The Last Word

Our Great Culture
For some reason, I try to like the United States of America.

Sometimes this is hard.

For the majority of my life I’ve tried to get a handle on what American Culture is. It seems that when I run into the concept of culture these days, it means other peoples’ cultures. Cultural studies seem to imply the cultures of ethnic, racial, or otherwise minority groups. We talk about black culture, Native American cultures, Hispanic culture, even women’s culture. Look at the cultural studies section of your local bookstore. You never hear about American Culture (or at least I don’t). While it is true that all the cultures mentioned above do constitute segments of American Culture, what about a general American Culture? Are we too close to our culture to recognize what it is? Is it culture if you do it twenty-four hours a day? I’ve heard of a course of study taught at certain colleges called American Studies, and perhaps American Culture is taught in these classes. But does an American have to take a class in order to know what American Culture is? In my attempts to get a chokehold on this thing called American Culture, I’ve run into two concepts: high culture and popular (or pop) culture. This distinction has been made about any culture that is sufficiently complex enough (that is containing two socioeconomic classes: the haves and the have-nots). High culture (in America anyway) means drinking cappuccino, reading the New York Times Book Review, and being a professor of English, History, or perhaps American Studies. Pop Culture means doing anything else, including but not limited to watching sit-coms and listening to music written after 1890. Despite any arguments to the contrary Seinfeld and John Tesh are not included in the category of High Culture. What makes America so incredible is that it’s one of the most powerful (if not THE most powerful) countries in the world AND IT’S ONLY TWO-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE YEARS OLD. America, as American Studies professors will no doubt point out, is great because it has literally hundreds of cultures (most of which come with the identifying label of minority). America is like a child’s chemistry set in the hands of, well, a child. The same country that produced the Mansons (Charles and Marilyn) also produced Martin Luther King and Chuck Berry. And H. P. Lovecraft, and Richard Nixon, and Gloria Steinem, and Tina Turner, and David Letterman. (For more examples, see People, Life, or Us magazine or write to Dr. Richard Peterson, Professor of American Studies, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg MS 39180). America is as diverse and explosive as the weapons it produces. A large part of what makes American culture such a powerful force is the fact that we’re always fighting with one another, making fun of one another, and goading one another into sticking up for ourselves and our cultures. American culture is the condition of many cultures living in a state of constant warfare with one another, blacks and whites, haves and have-nots, English Professors and American Studies Professors, all within the boundaries of a single nation. That is what makes us strong. That is what makes me proud to be an American.

Jim Robinson