Do Americans have a culture?

Question

as an Englishman who has just arrived in the USA on business i feel i must ask this.
Everybody is aware that the USA hasnt got much of a culture, but i was thinking that perhaps those more fortunate like ourselves could lend some of ours to the USA for them to warp/fashion into their own.
At the moment the only famous American icon i can think of is Ronald McDonald and even he is Scottish.

PHONEBREAKER-
Babe Ruth-never heard of her
Ronald Reagan-senile old fart
Patton-somebody who was 2 years late for a war
Ali-Americans made him become a muslim-he hates America
Anymore twatty?

rollin west-dont keep on about my balls.People will start talking

PHONEBREAKER-nooooooo once again i have been defeated by an Americans superior humour.
Please spare me

Answer 1

Oh dear, was this bandwagon chosen specially or did you just stumble across it.

Answer 2

As an Englishman I find it amazing at just how many good quality authors, poets and playwrights the United States has produced. In my short life-time I have read at least one or two works by the following Americans -

Emily Dickinson
Edgar Allen Poe
Washington Irvine
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry Thoreau
Stephen Crane
Herman Melville
James Fenimore Cooper
Mark Twain
Henry James
Edith Wharton
Ernest Hemingway
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Willa Cather
Sherwood Anderson
Gertrude Stein
John Dos Passos
Ezra Pound
John Steinbeck
William Faulkner
J.D. Salinger
Jack Kerouac
Norman Mailer
Frederick Douglass
Zora Neale Hurston
Dorothy West
Toni Morrison
Maya Angelou
James Baldwin
Alice Walker
William Faulkner
Tennessee Williams
Eugene O'Neil
T.S Eliot
E.E Cummings
Arthur Miller

Quite frankly I amazed that you have never heard of these famous American literary icons.

Answer 3

As far as I'm aware - grits and hoecakes are served nowhere else in the world but the Southern USA. Gumbo is strictly Cajun, and most people don't know what okra and hominy are. We have Martha Graham, Bob Fosse, Arthur Miller, Tommy Tune, Rogers n Hammerstein, George n Ira Gershwin, Beverly Sills, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price, The Smithsonian Institution, Carnegie Hall, Mark Twain, The Masters, Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving, waterbeds, The Met, MOMA, the Brooklyn Bridge, Pete Fountain, Area 52, Kitty Hawk, baseball, lacrosse, NASA, John Deere, Eli Whitney, Disney, Aaron Copland, Appalachia .. we're the home of Jazz, Blues, Zydeco and Rock n Roll (which you've borrowed quite nicely).

We have a rich culture.

Answer 4

Ronald McDonald is not a culture, he's a fast food advertising figure. What are you talking about? WE ARE MULTI-CULTURAL, that's why even though everyone complains about us everyone's still trying to get in. Have you ever heard of things like Democracy, Baseball, Real Football, Hollywood, Religious Freedom, Deodorant, Taking Showers & Brushing your teeth, those are some of the things in the American culture which the english could use. As far as icons go how about George Washington (oh yeah the english have a different view on him), Babe Ruth, George Patton (who saved your Butts in WW2), Ronald Reagan, Muhammad Ali just name a few. Whose your Icons? An old lady & Benedict Arnold? Or how about a druggie named VICIOUS who couldn't sing and met his prematurely, but long overdue, end (thankfully for all of us with ears)?
ADDED:
Aw, the poor englishwoman doesn't like it when people come back at her, that's OK I will always defend this country and it's culture (I think you should look up the word). By the way just because someone's Muslim that doesn't mean they hate America, that's a religous choice, IE Religious freedom, as stated earlier.

Answer 5

Well as a British person who is dentally challenged who swigs several mouthfuls of vodka to start the day. May be you're confused with mass culture and American culture.... these terms are a tad different. I would say that the U.S. is so vast there is culture, but it's just more localised and diverse, so outsiders when they initially visit just see the mass culture that WE TOO have in the UK.

The U.S. was built on the whole ethos of the melting pot, and that arguably is the case culturally - it's so homogenised that people such as yourself don't look beyond that.

Answer 6

Yes, we have a culture and you've been busy living it back home. American culture has spread all over the world. The entire planet wears our style clothes, listens to our music , eats our foods, watches our movies and TV shows. If America seems to not have a culture, it's because you are so used to it in your every day English life that when you come here, you can't perceive it.

Answer 7

America is multicultural - and not just meaning that there are people from many other world cultures here - there are a variety of homegrown cultures, and subcultures throughout the different states, cities, and regions.

There are plenty of Americans that disdain the corporate commercialism, and pop fashion garbage that attempt to dominate this country.

That said, there are also a lot of Americans that buy into it 100%.

Answer 8

Anything we do is culture.
You don't have too much or too little culture. Whatever you do, that's your culture.

The difference is that "english" culture (you're probably talking about London urban culture) hasn't change in the last 20 centuries while culture in other places is changing on a daily basis. I like it that way, you obviously like the way it is around you (at home) so everybody's happy.
Thank you very much

Answer 9

Your probably in a city where everyone is integrated into Americana and don't have much of a culture, truth is America is a mix of different culture across the land, mostly in rural non city areas is where people have more of a sense of their own culture and every part of the US has a different type of people with different national backgrounds with different culture, for example Hispanics in the Southwest, Scandinavian background in the Northern US states, the people in Pennsylvania with a German background, the Cajun in Louisiana and the Bayous, so many more but those are just some examples, don't be so quick to judge.

Answer 10

Why are you lying? Whats the point of this?

You have been posting the same questions on a daily bases for the last 2 months, always attacking America. You always say that "you are an Englishman who has just arrived in the USA on business", but clearly you are not.

So whats the point? WHY LIE?

Answer 11

yes, we have our own culture. however, many are so distracted by the myriad other cultures which are welcome to thrive here that they don't recognize it. Also, most of america's culture resides outside the megacities. The larger the city, the more the heterogeneous cultural landscape obscures Americana. Plus, in my opinion, the metro culture tends to look down on the true American culture.

Spend some time in small towns around America. You'll find a lot of culture.