Americanization In The Perils Of Soft Power By Josef Joffe

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American culture has completely encompassed the world. Even the smallest symbols of America are seen throughout international countries. The United States has become the center of technological advancements, and inventions to, in theory, better the lives of its people. As these ideas spread all over the world. On the contrary the effects are majorly negative, as these effects only change people into to becoming more “american” whether than embracing the beautiful culture they were brought up in. “Americanization” is continually altering the lives of foreigners for the worst. American media nonetheless is most definitely the most dominating part of americanization. I think it’s clear to say that mostly everyone knows Hollywood and the how outstanding …show more content…

Many believe the actual effect is very slim. In The Perils of Soft Power by Josef Joffe, Joffe had this to say “There may be little or no relationship between America's ubiquity and its actual influence. Hundreds of millions of people around the world wear, listen, eat, drink, watch and dance American, but they do not identify these accouterments of their daily lives with America.” So, this implies that many American symbols aren’t really even seen as “american icons’, they are just seen as trendy concepts. Joffe uses the example of New York Yankee apparel. While every U.S native knows how important Yankee baseball is to many americans, international people do not. Some of the foreign Yankee clothing wearers might not even know the emblem is for a baseball team. So essentially the effect of american isn’t even that prominent, it’s just seen as “cool’ and “hip” so people just want to follow the trend. Would this almost be considered a type of “brainwashing” as the civilians have no idea what they representing, but know it is cool to be sporting it? The wearing of american emblem clothing is a negative effect, because the foreign citizens would rather wear something affiliated with the United States, rather than something from their own

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