Named after the town of California, Maryland no doubt.
This was mentioned upthread, but Americans don’t have tight cornering and high rev driving. We have really big engines. It’s the same with a touring bike in Europe versus a Harley in America. Different geography breeds different results. Also, my patriotism is outweighing my love of the manual gearbox here, but it’s not really an intelligence deal in auto vs. manual. Unless it’s a imported sports car for God’s sake.
Another geography issue. The US is really big and sparsely populated in most areas. Traffic laws are damn near impossible to enforce and the drivers know it. I guess you could call our approach to traffic planning stupid and shortsighted, but it’s cheaper and easier. The only reason Europeans do it differently is necessity.
None of these are examples of anything being dumbed down though. They all have rational explanations based more on market conditions and consumer preference than “dumbed down-ness”.
For example, the real reason for Super Mario 2’s non-release in America has never really been stated. Executives have cited it’s similarity to Super Mario 1 as well as the belief a new Super Mario game wouldn’t sell so close to the release of the original. Executives also have mentioned the difficulty thing.
But Nintendo has also been a very divided company, ever since the days of the NES and Nintendo of Japan and Nintendo of America have always operated as separately as possible. This continues even today with the Mother/Earthbound situation.
As for the “mature” elements, that wasn’t dumbing down, it was playing to the market. In Japan, video games have always been for everyone. But in the US in the late 80s/early 90s, games were for kids. And marketing adult games on what was believed to be a kids medium would get you nowhere. It took Mortal Kombat to make Nintendo realize the market in America had shifted. Literally overnight, the censorship rules were relaxed. In fact, in today’s market, Japanese companies routinely make the American version more violent because games for adults have become super-accepted here now (see No More Heroes, Dead Rising and Resident Evil 4).
And the difficulty thing doesn’t prove anything because examples can be shown in both directions. Contra: Hard Corps was made harder for American audiences as was Battletoads.
si_blakely writes:
> As for cultural translation (particularly of TV shows), I grew up in NZ. We got to
> see both the British originals and the US translations, so were in a position to
> compare. And the American versions were almost always anodyne and bland.
Here’s a list of all the American TV shows which were remakes of British TV shows:
(There’s a link at the bottom of this page to all the British TV shows which are remakes of American TV shows.)
I think I counted once and only found six shows on that list which weren’t nonfiction shows (which means things like reality shows and quiz programs) and which lasted longer than one season. Most British TV shows (except for nonfiction shows) which get remade for the American market fail very quickly. I think that there’s a simple reason for this. Most American TV shows, even popular ones, wouldn’t work as British remakes. Most British TV shows, even popular ones, wouldn’t work as American remakes. The cultural differences are too great, and the remake just looks ridiculous. British TV producers know this, and it’s considered acceptable in the U.K. to show the original American TV program. Either most American TV producers don’t realize this or they don’t care. Most American TV networks generally simply refuse to show non-American TV programs. They keep remaking British shows, and the shows keep getting cancelled very quickly because they simply don’t work. Their stupid persistence in this is often amazing. They have tried three times to remake Fawlty Towers, and all the remakes have been failures.
It’s slightly different with the nonfiction programs. When a nonfiction program like a quiz show or a reality program is remade in the other country, it works better. You are only keeping the mere frame of the show. The rest of the show can be changed as necessary.
There’s a more down-to-earth reason that showing British shows is a problem: a British series can be as few as half-a-dozen episodes, unlike the American (system’s) expectations of anything up to half-a-year of weekly output. Look at Fawlty Towers: only twelve episodes, divided into two series, were ever made. ‘Amanda’s’ had filmed thirteen before it was cancelled.
Similarly with The Office, while the first ‘season’ of the remake could get away with being an exception and sticking to six episodes, the second season had to be a full 22-episode slog. That’s a lot more work than simply tweaking a few location-dependent references. In the same time, you could air the whole of the British second series, the Christmas specials, and still have time for the whole of Fawlty Towers. (Well, actually, it wouldn’t work because there’s no time for adverts in The Office, but you get the idea.)
The result is that you end up with the large numbers of writers typical of a US sitcom rather than the individuals or pairs normal in the UK, watering down the particular flavour of whatever it was you were importing in the first place, rather than creating something good from scratch.
Good point…I don’t know if they still do this, but when I was in college and traveling by train frequently between L.A. and San Diego, the printed schedules always said “Los Angeles, California” and “San Diego, California”. And you do see the same sort of thing generally with other major U.S. cities like San Francisco and New York.
“Infiniti.” And I’d buy an Acura before I bought a Mercedes.
Acura and Honda are the same company, but an Acura in North America is not identical to a Honda. They don’t just take Civics and change the brand name; Acuras are the high-end models. I’m sure there’s some marketing reason behind the two-name thing.
Not all states require you to remain in the right lane except when passing.
I think you need to read my original and subsequent posts. In 1988, Acuras were Hondas. The exact cars sold everywhere else. A Honda Legend on the streets of London or Paris or Tokyo was the same car as the Acura Legend. Ditto the Integra and the Vigor and the NSX. Don’t nit pick me about emmisions and right hand drive. They were the same cars.
Here: http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/car-reviews/car-and-driving/honda-nsx-2002165.html
Yes, it is now 2008 and generally, Acuras do not have a Honda equivalent although the TSX is a Honda Accord in the UK and I believe the current RL is sold as a Honda Legend in some parts of the world.
As an American, I was insulted by the changes made to the Harry Potter books. This, I think, was one real instance of dumbing down for an American audience, and a completely unnecessary one in my opinion.
I don’t know why the non-Americans on this board harp on this constantly. In America, we consider it proper to give a secondary description to the name of the city, even when there’s no chance of misunderstanding. “Los Angeles, California,” “New York, New York.” Why not “London, England” and “Paris, France”? Plus, given the way names are repeated throughout the country, there is a very real chance of ambiguity. Even if there is no possibility of ambiguity, it’s simply never considered incorrect to follow a city name with a state or country. That’s just the way we talk, and it has nothing to do with being dumb.
Again, how is this dumb? Diacriticals mean nothing in English. Typographical convention is to leave them out. Yes, in German, Schaetzing is the correct non-diacritical form of Schätzing, but what does any of this have to do with dumbness?
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Your post makes absolutely no sense. Handclaps = dumb?
And listening to Whitesnake at all is a pretty good indicator of shaky intellect. 
And this is dumb how?
If you don’t mind asking, Kevbo, what are you credentials with regard to traffic flow? Because, on first gloss, these comments strike me as utter nonsense.
Actually, in Canada, they do. A somewhat gussied up trim of the Honda Civic is sold (and built) in Canada (only) as the Acura CSX.
Which is why you have people going 45 in the left lane for miles and miles.
The same states don’t also enforce laws regarding proper use of lighting. Which is why you keep running into cars that 1) forget to turn on their headlights, 2) drive constantly with high beams on, and 3) misuse their fog lights, especially the few foreign models that aren’t stripped of their rear fog lights. Bright red lights shining in your face HURT, damn it! :mad:
So what? Unless there’s a multi-lane conspiracy, you can usually get around them. I just don’t see the occasional slow driver in the left lane as a major problem in our traffic situation.
Do you see the difference between not having a law and not enforcing a law?
Omitting diacritical marks from non-English names just because English doesn’t use them strikes me an approach which could vary from slightly condescending to extremely insulting. If it’s part of a person’s name, it has a very particular personal attachment (even if it is essentially purposeless), so leave it be.
And I can’t help but suspect that conventions which leave them out are at least partially limited by technological limitations, past or present. With ASCII being the lowest common denominator.
Is it insulting to transliterate a name from Arabic or Cyrillic or Hebrew or Devanagari script into Latin script? It’s the same damn thing, only the American English script is less different from the German script than it is from the others.
This obsession with the exact form of a person’s name is a rather recent fetish, and it’s not extant everywhere in the world. The fact is that publishers and typographers have always had in place rules that resulted in changes in the way some people’s names appeared. These are often for practical purposes such as (but not limited to) technology.
The fact is that in English, diacriticals are meaningless. To an English-reading audience, leaving them out is a reasonable and practical policy. Concluding that it is somewhere “from slightly condescending to extremely insulting” is rather overboard.
It reminds me of a Usenet poster who insisted that because the draft board spelled his name in ALL CAPITALS that he didn’t have to respond because the “correct” spelling of his name was not in all capitals.
Hold on, didn’t you just say “Diacriticals mean nothing in English” - so it’s not the same thing at all.
OK, maybe slightly hyperbolic, but I’m talking about being polite to the person being referred to, not saying that it makes a big difference to the audience.
This is a thread about Americans being dumb, not impolite. Right? 
IIRC when The Commitments was released in the United States cinema-goers were given a glossary to help decipher the Dublin vernacular used. I imagine this might have been as much for promotional purposes as to address an actual need. I notice that shows on VH1 in the US often subtitle native English speakers such as the Gallagher brothers from Oasis.
This is not an either/or; you seem to be saying if something is dumbed down for “market conditions and consumer preference” then it doesn’t count. But that’s exactly what the OP is after, things that are dumbed down for the US market for any reason, presumably including because of “market conditions and consumer preference”.
But are you really arguing that something “dumbed down” because the main market is children is dumbing anything down? It’s not dumbing down, it’s making something age appropriate.
And in the Super Mario 2 example, an argument could be made that the two games are so similar they would have cannibalized each other’s sales. By the time Nintendo was able to space the Mario releases out enough that it could work, the SNES came along. And what do you know, SMB2 was released on the SNES compilation Super Mario All-Stars.
I’m sorry, to me, the video game argument just looks like another sad “Everything’s better when it’s Japanese!” argument. And I hate those, they make us geeks look bad and seriously lame.