it very gradually. Texans were cowboys before they were american, californians, etc.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoHalf of those are unique entities which arent "quintessentially American, they just are American.
- oblio 6y agoYou even have a saying "as American as apple pie". Everyone makes apple pie. Apples were domesticated 5000+ years ago in China and the apple pie was documented at least as far as 1380, in England. I find it hard to believe nobody else was making apple pie, even earlier than that :-) My grandma made apple pie and she was Romanian and had never been more than 200 km from her village. She definitely didn't learn the recipe from US TV shows :-p
- adventured 6y agoThe saying, "American as apple pie," was never meant to imply Americans invented apple pie (earlier Americans knew it had long existed in Europe for example), rather, that Americans have had a traditional fondness for it, it became a part of our culture. That level of fondness doesn't exist across all cultures. When people would say that, what they meant is it represented a staple of American culture, something Americans commonly liked (with the saying typically being projected at another object that Americans had a fondness for, to express that sense).
- mcv 6y agoAs American as beer? As American as cookies? From other countries it still sounds like a weird saying. Dutch people love apple pie every bit as much as Americans do. Apple pie is something quintessentially loved by people all over the world. From my (Dutch) perspective, cheesecake is far more specifically American than apple pie. I love cheesecake, but it's not as rooted in my tradition as apple pie, and feels more like an American import.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoPeanut butter