Alex Francavilla - Week 5 - And YOU Get a Big Mac!
One of the most popular stereotypes of America is that we love burgers. And french fries, and hot dogs, or other fried, oily handheld food items. Or, perhaps, fast food restaurants, McDonalds being by far the most represented. And it’s not too difficult to see why that is. Fast food restaurants are everywhere. If you’ve ever seen a Starbucks across the street from a Target with a Starbucks inside across the street from a mall with Starbucks across the street from a college campus with (can you guess the next 2 words?) a Starbucks, you probably know what I’m talking about.
Fast food chain restaurants such as these have spread to the majority of the world’s countries, with some being more successful than others. KFC and Pizza Hut are particularly noteworthy in this aspect. KFC is the 5th largest fast food restaurant by number of locations, at over 30 thousand, with Pizza Hut following close behind at 10th with 19 thousand. But if you look around the United States, there aren’t as many KFCs and Pizza Huts as there are some other popular fast food chains like Burger King—that’s because they have a large density of locations in East Asia, particularly China and Japan. Some of my very limited memories from my trip to China at the ripe old age of four include throwing up in a Shanghai Pizza Hut. My aunt in China used to work as a civil engineer for KFC!
Of course, we can’t forget about Japanese KFCs. Because of a singular Japanese marketing campaign in the 1970s promoting the consumption of KFC’s fried chicken for the holidays, a quasi-holiday called, quite literally, KFC Christmas (!) was established, with backorders lasting for months leading up to Christmas Eve.
This pattern of widespread American chain restaurants reflects Americanization—whether intentional or not, aspects of foreign cultures across the world have slowly begun seeing influences from the United States. This is not just seen in food, but language as well—its why languages such as Japanese have slowly begun incorporating kanji-pronounced English words into the modern Japanese language, and why the most popular German slang word for the past several years have all been English-derived, with this year’s winner being “Das crazy” (narrowly winning against top contenders like “goonen” and “checkst du”).
The whole concept of Americanization does seem a little weird to me. Imagine if the most popular US slang this year, instead of something like “brainrot” or “6 7,” was “en la tumba de mi madre”...
Hi Alex! Sure, America may be taking over every corner in international cities with Starbucks and Mcdonalds, but those food chains always seem to outdo the original. Cultural foods, suited to the taste of the locals, are unique to each international location; take for example, Teriyaki ハンバーガー (pronounced han-ba-gas, isn’t that ironic?) in Japanese McDonalds look much more appealing than a “McCrispy”. So they’re taking America’s things, and making them better, which frankly is quite embarrassing for us.
ReplyDeleteBut the United States’ global influence making its way through every crevice of life irks me to say the least. KFC as the ideal Christmas dinner abroad doesn't sit right with me. Even though people in other countries may perceive Americanization as positive for its citizens, who may view fast food as foreign delicacies, personally it just feels like the Americanization of cities dims their cultural spark—tourists travel across the world just for the same dry burger, just with better sauce. It’s not that the citizens of different countries shouldn’t enjoy a burger, but as you acknowledge in your blog, things really get out of hand when there’s fast food restaurants on every block. Americanization of language is a loss as well; American slang cannot be as funny as some sayings in other languages. Germans, inventors of great words like Kummerspeck and schadenfreude, picking “das crazy” over “goonen” and “checkst du” is just crazy.
Hi Alex, I love the image you’ve included in your blog! As someone who doesn’t like Starbucks, it’s nightmarish… but I will be sending you $5B posthaste. I think US culture is a very interesting thing. Sure, it might seem strange if the most popular US slang was a Spanish phrase, but without those Spanish influences, the most populated state wouldn’t be called California! American culture is inherently a melting pot of other cultures, and I think it’s beautiful. I also think that’s the reason it seems to have spread elsewhere so rapidly—it’s a small glimpse at a new global culture as our world becomes more interconnected.
ReplyDeleteHi Alex! I agree that seeing Starbucks at every corner at a mall or namely anywhere in public can seem a bit much.. and honestly I think all of us just ignore Starbucks shops now because it’s so normalized to see one literally anywhere you go. Now that I think about it, when I went to Vietnam over the summer there were so many KFCs for no reason! I haven’t tried their chicken there yet, but based on the very few people I see sitting inside that place, it doesn’t seem worth the hype.
ReplyDeleteI think American influence on foreign countries can definitely seem like a bad thing because as Charlize had mentioned, it can dim the spark of the culture. But I also see Americanization as a step towards having a universal connection between diverse cultures. Social media has definitely catalyzed other countries to adopt our customs, and whether they are fast food restaurants or traditions, I think it’s also inherent that we and other countries start to accept and incorporate cultures we see that are intriguing or catches our attention into our own societies. Such can be said about our own culture, as we are seeing more recent generations have a liking to K-pop music to such an extent that we even incorporate our own version of K-pop with the girl group KATSEYE.