Comics: American liberty or suppression?

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Comics: American liberty or suppression?


We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. ().

The identity of the free American people was not just secured in its constitution. When Europe discovered the New World by the end of the fifteenth century, the dream and fantasy of it being a free world was deeply entrenched in its identity at that time. After this Europe started to colonize the land, as it colonized many parts of the globe.

A significant question in cultural discourse now, as “America has irresistibly moved toward center stage” (Kroes, 1996, p. 171), is whether America is now colonizing and dominating Europe by a process called Americanization or MacDonaldization. The MacDonaldization thesis is adhered by those who believe America is replacing traditional European culture by its own standards. Comic books can be considered an embodiment of American culture. So are European comics suppressed by American culture, or are they kept free to form a particular identity itself, as the liberal country of the United States of America would logically pledge for?

What is the MacDonaldization thesis?

Ritzer defines it this way: “The process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world” (Ritzer, 1993, p.1). The principles of the fast-food restaurants, or also of credit cards (Ritzer, 1993), are regarded slightly different, depending on the author writing on the topic. The history of the concept of the past century is investigated to arrive at a general explanation of the thesis in the end.

Well conceivable is the fact that the concept of America had already been formed theoretically before it was discovered (Kroes, 1996, p.1, 172). Myths and fantasies had emerged around the concept in Europe, while it was referred to as “the land of promise” (p.8), “a world of freedom” (p.172) and to “its freedom from academic constraints” (173). “The millions who still left Europe, up to 1914, persisted in heading for the Americas” (Palmer, 2002, p.621). The many immigrants America welcomed, especially in the first half of the 20th century, contributed to the multiethnic character of its culture.

The “family of nations” (Kroes, 1996, p. 51) did not just import other cultures. According to Pells (2002), America has also emitted its own culture abroad after adjusting it according to the foreign cultural influence. America rearranges the European patterns to new ones by their own free will (Kroes, 1996, p.165), not always thanked for by the Europeans. It blurs the demarcations between low and high culture, “combining the sacred and the profane” (Pells, 2002), while Europeans almost praise the distinctive cultural classes.

Europeans have been witnessed with certain amounts of anti-Americanism from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards (p.10). A genuine anguish for the erosion of the traditional European culture led for some to a response of criticism of mass culture (Kroes, 1996, p. 17). Others were more favourably disposed towards “America’s modernity” (p.18). Both regarded the U.S. as a representation of Europe’s near future. This ambiguity remained throughout time, concerning the opinion of Europeans on American culture.

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The criticisms consisted of various aspects. Anti-capitalism was always a main part. The thoughtless consumism derived from capitalism was best exemplified and many saw this as a negative characteristic (p.27). Ritzer elaborates on the critique by pointing out the dehumanizing environment in fast-food restaurants, the need to deliver perfect products despite the impossibility for nature to do so, the huge costs and risks McDonaldization results in, and most of all the requirements MacDonaldization will demand of our planet and us in the future (1993, p.16-8). Even within America, its culture has been criticized, mainly by academics, on its deconstructionist character. ...

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