# Americans - how important are American characters to you?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-how-important-are-american-characters-to-you/766768>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [September 24, 2016, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-how-important-are-american-characters-to-you/766768 "2016-09-24T20:45:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2016, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-how-important-are-american-characters-to-you/766768/21 "2016-09-25T16:37:53Z")

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Reminds me of Stoker dropping a Texan into Dracula, for no apparent reason (that I can recall). Didn’t make a bit of difference to me.

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**Author:** ![Driver8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Driver8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Driver8)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2016, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-how-important-are-american-characters-to-you/766768/22 "2016-09-25T16:51:54Z")

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No, it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes the cultural differences add interesting texture. And sometimes they melt away and the similarities are most striking.

The most recent example for me was “The Wave”, a Norwegian film essentially in the “disaster movie” genre, a genre I typically associate with Hollywood. The Norwegian protagonist family was nicely fleshed out and charming, and you really wanted to root for them. This was done much better IMHO than a lot of Hollywood disaster movies. I don’t think that was changed by whether they were American or Norwegian, its just that the film was much better about setting up the characters and your emotional investment in them. There isn’t any reason why a Hollywood movie can’t do this, and its irritating that they mostly don’t. Although I guess not having the budget for a full 120 minutes of special effects destruction might help.

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**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2016, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-how-important-are-american-characters-to-you/766768/23 "2016-09-25T18:27:15Z")

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> [@Disposable Hero](#):
>
> In terms of whether you will watch or enjoy a story, in whatever media, how important is it to you that it features an American character? Do you find it difficult to relate if it doesn’t?

No, and I don’t really understand why this would be the case for any other American (although it presumably is for some).

I can understand the reader/audience wanting a character with an outsider’s perspective if the setting is very different from “typical” contemporary America, if only because it allows for more natural explanation of unfamiliar customs\*, but that character doesn’t need to be an American. In the _Harry Potter_ series Harry himself serves in this role, as he knew nothing about wizard society – not even that it existed – until he was admitted to Hogwarts.

\*I once read a historic novel set in China where the narrator was supposed to be telling the story to relatives, but kept explaining things that Chinese people of the period would obviously already know.

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