Pax Americana

I went out last night with a fellow North-East Englishman and something about my time had me thinking about what makes English people English. I came up with a rough list:

1. Humourous dourness (think Douglas Adams, George Orwell) that gets taken for misanthropy.
2. A love of baked beans.
3. A belief that nearly all good music was created on our isle (especially The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, any good punk music, almost any synthesiser music, most good dance music).
4. We don't really like America, or we begrudge it. (It's no mistake that in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that Zaphod Beeblebrox seems much like a stereotypical brash American).

The American thing really got me thinking. Of course it's our English superiority complex built on the age of Empire and passed down to us, and now seeing all the cool shiny stuff that America builds we have an inferiority complex so dismiss it as plastic tat. We turn a blind eye to African Americans or see it as a different America, which is why many English people are willing to adopt hip-hop slang and arse about in baggy jeans and Stüssy T-shirts and sing along to songs about armed struggle against the corrupt police system while we drive through sleepy bed towns like Orpington, Godalming, Aylesbury and such. We blame Americans for McDonalds even though it's our own purchases that drive the expansion of the burger chain.

Anyway, by chance as I was browsing Google Reader I came upon a much better article than this by the much better and professional and older writer Geoff Dyer.

And also, Happy New Year!