Top Five of American Institutions that Americans Expect the Rest of the World to Know About, But We Really Don’t
I have an embarrassing confession to make: I watch a lot of Amerícan trash tv. This is not a post about American trash tv, nor is it an indictment of American culture in general, either. This is just a whimsical musing on a few phenomena I think everyone can relate to on some level — presented in a format inspired by my favorite style of article writing: the +Cracked.com school of writing.
Also, bear in mind, this is from the perspective of one Scandinavian asshole whose frame of reference may or may not be fully up to scratch. In fact, that’s very likely. I’m saying that because I don’t want the rest of Europe to think I’m speaking on their behalf, nor anyone else to think I was being anything other than a deeply subjective, possibly ill-informed turd nugget.
With that said, here’s my Top Five of American Institutions that Americans Expect the Rest of the World to Know About, But We Really Don’t:
5. Sesame Street
We know who Jim Henson is, and we know who the Muppets are. Hell, we know who Tokka and Rahza are, and they are probably the least popular muppets in existence.
But Sesame Street is absolutely foreign to us. Children here have no idea who Grover is, what the hell Big Bird is supposed to be, or why Elmo has the voice of a tiny squeaking mouse when we know he’s voiced by a guy who looks like he should be playing Evander Holyfield in a biopic.
Sesame Street is like an American institution. Every child in America, regardless of race, creed, religion, sex, perverted preferences or social stature, has watched Sesame Street since before they could speak. It’s as deeply ingrained a social reference as the Bible.
Here, only adults who got bored on Wikipedia or YouTube know what the hell you’re jabbering about when you’re making “Letter of the Day” jokes. Just thought we’d let you know.
4. Baseball
Don’t get me wrong; the concept of whacking a ball with a stick is not completely novel to us, like we imagine the concept of iron utensils must be to Asian people. We’ve got games like that, too, and the reason why baseball is so inherently confusing to us is because it reminds us a lot of games that we’ve made up that involve whacking a ball with a stick, but doesn’t follow any of the rules you’ve made up.
And anyone who’s tried to sit down and patiently study the rule book behind baseball, without the comfort of having been brought up with it through hand-me-down wisdom since they were old enough to tell an on-coming baseball traveling at several hundred miles per hour from a fruit pulp-bearing “helicopter”, have, at least in my imagination, thrown up their hands in frustration before they even got to the end of the chapter about “officially sanctioned bats.”
Baseball makes no goddamn sense. It’s an incredibly over-complicated game centered around one relatively random outcome of events: the successful contact between a wooden stick and a ball traveling outdoors through a bewildering myriad of incalculable factors. Just thought we’d let you know.
3. Country music
We have rednecks, too. Or, at least, we have “rural people.” And I’m not saying everyone who listens to country music is a redneck, or lives in the woods, or votes Republican, or even, say, has ever looked romantically at a piece of firearm. Just to get the stereotypes out of the way.
But country music is one of those other inherently American phenomenons that inevitably inspires one out of two reactions from us: 1) bewildernment at the subject matter, the awkward instrumentation, the distracting inflections, or any or all of the above, or 2) feigned understanding and head-nodding, perhaps while wearing a ridiculous hat, masking everything just described in 1).
It’s not that we can’t sympathize with the heartfelt sentiment of being married to a woman that doesn’t know her place or won’t make us a sandwich when we tell her to. It’s just that it’s never happened to us, and never will, because we don’t treat genders like different stages of evolution. Er, I mean, I don’t. Anyway, just thought we’d let you know.
2. Taco Bell
Haven’t got much to say about this, because my god, I wish we did get it. I fucking love Taco Bell. I love the idea of taking food that’s inherently unhealthy to a speedily-prepared level of sloppy greasiness that threatens to eradicate the word “culinary” entirely from the equation.
But around here, we trust McDonald’s to provide us with our Mexican-inspired cuisine. McDonald’s. I ask you.
When Sylvester Stallone was foaming at the mouth at the prospect of dining on a burrito after having spent a hundred years or so in cold storage, I sat there as a 14-year old boy, mouth agape at what a marvellously fanciful palace this “Taco Bell” thing was. And, also, that Denis Leary ate rat burgers for a living.
1. Child pageants
I’m sorry, I really want to be diplomatic on this one, but I just got to ask. What the mother fuck?
I mean, we get envy. We get competition. We used to lob the heads off our national leaders if they didn’t live up to expectations. We’re down with the whole survival of the fittest mentality.
But we, and I specifically mean we as Scandinavian heathens, didn’t start shoving psychedelic mushrooms down our children’s throats until they’d reached a certain level of maturity. Like, when they could comfortably support a sword using nothing but their own body weight.
This whole “0-3 year category” thing just creeps me the fuck out, and I’ll apologize right now for saying that to anyone who themselves got paraded around in that ghoulishly-lit convention hall full of plastic chairs before their barely-formed brains had even given a second thought to start storing inputs in memory, but my god.
Maybe I just don’t get the competitive element. Maybe it won’t scar a person’s sense of self-worth for the rest of their lives to look back upon their infancy and learn that they were put on display like blobs of human cattle in ghastly outfits in front of whooping zombies, each of them united in their vicarious living through their children’s perceived magnificence, before they could even gather their thoughts for a sustained period long enough to utter a discouraging grumble.
Maybe. Just thought I’d let you know.
