I'm wondering if this is just natural, or if there is some kind of push to make Australia in particular more American?
In fact the only American stores that survive are the ones the kids want to go into.
So definitely pulled?
Many countries try to export their culture as a means of projecting soft power, some more successfully (or perhaps: aggressively even in some case) than others.
The US simply have been the by far most dominant power in the last hundred years, politically as well as culturally.
As for more recent developments, I'm not so sure about that. If anything, from my perspective due the influence of Spotify and Netflix and the wide range of these services provide, popular culture has become more diverse and less US-centric than it used to be.
That said, in the Anglosphere, American influence is more pronounced than elsewhere because of the same linguistic and cultural roots.
Depending on how in depth you want to go you can also take a skim of this https://web.archive.org/web/20011107151615/http://www.guerri... for some search terms for a deeper dive.
Where is the mystery? It would take special effort not to receive such exports from a behemoth which speaks your language and lives next door. Inevitable diffusion. Consider how many Australian artists become also American, for instance.
Everything else - no, or more accurately no more than normally. US has always been good at exporting culture & soft power from Taylor Swift to corporate culture to memes.
But seeing now what is happening in the UK, I think the "Americanisation of UK" has started. Big examples of this you see is the TV dramas made by local producers, and the news channel GB News(which actually sounds like Fox News of the US). UK was very good at making spy, political and comedy TV shows. No one came close to making the quality-level and substance of these type of shows across the world. Same is the case of News channels. The UK journalism, if done without constraints, is very good. But unfortunately I have seen both TV and News going the American-way, may be due to profit and or politics.
UK is more of a knife crime scene
(There are armed response units with automatics though)
“Local stuff” are terrific in Brazil (where I live) and I really enjoy European movies. I watch American movies, but most of them are hard passes — super hero movies, for instance, are formulaic and often very bad movies.
If you grew up watching mostly American movies, it takes a while and some effort to get used to different movie making styles. This can be quite hard (hence the heavy promotion of American movies), but it’s liberating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahiers_du_Cin%C3%A9ma%27s_Ann...
Disclosure: Not an American.
There are tons of small budget local movies abroad as well, these aren't the ones that are mass marketed in western media.
However, right now Marvel blockbusters are their prime product, one can say the face of made in the US cinema. And that's… sad.
A UK or French medieval show looks completely different. Different type of quality.There is no surprise that there are so many UK actors playing even American characters in US made movies. They have great acting schools and a good theater culture. There is nothing like a live performance every night to work on your acting.
I think it happens both organically and intentionally, with different degrees in different countries. For example Denmark has been force fed US culture for many years, due to the strategic importance of Thule Air Base in Greenland, which is Danish on paper. The US culture presents a stark contrast to the Nordic culture, the former being about expansion while the latter about containment (from public behaviour to company operations) and you can see the negative effects of those two conflicting ideologies.
And I have no evidence of US triple letter agencies conducting psyOPs in Denmark, I wish I did
One reason of this push is internet and communication technology. Most of what you use in computer, and phone is made in China (hardware), designed in US (software).
Same thing with the Internet. People from all over the world are on the English Internet, absorbing American/British/etc memes and values. Is that 'intentional' in the sense there's some shadowy cabal behind it? No. It's just a consequence of communications technology.
I’m not sure why the NFL does a few of these games (overseas, more often in London) each year. The stadium seems full, but I don’t know if it’s more Americans who traveled for the game, Europeans who are clamoring for more American Football, or just folks curious to see what the game is like.
I think there is great value for the US in the soft power that comes from other countries adopting American culture, but I’m not sure whether it’s deliberate or just a natural consequence of being such a large economy. There’s also a deeply embedded sense of ‘manifest destiny’ in American culture. We’re out of land to acquire, because we reached the pacific coast and modern politics doesn’t allow for empire building the way it once did. So maybe the next frontier in expanding (our) civilization is to spread our culture.
Somebody mentioned American style Halloween, which I think is a rather interesting case due to its recent, extremely rapid spread. Halloween is like catnip for youth, because it combines three enticing things -- goodies, costumes, and sanctioned convention-breaking. The spread of Halloween has been very controversial, even in some Western countries, but I think it's unstoppable unless the receiving culture has something at least as appealing to compete. I attribute the rapid spread in this generation to the internet.
Halloween is just a lot of fun. No one can avoid fun from spreading. American style Christmas is also a heck of a lot more fun than traditional European style. In Thailand, one of the most non-Christian countries out there, during Christmas there are American Christmas themes everywhere with music and green and red and people who are born Buddhists exchanging gifts on Christmas morning.
American culture is broadly appealing because it’s generally appealing to human beings that are individuals, and mixes in materialism and consumerism and a little bit of greed and violence. It’s not an insidious plot - it’s an outgrowth of liberal humanism and specifically 1960’s philosophy packaged for resale in the 1980’s and marketed aggressively internationally in the 1990+‘s. Mix in the fact American culture was created by mixing cultures from around the world, the fact that most middle class in the global society at least know someone who moved to America and comes back bringing the culture on visits, it’s totally unsurprising it has broad influence and appeal. And since the influence and appeal translates into expanded consumer markets American companies relentlessly market and make available to consume everything American.
But I’d also note in my travels I’ve not observed the export being specifically one way or crushing. I’ve seen elements of every culture I’ve experienced mixed into American culture as I’m used to it as an American. I see Japan, China, Korea, Germany, France, Mexico, Africa, even Polynesia influence. Likewise in those places their adoption of American culture is distinctly an interpretation based in their local culture.
This is in contrast to say French colonialism in modern Polynesia where the schools only teach French language and history and have traditionally proscribed Polynesian tattooing in school and work institutions.
The flexibility and adaptability of American culture to local cultural interpretation and lack of “force” make it an easy to consume culture without pervasive resentment.
For example, the USA has a particular history of racial inequality, and in many companies employees need to undergo compulsory training about the so-called "white privilege" and so on. I was surprised to see this being imported in the UK. Most of my friends ignored it just like other parts of the corpoculture ("you just need to watch the video and mark the right answers") but there is something unsettling about this. And obviously there is no room for any discussion, should you be so inconsiderate to start it.
Got any detailed explanation of this?
Many people like to blame Obama for that, but the stripping away of Americans rights is a bipartisan effort.
I see a lot of discussion of force and it feels blind to colonialism and other even more forceful cultural indoctrination. American culture isn’t generally forced on anyone (exceptions exist!). It evolved as individual humanism by a multicultural society, so it’s essentially the cultural equivalent to a donut - super appealing to our human senses, relatable across cultures, and probably bad for you in large quantities. That doesn’t require force, just availability and marketing.
Selfishness and egocentrism play well with consumptionism.
I think it starts with natural isolation and weak societal bonds in the US (haha, as far as it can be observed in Hollywood movies). People lack something then and they are offered a lot of entertainment. That entertainment is more often than not something you buy.
And then at some point the US corporates realized the US market is not so big. Or it is big, but the total world is bigger. And they can or even need to export their goods and services. And when exporting they often need to sell and market their products using feelings. These feelings are often pictured in American context, even if the content is presented abroad.
TLDR: I think it's intentional.
Fun fact: Freddy Mercury studied in an American school in India.
I believe America and Russia were competing for soft power. Americans and Russians allegedly funded pro-democracy and pro-communism parties in India.
There was Raduga publishers which translated Russian literature into high quality English books. I remember fairy tales, city kid in a village, Lenin's mother who had children receive death penalty for revolution. Yes, it was way later than 1991.
India, after independence, experimented with "limited capitalism", that is, it had private banks, foreign brand operated in India e.g. Coca-Cola, universities were formed with help from American universities, etc. But after few years, India started becoming more socialist (India is by constitution a socialist country). Banks were made public, foreign brands like Coca-Cola were asked to leave India etc. The goal was to make India self-reliant. Local brands were promoted internally. The fallout from this was India was heavily sanctioned by the west. No educational books from foreign authors, no computers, no foreign technology, no defence deals(except from Russia). In all this few Indian commercial brands started to shine within India. One of them was "ThumsUp", a soft-drink similar to Coca-Cola. After India was brought to its knees due to sanction and its own internal old bureaucratic structures, India finally agreed to "open up" and foreign brands were allowed to enter the country again. Coca-Cola came to India again. The founders of the local Indian soft-drink "ThumsUp" became jittery looking at the might of the US brands Coca-Cola and Pepsi and sold out to Coca-Cola. Since then Coca-Cola, the company, has tried many times in various was to kill the "ThumsUp" brand by changing the taste of the drink, raising prices, changing the logo, changing the bottle shape and size. Nothing worked! Even though Coca-Cola now owns the brand, it has been unsuccessful in killing the Indian brand.
Now, consider the story on the other side of the world, in Scotland. Scotland has its own soft-drink "Irn-Bru". When the American soft-drinks companies tried to beat that brand they failed. But unlike the Indian company that sold itself, the Scottish company decided to stand against the might of the American companies.
So, it is about how the locals handle the American entry. America does push it's "ideas" on to other cultures, as was the case in India, but the locals can decide whether to accept it or not.