Americana encompasses cultural artifacts, cuisine, art, architecture, and history that distinctly reflect American culture. It includes movements in art, literature, and music, as well as cuisine and sports. The concept of the American Dream is a significant part of Americana, and it has been carried over to other cultures. However, it can lead to stereotypes or illusory expectations about what people will find when they visit or immigrate.
Americana refers to cultural artifacts, cuisine, art, architecture, and history that distinctly reflect the culture of the United States. In essence, Americana expresses those things that would be most associated with Americans, even if they were loved in other countries. For example, apple pie, although made in many other countries, is considered a perfect example of American cuisine. Statements such as, “It’s as American as baseball or apple pie,” suggest that Americans in some sense “own” certain cultural developments, and most associate these things as part of their cultural heritage.
Americana can also be used to express movements in art, literature, or music, or artists who seem particularly American can be said to be part of Americana. For example, in the visual arts, Norman Rockwell and his Saturday Evening Post cover artwork were thought of as representing America. In music, rockabilly and indeed rock and roll are considered American cultural expressions.
Literature that seems distinctly American is not always easy to pin down. Some say Washington Irving captures a slice of American culture in his short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Others argue that the work is imitative of the European style. It is important to remember that many things considered American, especially early cultural productions of necessity, mimicked European cultural values, since many early artists were not that far from their European roots.
Certain cuisine is also distinctly associated with Americana. Apple pie is just one example among many. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes, for example, would be considered solid American food, and the hamburger and fries on fast food menus across the country certainly are.
Although baseball is the most American sport, American football is another American sport. Some traditions like watching football on Thanksgiving, the ultimate American holiday, are seen as unique to the United States. Of course, in many European countries, watching sporting events is part of the holidays, but the Americans have made this tradition a sport developed here and a uniquely American holiday. It should be noted that many countries have holidays that celebrate the harvest, and Canada also celebrates a Thanksgiving holiday.
If America is seen as a cultural melting pot, which it indeed can be at times, it can be difficult to trace the roots of various American cultural activities or concepts. Rock and roll, for example, derives from contributions from numerous cultures: the percussive music maintained by slaves and then freed by African Americans, the folk music of various European countries, and a variety of other sources. In other cases you can draw a more direct line between the cultures that have produced American cultural products. Clog, for example, a popular form of dance is closely related to the Celtic step dance.
The sum total of cultural products representing America gives people from other countries impressions of what they are likely to find here. Sometimes, visitors expect predominant or well-known aspects of a society, which can lead to stereotypes or illusory expectations about what people will find when they visit or immigrate. During the Industrial Revolution, it could be argued that America’s main product was the concept of the American Dream.
With effort, everyone could thrive and this meme has been carried over to other cultures. Mass immigration to America certainly affected our culture, but many found that the life that embodied “Americana” was hard to come by. Despite the hardships, many immigrants and subsequent generations have thrived – thus perpetuating the American concept of “the good life in America”.
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