How American Culture Looks to Outsiders

While watching the video clip of Hugh Laurie singing his "America" song, I wasn't surprised or enlightened much by what I was seeing. Having lived overseas and having travelled quite a bit, I think that I am aware of other countries' viewpoints of America's ego.

I think that different countries have different viewpoints about America, which is reflective of those countries' own culture. For example, I believe that the way that Japanese people view Americans is very different from how British people view Americans.

After living in Japan and speaking to Japanese people on this same topic, I learned that when Japanese people picture Americans, they automatically think of rudeness and pushiness but not necessarily of a lack of education or ignorance. Japanese culture involves so much subtlety and courtesy that when they think of Americans, it makes sense that they would think of us as rude and pushy in comparison.

On the other hand, I think that when British people picture Americans, they think of ignorant, uneducated people who think that they are better than the rest of the world. British people, and other Europeans also, pride themselves on knowing what is going on around the world, economically and otherwise, so are surprised by Americans' self-centered attitude that they consider ignorant. This was shown in the video by the words that Hugh Laurie was singing. These viewpoints that British people have have also been exacerbated by the US government's foreign policy.