mark and i subbed in primary for the 8 year old class yesterday, which means we got to attend SINGING TIME! i really liked singing time growing up, but i REALLY like it now (probably because adults just don't do fun things like that - and it's a shame too). so, we sang a song i hadn't sung since elementary school: "what's more American?" such a classic! mark and i loved singing it with the picture prompts and everything and kept singing it all day: "What's more American than toothpaste?... I AM! I AM! I AM!" (if you don't know this song, you should really get acquainted with it.) so mark asks me at dinner, "what is more American than Ernie?" (That was one of the pictures on the singing posters.) i laughed and thought "hmmm... what's REALLY American?..." and for some reason, all things 80s came to my head. so, i said "MTV." mark questioned, "Why?" (Hadn't he seen Girls Just Wanna Have Fun?) then he did the Mark-hand-gesture finger point and said with a smile "this is a serious game, Jan." so, we commenced on discovering what is truly American. we had to name something from the song and find something that is more American than that. what's more American than Superman? Mark responded, Rocky - he's a self-made man. so, you see, you have to compare apples to apples in this game and find something within the same category as the thing you named. we started to discover some things about our perspectives on America, however. mark's responses always tied to the American ideals of being self-made, being rebellious, facing the frontier, or being individualistic. my criteria for the game was to find things that were purely American-made. (mine was more difficult, i found, because of globalization. it was almost impossible to determine if something was exclusively American.)
so the question: are Mark's ideals still true to America? to me, conformity was the new American way. look at mass media - it's all about being the same. but, is this American? mark said that the indie film maker epitomizes American ideals - the independent, the new, the individual. interesting, i said. so, what made Americans "American" at the dawn of America was the independence from Great Britain. it was about breaking away from those foreign rulers an ocean away. these days, those that epitomize that same "American" spirit are breaking away from other Americans. popular media is the new Great Britain; the indie filmmakers - the carriers of the American ideals. or, are they?
new question: who says that America is what America is or was 200 year ago? is America as we see it now, and to be American to be what we are? and what are we exactly?
what's more American than me?
