Т.В. Артеменко, Е.В. Кривощекова, Е.В. Кравченко, Н.Е. Николаева - Reader in Language and Culture - Part II, страница 6

The government and various associations pass out awards andcitations of achievement like so many Christmas cards. It's a rare Americanwho doesn't have on his wall at least one Certificate of Excellence, whetherin Management, Salesmanship, or Best Attitude.Every American bookshop has shelves and shelves of self-help books inthe belief that you can achieve true happiness by following their advice.Titles such as The South Beach Diet, since becoming thinner will make youmore attractive; The Purpose-Driven Life, a book that teaches how toimprove your life in a religious context and Who Moved My Cheese, alaughably simplistic business guide that has been on the best-seller list foralmost a decade and whose entire message boils down to "If your well goesdry, seek water elsewhere." The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands,which describes how to keep a man happy, and presumably at home insteadof down the road on a bar stool.

The New York Times Book Review givessuch books their own bestseller list so they won't crowd out the real books.Elementary schools focus on teaching children self-esteem, urging them29to feel good about their accomplishments (even if such accomplishmentsdon't include the ability to perform long division without a calculator).Some schools have stopped giving spelling tests because many of thechildren couldn't get all the words right and the resulting failure damagedtheir confidence, i.e., made them feel bad.InsecurityThe dark side of American cheerfulness is the undercurrent of insecurityand depression that drives much of the country's commerce and nearly all ofits psychiatry.

Deep down, Americans are deeply fearful, pessimistic,and unhappy. They feel inadequate to meet life's challenges.On September 11, 2001, the nation's fears were realized. The assaultdramatically changed the American world view as security cameras,checkpoints, and bag searches became routine for institutions as diverse ashigh schools and museums.Americans are more afraid than ever.

They are afraid of terrorists. Theyare afraid they will lose their jobs. They're afraid that after working so hard,someone (whether the government through taxes or a thief through force)will take the things they value away from them, that a terrorist will targetthem personally. They're afraid their children will grow up to becomecriminals, pornographic film stars, or, worse still, politicians. They're afraidthat eating raw oysters will kill them, that their neighbours make moremoney than they do, that they have cancer.If they are single they're afraid they will never get married, if marriedthey're afraid they will get divorced, if divorced they fear they will nevermeet anyone attractive ever again.

To prevent these dire events Americansmove to the suburbs, buy insurance, avoid shellfish, go into therapy, installsecurity cameras, and join clubs for singles. Often this only makes theanxiety worse by bringing sufferers into contact with people who have thesame problem.Being depressed is unattractive and thus not suitable for public display.30The preferred reaction is treatment, either with drugs or psychotherapy orboth, and concealment. If pressed about his or her state of mind, anAmerican will admit, "I was pretty anxious about the situation at first, butI'm sure everything will be OK.";When seeing each other off on a journey, Americans will say "Have asafe trip".

The travellers will have updated their wills and made sure theinsurance is current, because you never know what can happen, and itprobably won't be good.It's a ConspiracyAmericans see conspiracies behind every event, from the Kennedyassassination to the worldwide spread of AIDS. After all, things don't justhappen by chance, do they.

Someone must be pulling the strings.Who really runs the world? A conspiracy, obviously. Opinions differ asto whether it involves the Illuminati or the Trilateral Commission, orpossibly the Catholic church, but the underlying paranoia remains the same.Terrorism has now provided justification for their fears as they looksuspiciously at foreigners and install metal detectors at the doors of theiroffices.BehaviourFamily ValuesConservative politicians in particular like to natter on about familyvalues. The problem is that in America nobody is exactly sure what `family'means. The American divorce and illegitimacy rates are high, homosexualcouples are having and adopting children in greater numbers, and nearly athird of Americans live alone anyway.Marriage in the United States often looks more like serial monogamythan lifetime partnership, especially in the major cities.

Just under half of all31marriages end in divorce. However, this statistic is misleading: manypeople, such as Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton BurtonWarner Fortensky, wed repeatedly, but three-quarters of Americans whomarry for the first time stay married. The others go through several spousesbefore settling down. And approximately 10% of men and 6% of womennever marry at all.The latest controversy is that of same-sex marriages, which werelegitimized by local authorities and then struck down by Federal courts. Thefact that many samesex couples are faithful for decades, while many heterosexual couples divorce after days, apparently is not supposed to affect thedebate.When Americans say `family', they mean a nuclear family of Mom, Dad,and the kids. That such households are melting down at a prodigious ratedoesn't affect the cultural ideal one iota.Another component of the ideal family is a nonworking wife, the caring,nurturing mother who greets children after school with a plate of homebaked cookies.

Such women, while they do exist, are nearly extinct.CultureThough the fine arts do exist in the United States, often heavilysubsidised by government and charitable foundations, the country's truepulse is popular. Ever the beacon of democracy, America produces cultureof the people, by the people, and for the people, all the people, all over theworld.American popular culture is, in fact, the most popular pop culture everinvented.

Dubbed versions of Sex and the City and The Simpsons blare fromtelevisions in Brazil and China, Spanish senoritas munch McDonald's inMadrid, and Thai taxis travel to the rhythms of Madonna.Like King Canute, foreign governments occasionally try to stop the32rising tide of American cultural influence, and like the hapless king theyalways fail.

The tsunami that is American popular culture sweeps asideeverything in its path.It's Not Real Life, It's TelevisionTelevision is the single strongest cultural influence on American life andthe widely recognised lowest common denominator. More homes havetelevisions than indoor plumbing, and the average high school studentspends more time watching television than sitting in the classroom.Television defines a reality of its own; news that isn't covered ontelevision didn't happen, and television-only events (such as the wedding orthe death of a fictitious character) provoke nationwide reactions and notchup record viewing audiences.

Daytime shows lean towards soap operas withplots that revolve around infidelity and medical crises, and talk shows inwhich hosts prod their guests to reveal personal details no sane personwould want to make public. Dramas and crime shows take over the eveningprogramming, with the result that by the time he is 18 the average Americanchild has seen 16,000 televised murders.The American passion for getting something for nothing reaches afrenzy in evening game shows. Another evening staple is the hard-boiledinvestigative show, which dwells on lurid topics such as body-snatching,drug dealing, and juvenile male prostitution.

To this has been added anothergenre - the real-life crime show, on which a camera crew follow the policearound for an evening and film them making arrests.Every time you think that no depth is unplumbed, sure enough,television finds a format even more degrading. The show Survivor, forexample, pits a dozen castaways against each other in meaninglesscompetitions; the individual who can endure the most humiliation gets amillion dollars. Temptation Island films a number of supposedly happycouples marooned on an island with a variety of sexy singletons who try to33break them up.Television has reached its acme, or perhaps more accurately its nadir,with the introduction of cable and satellite TV, which provides hundreds ofchannels of drivel.

Specialised programmes include The Weather Channel,24 hours a day of ;barometry and precipitation forecasts; Music Television(MTV) and its country music and soul music imitators; C-Span, whichshows the U.S. Congress in session and is widely applied as a soporific; andCourt TV, which allows viewers to shriek at the television judge the waysports fans might shriek at a referee.Few topics are considered cultural minefields. Turn on an Americantelevision any afternoon and you can see people discussing, in intimatedetail, before millions; of viewers, topics that natives of other nationswouldn't whisper about in the dark. One may hear the testimony of a manwho had a sex-change operation so he could live a fulfilled life as a lesbian,or a wife who had a baby by her sister's husband and wants another so thechild will have siblings (her own husband doesn't know about the situation,but presumably will soon if he's at home watching television).

Talk-showguests include everything from homosexual fathers to bisexual nuns tochildren who killed their parents, interspersed with advertisements forlaxatives.Faced with such unabashed exhibitionism, one is tempted to scream, "Isnothing sacred?" The answer, of course, is "Well, actually, no. Not ontelevision, anyway."Eating and DrinkingYou Are What You EatAmericans approach every meal mindful that the food will either be badfor them or, worse, make them fat. Food contributes to disease, particularlyheart disease, and one never knows which mouthful could be fatal.Suspicious dishes include steak (a `heart attack on a plate') and any high34fat,' high-cholesterol, high-calorie, low-fibre food, such as sugar, butter,cheese, ice cream, white bread, or fried anything.

Hot dogs, an Americanstaple, have been linked with leukemia in children. Even spinach and beetsare not exempt, since they are high in oxalic acid, which is harmful in largequantities. In the endless American battle for eternal youth, glowing goodhealth and an attractive figure, food is on the front lines, and flavour is thefirst casualty.The American dietary obsession is fed by a seemingly endless series ofscientific studies that demonstrate the wholesomeness or toxicity of variousfoodstuffs.