Summary Of Not Like America

1. The three dominant metaphors Kroes uses are: space, time and organic cohesion. If we look at the first one space there are some differences between Europe and America. For example Europe’s history compared to America’s history. Europeans live with this sense of a very long history, while the Americans have more of a sense of the here and now. Another example is that America is perceived as superficial, while Europe is perceived as a continent that has a lot of depth. The funny thing is that I have experienced this bias firsthand. People not only have a bias towards the United States as a country but also to its people. Americans are viewed as superficial, and Dutch people tend to say that if they meet Americans they are all fake and superficial,

In chapter 2 of the book Not Like Us, Pells discusses the influence of American journalism on Europe after the Second World War. “By the 1950s, the postwar generation of West German journalists not only endorsed the policies of the Atlantic Alliance, but did so in the pages of newspapers and magazines that looked exactly like their American prototypes (the most celebrated imitation being Der Spiegel, which faithfully copied the format and layout of Time). At least in this area, the Federal Republic had become thoroughly “Americanized” (Pells 51). This is good example of how the Americanization worked in all kinds of different sectors. The Europeans saw the popularity of newspapers and magazines in the United States and completely let go of the way they used to write their newspapers. And even to date we see that the American way of news casting and magazines are intertwined with our own. Furthermore, the most important newspapers in the world are American and that is why this is a good example of Euro-American cultural transfer. In chapter 5 Pells says the following: “On the one hand, the majority of countries in Western Europe needed the tourists’ dollars to ease their balance-of-payment problems during the 1950s and to help keep their economies prosperous thereafter. On the other hand, the natives resented having to restructure their societies to accommodate the visiting Americans” (Pells 137). We can think of the restaurants Americans liked to eat and accommodations they were used to back in the United States and so the Europeans adjusted to this, and at first they did not like it. However, currently McDonald’s is just as popular in European countries as it is in the United States. Another clear example of cultural transfer. The last example comes from chapter 8: “By the early 1960s, however, the majority of American television programs were either filmed or videotaped, making them easily exportable” (Pells 230). Nowadays, American television shows are very