Blogs are the death of me, they really are. There are times when I stand in the kitchen just working through something or whatever and that sort of internal monologue would be great to right down… but alas. This thing never gets updated unless I’m bored stupid it seems.

Anyway, in the spirt of randomness, the original Bleach opening song (Orange Range – Asterisk) popped up on Winamp (Yeah, I know I’ve screamed foobar2000 from the mountain tops, but it doesn’t tend to play nice with stuff encoded in iTunes (as it labels tracks as #/total instead of just the track number like any other normal thing would) and 5.x isn’t that bad…). There was a part (fuck if I know the musical term) in it where they spell out G-O-O-D-Y.

I didn’t remember that part specificly (as Bleach is now going on its 3rd opening/ending) so it brought to mind a term used in this naval power documentary I watched a couple weeks back (it was about battleships and such, started watching it ’bout half way through), Pax Americana. It was in reference of course to the relative post-WW2 peice with the US at is forefront (similar to the Pax Brittanica or Romana when Britan and Rome were “teh uber l33t”).

Now, the denotation (literal meaning/translation) of Pax Americana is “American Peace” and means more in terms of actual events rather then social or cultural dominance. But hearing English words in a J-Pop/Rock song or some Spanish Hip-Hop makes me thing more along those lines. Both major previous Western Paxes (Romana and Brittanica, for reference’s sake) really seemed to have those two nations set the “tone” for the Western world. You can contrast that to something like Moorish Spain, Renissance Italy or even France between the World Wars, with the first two, they were easily the center of everything artistic, cultural, and scientifical, but they didn’t quite… dominate (although they were easily the centers of the Western world).

The Moors got reemed by the Reconquista, the rest of Europe caught up with the Italians and the French got it from the Germans again in WW2. But the thing is Paxes end… Rome got it royally when the Western Empire went to shit, and the British just sort of lost their dominance (in comes the World Wars and out comes the US).

Admittedly you run into the circular argument that beacuse these powers were the leaders of their time, that they were the ones to write the majority of its history…

but getting to the point (and tieing the Bleach thing in) is that does being the dominant global power lead to other cultures borrowing from it? Or is it the fact that I’m watching anime at all more of a bilateral cultural sharing thingy. Another thing, now woe to anyone who takes The Simpsons as historical record (except for the whole Grover Cleveland thing ), but I remember them mentioning an American infatuation with Australian culture (Steve Irwin anyone?), things in that regard would be a lot more transperant beacuse of the same language, but then again…

it’s honestly a situation where there is such a small sample-size of cultural stuff to pick on (The UN’s two official languages for example, sure half of that list is English, but half of that list is also French, and no one is claiming a Pax Franca.) that could really be called decisive that cultural dominance isn’t actually just precieved but actually… actual.

It’s like every time I see Condi Rice hammering out some agreement in Palestine on the news, I may see on the BBC Tony Blair working on some poverty stuff in Africa, so it’s also a perception issue there. While when something huge happens with either one, both groups (Americans and Britsh in this case, duh) might here about it, on the little stuff, it may pass under one’s radar, beacuse it’s not “our thing”. (That previous statement is prefaced (“previous is prefaced” is some grammatical/linguistic monstrocity I’m guessing) with the assumption that you know… are actually informed about stuff.)

I guess I just like to be a bit self-important some days. I really enjoy living in the second-biggest media market, and well that whole only superpower thing can distort matters. But at the end of the day I’m watching something Japanese and eating something Nicaraguan (or maybe just a pizza, lol), all in front of a computer made in Taiwan or something.

Cultural dominance is hard to get a hold on ain’t it?

P.S. Wikipedia For. The. Win.