Coca-Cola doesn't even taste that good

Today, to make us practice asking questions properly (using inversion rather than the unwieldly "est-ce que" that I love so much), our professor had us pose questions to the other students in my French class. So things like "in your country, are there a lot of tourist destinations?" or "what's the cuisine like in Armenia?" To start off, he listed the nationalities of the students in the room. We are from the following countries:

China

Turkey

Russia

Armenia

Chili

Colombia

United States (I'm the only American yay!)

Sweden

Venezuela (which I now know has the most dangerous city in the world)

Taiwan

Costa Rica

Canada

Germany

Korea

Japan

^ this is incredible. I could not be more fortunate.

But something came up in class today that made me sad. The Colombian man asked the Russian woman if Russians watch a lot of American films. She said yes and then added that Russia is now very "americanisée", or Americanized. This struck me as tragic. Why give up a centuries-old culture for another, newer and possibly less-wise, one?

This takes me back to a conversation I had last week with my Colombian and Swedish friends. I asked them why one hears so much American music and sees so many American brands in other countries. After some discussion, we decided it has to do with money, consumerism, and mass marketing. For instance, one friend pointed out that the modern conception of "Santa Claus" was actually a character created by Coca-Cola decades ago for marketing purposes and had very little to do with the older conception of St. Nicholas. (Writing this, now, I wonder if our concept of Santa Claus also goes back to the description of such a personnage in a poem you may have heard of called "A Night Before Christmas"...)

The spread of American culture to all corners of the world is not something I can explain in a blog post, if ever, but the replacement of much older cultures inevitably saddens me. At the end of the day, what does the United States have to offer? Coca-Cola and line-dancing? The recession has thrown cold water on the American dream, and I certainly hope that the future of this planet is not one of Nikes and over-processed rap music.

Ah well, luckily I have a cider tasting seminar at 2:30 and my wine sciences class after dinner, so I can do what people from all different cultures have done for millenia: drink away the weight of the world.

(JUST KIDDING MOM)