[UA] Greetings

[Epoch]

On Thu, 17 May 2001, James O'Rance wrote:

> Epoch <msulliva at wso.williams.edu> said:
> 
>  >>>Quantity doesn't really impress me much.  If there were 30 clones of the 
> Crocodile Hunter on the air in the U.S., and I watched all of them, would I 
> have a good handle on Australian culture?<<<
> 
> Of course not. But not every American TV show that we see is "Friends" 
> (although I'd rather have Friends than Survivor 2, which I've mercifully 
> missed). We get Buffy too.  ;)

I'm kind of hard-pressed to think of a TV show that doesn't significantly
skew the nature of the culture of the nation that it's set in.  That's
more or less the point of TV shows -- they don't show everday life, we get
plent of that every day.

>  >>>Do you know who the governor of California is?  Our Senators?<<<
> 
> There are certainly governors and Senators named on the news from time to 
> time, especially if you have a pay TV service. Anyway.

Sure.  And doubtless the PM of Australia is mentioned on our TV from time
to time (I don't have a television, so I'm even more cut off from
everything than most people).  And if I did have a TV, I'd doubtless pay
no more attention to it than you do to the governor of California.

> I said:
>  > What are the racial issues in our society?
> 
> You rebuffed:
> 
>  >>>Do you really understand the ones in the U.S.?<<<
> 
> Certainly not. I'm very aware that there are social issues that go back 
> hundreds of years, and that things like the death penalty are racist for 
> reasons that I have only been informed of in a basic manner.
> But I am presented with this basic level of information frequently, whether 
> it be through the news, through print reporting, through films like Higher 
> Learning (which I mostly like and remember for its music), and through 
> references in some roleplaying games (not many; they seem strangely anglo to 
> me).

The thing is, I don't think that you've been informed /correctly/.  I've
got some concept of the racial issues in Australia (or, at least, I did --
I used to be more interested in Australia than I am now, having had some
friends who'd grown up there).  As I recall, the Aborigines are generally
destitute and unskilled, and I don't doubt that you get some of the same
kinds of Asian immigration that we get in California.

But, frankly, if I were to take that kind of sketchy overview and try to
apply to to serious conclusions about your culture, I'd not succeed.  I'd
end up with a caricature.

I'm going to go out on a limb, based on what gets media attention here in
the States, and suggest that you probably have the black-white tensions
overemphasized to you, and then get the latinos either totally ignored or
wrapped up into the blacks, which, in my view at least, very much misses
the point.

> On the other hand, the kind of experiences I've had with growing up in 
> Sydney are not reflected in very many forms of media at all, and so I would 
> be surprised and flattered if you'd managed to be informed of them.

I'd be very surprised if I were.

> If my experiences with Australian multiculturality are represented in the 
> media far less than American racial issues are, then I find it hard to 
> understand how Americans would be able to learn about them.
> 
> If I'm wrong, I'll be pleased.  :)

I'm not suggesting that we know more of Australia than you think -- I'm
suggesting that you probably know less of the U.S. than you think.

>  >>>My experience is that non-U.S. residents tend to have a view of the U.S. 
> that could only be described as a caricature.<<<
> 
> This is undoubtedly true. You are the Great Satan, after all. ;)
> 
> (that's intended as a joke)

Got it.  :P

>  >>>And there was some guy from a country which has tried to essentially 
> excise X rated material from its chunk of the internet which called the U.S. 
> "Land of the Puritans and Religious Right."<<<
> 
> Touche. Porn isn't really a religious issue here, as I understand it - it's 
> a political issue driven by some conservative elements of the government. 
> Australia had a conservative backlash in recent years, but we're a notably 
> secular nation.

Sure.  On the other hand, "Puritanism" isn't a religion (anymore) -- it's
a generally perjorative adjective that we apply to socially conservative
folks.

I suggest that you're probably overestimating the amount of religious
influence, and particularly conservative Christian religious influence,
that there is in public life here.  For example, at my work, there's
nobody that I'd say with any kind of absolute certainty is Christian -- I
suspect that several people may be, but it's never come up.  The
predominant vocalized religion at my workplace is Islam, and we basically
only know that because the Muslims won't eat lunch with us during Ramadan
and don't eat pork.

> In general, I have no problem at all with rpgs being set in the USA; that's 
> where the market is, and its a great setting for action, conspiracy, and a 
> multitude of other game types. Naturally, I still wonder about my own 
> country...

Sure.  And I'm entirely down with you either adapting UA to your own
country, or taking your view of mine -- I mean, heck, it's just a
game.  In general, I just get snappish when people suggest that the
U.S. is just a bunch of ignorant boors -- which you certainly didn't do,
but which has happened in the past and annoys me to no end.

Mike

(Deirdre Brooks, a freelancer who works primarily on White Wolf products,
suggested a corrolary to Godwin's law, suggesting that "As a thread
lengthens, the probability of a European randomly bashing the
U.S. approaches unity.")

--
"Generally speaking, the Slayer is always all out of bubble gum."
	http://www.edromia.com/games/buffy/index.html


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