Anti-Nationalism Pride?

So a friend also studying in Europe recently wrote to me about an encounter he observed. He told me of this situation where a girl from the U.S.A was told she, “did not look American” and how this statement caused her great pride and joy. My friend, very proud of his Kiwi heritage found the girls strange anti-nationalistic elation odd and asked me if I would have reacted similarly.

The short answer: Yes. I can completely understand this girl's perspective. I've had many people also say "oh you don't look American" and deep down inside am so proud to be disassociated with my country. I cannot explain what it feels like to be from the U.S.A and to have our globalized stereotypes consciously or unconsciously immediately emptied onto a person’s first impression of ‘you’. It’s easy to make a neat little ‘box’ of what people from the U.S.A are because "American's" are banally blasted into everyone's homes through those tiny silver screens and into everyone's cities via those large animated cinema squares. Our politics are notoriously studied and broadcasted and also propagate a certain 'image'. Many world universities offer an American studies degree…how many offer a Australian studies degree or how about a Belgium studies.

It’s not really being from the U.S.A. that bothers me, it's rather the pre-wrapped box full of stereotypes. I have less freedom over how people perceive me and often feel I have to battle these associations. Perhaps in part its my own insecurities and I am in fact interpreted with an open mind… but experience has proved otherwise. In India when people asked where I was from I would often reply "Canada". If you said, American, Japanese, or Israeli the Indian venders would treat you according to stereotype. According to these stereotypes (i felt) they then made judgments according to their previous experiences—They wouldn’t bother bargaining with an ‘stubborn’ Israeli and automatically give them a semi-low price, inflated prices were quoted to the Japanese because the ‘timid’ Japs would dutifully pay with their powerful Yen to Rupee exchange rate, Americans were also given ridiculous prices with the knowledge that ten minutes would be spent arguing over the equivalent of 1 $USD. Yet if you said something like 'Dutch, Philippino, or Costa Rican’, basically any nationality whose history/stereotype wasn’t as prevalent, people treated you as a just a plain person. They were curious. They gave you an empty ‘space’ to be filled rather than a pre-made representation. I find that here it is quite the same. If you are from Mexico or Brazil Europeans have had less contact with these cultures and do not automatically make (as many) assumptions. Whereas being American...well oye I cant even begin (of course again this is completely subjective and related to my own insecurity and interpretation). I try and escape being placed in a box by emphasizing the time i've spent abroad and mentioning I grew up in Hawaii and spent time in Guam. No i am not the blonde bimbo Orange County Californian, no i'm not a sassy NYer from CSI, or the extra friendly southerner from Ten-ess-see, I do not binge drink, talk loudly, embrace my stupidity or love the war in Iraq. At the same time It's frustrating because i do to some extent have some or all of these qualities. Instead I consciously speak softer, throwing 'eh'  in as much as possible and soften my accent so that people aren't quite sure if I’m actually American.

Yet at the same time lately i've felt quite lost. I really am sick of not having a home. I am sick of having complicated explanations about where I'm from and often wish I had a nice set of cultural rules and identity to embrace as well as knew how to read the ones around me. 

Yet going back to the original question: through everything I do like being American, even abroad and perhaps more so abroad because it helps me reflect upon my own culture. I think there are some fantastic things about our culture/country as well as some ones i'd rather not be associated with. We are friendly. I like that you can usually approach someone on the street and ask for directions or make a comment and be received with a smile (of course this varies within region but I think even cold no-nonsense New Yorkers are accepting and welcoming in their own special way). I like that we are passionate. American's LOVE what they do. THEY USE LOTS OF CAPITALS! OMG!! THAT IS SO AWESOME GIRL!! And they really embrace their interests whether it be sport, school, or work. There is this unspoken standard that whatever you do you should thoroughly enjoy it or it’s not worth doing (ok of course there are many exceptions but perhaps people compensate in other areas of life: have a job they hate but it pays a salary which provides a means to buy season tickets, a flat screen, and subscription to sports illustrated). I think this passion (which often is parallel to our pride) is one of the reason for our global presence (ha second to economic motivation of course), but we are proud of what we do, we love what we do, and want to share it with EVERYONE--from movies to literature to art to you name it! I also like our humor to some extent. It's stupid. It's childish. It's banal. It's extreme, over the top and ridiculous. However it is a bit egalitarian. Watching Jackass does not require knowledge of Shakespeare or politics. The only requirement is an ability to laugh at yourself and deviance from social norms. In a way its liberating. An academic called Walter Benjamin writes about the 'cinema's ability for distraction'. He claims that people can go to the movies and loose themselves in the Hollywood stories. It provides a fantasy for everyone. We place ourselves in the character’s places. According to him this new media is not only a distraction, but a new form of art. Before 'art' was elitist and bourgeois. However a movie is entertaining, does not require extensive thought and produces feelings of visceral enjoyment. The 'aura' or the elitism associated with 'old art' is taken down by the cinema. This new form of art brings human expression and is not limited to those who have the 'cultural capital' and art knowledge usually limited to the higher ranks of society. For me... american humor is a new sort of accessible art. We enjoy looking, looking at emotion, at the spectacle, and the grotesque. And Lastly I like our empathy. Americans are empathetic unlike the Dutch who take the attitude that "well if your stuff was stolen then you should have locked your window. Or when I tried to switch my order in a cafe the waitress told me, "nope I've already put it down you should have thought about it before". However on the other end in NZ sometimes I ended up feeling bad due to the amount of customer service or help I received. The Kiwi's will literally bend over backwards for you. Once in a clothing shop the women spent an hour and a half calling every clothing store on the north and south island to see if they had my size in a pair of pants (sure its a small country but still... this was a chain store with quite a few outlets). Americans lie somewhere in between. We are always there to say 'oh man that really sucks' and go out of our way to make someone's life just a bit easier by giving up something for them whether it be time or an extra umbrella.

CROSS CULTURAL BODY LANGUAGE

Another difficult part about being abroad for me is not language differences but interpreting other’s body language. I hate guessing about gestures. Is that smile genuine, joking or jeering. I read this article and a bit really struck home:

"Back in 1959, anthropologist Edward T. Hall labeled these expressive human attributes "the Silent Language." Hall passed away last month in Santa Fe at age 95, but his writings on nonverbal communication deserve continued attention. He argued that body language, facial expressions and stock mannerisms function "in juxtaposition to words," imparting feelings, attitudes, reactions and judgments in a different register.

This is why, Hall explained, U.S. diplomats could enter a foreign country fully competent in the native language and yet still flounder from one miscommunication to another, having failed to decode the manners, gestures and subtle protocols that go along with words. And how could they, for the "silent language" is acquired through acculturation, not schooling. Not only is it unspoken; it is largely unconscious. The meanings that pass through it remain implicit, more felt than understood."

I thought: That's it. I am always trying to 'read' people but it is so difficult. For instance I was talking to my friend D (from mexico) and he was saying how our friend S (Indian) seemed so serious and powerful. Whereas to me, I read her as thoughtful, observant and with bits of anxiety thrown in at odd intervals. We had completely interpreted her unspoken body language differently. For instance when in NZ I was always surprised by how MUCH emotion men/boys conveyed in their faces. I often felt quite disconcerted because i'd be speaking and all of a sudden they would move their eyebrows together and down and crinkle their forehead in this deeply concerned look (my reading). They matched this with a deep almost angry intensity in their eyes. However after three years I started to understand that it wasnt as strong as a concern as I had read it as, it was merely their cultural demonstration of thought. Where as the same facial expression in the USA would mean... what the person said borderline pissed you off/you were in a bit of disagreement.

But I digress. As much anti-nationalism I have I do miss being in America because I knew how to read people and to be read. I was 'good' at being a 'person'. Here I am finding myself at that turning point in friendships where the newness has worn off and now you are really trying to get to know each other. However there are always these tiny little nuances of personality and cultural differences that always create invisible hurdles and boundaries. Sometimes I feel as if i keep trying to be nice and communicate with someone but keep having this feeling of slamming into an invisible wall… a cultural value embodied blockade. Whereas in the USA I knew how to 'do' friendship as silly as it sounds. I knew how to 'do' small talk. I knew how to embody my emotions in a readable manner. When I first went back to the USA this summer I felt quite disoriented. I didn’t know how to say hello, I didnt know what to talk about, how to act. I was so out of the rhythm and found myself constantly in a state of strange nervousness. However, like riding a bicycle in a few weeks it all came back. I re-learned the silent language and mundane self. Yet... here I am undoing it all again.

However now i'm consciously undoing and choosing. I find myself much more aware of my body language, my speech pattern. It no longer flows unconsciously, but rather, I am always ironing out my topic, thinking of how it will be understood, choosing words carefully and wondering if their meaning will be interpreted as I have meant. I constantly think about my body, noticing the small gestures that are unconsciously communicating more than most realize. I was speaking with a friend yesterday and being conscious of this invisible language I could tell when the topics challenged him. It was overly apparent when he was unsure of his answers (well at least that was my reading). The amount of small fidgeting increased, he began to play with his hair more intensely when the subject matter became more controversial. During tense moments I almost laughed. The exaggerated twisting, twirling of strands around his fingers made it seem as if he was attempting to place an invisible roller in his hair, a scene from a 1960’s movie of a women in a bathroom giving herself a perm rather than an heated academic discussion. Yet perhaps he is a kinesthetic thinker. He just was processing his thoughts through movement. He was not nervous at all…I do not know anything about British embodied behavior.

Another example was in class the other day. We were working in small groups to answer a few assigned questions. I had been paired with two Dutch students. One, Bart, is blond somewhat good looking, and moves with certainty. He has this relaxed arrogance in the way he speaks and he seemed to choose his postures. After we had presented our answers and were listening to our fellow classmates he began to poke my chair. Then after he tired of that he began to move my paper so that it was crooked on the desk. Afterwards he touched and stopped my foot that had been moving back and forth as i do when i'm bored. All of these gestures were done with out looking at me and while pretending to pay attention. Now in the USA this would be flirting. No questions asked. However I am not sure if these little intended annoyances were actually vices to get my attention or the fact that he really just wanted to annoy me. I have no clue how to read this silent language. My embodied Dutch is probably worse than my spoken Dutch. I think most people would say 'oh definitely flirting' however I have heard that Bart does not like the foreign students in class and often makes snide remarks in Dutch about us. So perhaps these gestures were in fact malicious and his own way of getting a taste of vengeance. I can understand where he is coming from given that we (‘foreign students’) are held in high esteem by the professors who perhaps exoticize us a tad bit to much (but is this not only human nature: curiosity about the other?) What does YOUR culture think: we are academic diplomats, interpreters, representatives of these far off lands and provide insight into otherwise unknown worlds. The problem with this split class dynamic, ‘us vs. them’, is often the 'natives' are neglected. They are the first born child in the shadow of a new baby, no longer the academic stars. Instead they remain boring old students who can't quite speak English as well as this strange accented 'others'.

Yet in writing all of this I realize these words would make a lot of anthropologists cringe at the horrible 'cultural' generalizations i've made. However stereotypes are based on reality so these are merely referring the essences of the cultures I mention. Each individual will have their own interpretation and cultural space. My own autobiographical experiences have written this passage and continue to effect my ideas, speech, and embodied behaviors. I am American according to my passport but I am also a hodgepodge of people, places, spaces, races, and many friendly faces :-)