It’s partly that McDonalds has a trashy, plastic feeling about it and it’s partly because it just feels bland, uniform, industrial and soulless - both across the country, and across the menu.
Actually, there’s not specific reason why it had to be an American company that inflicted this on us - we could have done this ourselves, or imported it from somewhere else, it just happens to be American in this example and some notable others.
‘Watching’? You have a set with one of those fancy electric eye tuning valves or something?
1 - I watch little TV, but strangely most of it is American. I guess that’s my one admittance to a touch of homesicknes; I also don’t think English TV is very funny and I usually watch for laughs so not much else appeals.
2 - American movies are everywehere. I think the only ‘English’ movie out right now is Run Fatboy Run (with Simon Pegg of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead fame). All the rest are imports as far as I can tell. What’s playing at my local cinema (theatre is something totally different of course) is:
Knocked Up
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Simpsons Movie
No Reservations
All American titles… (but I should note it’s a bit of a local cinema, not a mega-plex)
3 - I like to think there’s a bit of commonality for mid-20 to mid-30’s people who work in IT that crosses a lot of national boundaries, so I identify less with ‘American’ than with ‘International mid-30’s techie’. It might be crap, but it’s certainly true for me.
4 - Overall, I think the influence of American culture is good beause several things that are majorly part of America are left at home. You don’t get the religious evangelism (which most English just mock the hell out of anyways) that you get back home, and you don’t get quite so much of the arrogance and violence that I feel is everywhere at home. You also don’t get the horrible tv commercials that seem to be every 3 minutes on TV in the US over here. So I kinda think we’re getting the best of the US culture over here.
They better be cheering for the Vikings!
About the UK. I’ve never really been there, but I’ve spent a lot of time around English people in Denmark. Maybe Brits in the UK aren’t so clingy about British stuff since they don’t miss it.
BTW, what do you call the bread on an Egg McMuffin? Is that available in stores? Here it’s called an English muffin. I’ve heard that crumpets are similar, but not exactly. The thing is that the Egg McMuffin is probably the only thing that is an actual English Muffin in the UK.
But surprisingly enough, I’ve never met a Dane that liked the vikings! The NFL thing is a bit new and they normally root for teams that have been good in the past 3 to 4 years. But they SHOULD root for the vikings!
I don’t get the McDonalds thing-to me, fast food is about serving cheap , low quality food quickly-it is just a business. I agree, American moves and TV shows dominate, simply because so much of them are produced-and if you can dub a TV show in Danish, and sell it for a few bucks, who cares? It’s just an example of Gresham’s Law at work-the cheapest, most readily avilable commodities drives out anything more expensive. Do ya think a Danish Hotdog (Polser) stand would go over big in the USA?
That would just be a muffin, although the McDonalds version of it is softer and more spongy than the muffins that we typically find in the shops alone. Crumpets are only really similar in size and shape, the texture and consistency is quite different.
Ireland calling. I’d say depending on channel anything from 10% to 75% of our tv is imported from America, much of the rest of it is imported from Britain but that’s another story. Sopranos, Lost, Heroes, Battlestar and the like are huge here. Oprah is a household name, so is Jerry Springer. Most facets of American (televised or movie) culture are omnipresent here. In fact the main exception is perhaps sports, soccer and gaelic sports rule the roost here. American football, baseball and the like are televised late at night and haven’t got much of a following. At one stage I heard basketball was getting so popular it threatened to supplant football (gaelic and soccer) but that never happened. Eminem was more popular here per capita than in any other nation on Earth. Selling several hundred thousand copies of lots of albums (in a country of roughly 4 million) . Hip-hop, r’n’b etc are very popular as in much of the world.
Westerns were a major cultural touchstone of former generations. American cars (other than Ford) are now becoming popular. McDonalds and BK are popular as are the various subs store. The sheer amount of Subways opening up here is bizarre.
The internet, various “memes” (i hate that term) are popular here. Most Irish people under a certain age can converse in Simpsons quotes (no cite for this but probably has a graduate thesis or three in it somewhere). American slang catches on fairly quickly here albeit in a playfully ironic way. The valley girl intonation and part of the accent has infected the youth of this country.
Car “culture” is more prevalent here than in the past but I believe this is more of the British style thing than American.
Knowledge of American politics are generally high enough, American politics being world politics in a way.
I don’t know how many of these things are more or less present in other societies but one noticable difference here is that English is the mother tongue of the vast majority of the populace. In France, Sweden, Germany etc. people seem Americanised in one way but they still have their native language as a bastion in a way. Although the “pollution” of these languages by American English terms has been an issue.
Well, in fairness, nothing is really “foisted” on Canadians. True, the government mandates that Canadian radio stations and TV channels have Canadian content quotas, but since we also get US channels by the boatload, we’re not forced to watch what the government wants us to. It’s pretty easy to avoid “Canadian content” TV programming if you want to, and besides–some of the Canadian music on the radio is pretty damn good.
As others have noted, we’re not very different from the USA anyway, at least in English Canada. One specific thing I have noticed however is the rise in popularty of the NFL. When I was a child in the 60s, the Canadian Football League was the football game to watch if you were a football fan in Canada. The American game simply wasn’t popular among Canadian fans. But between some great promotions on the part of the NFL (the development of Monday Night Football on ABC, for example), and some boneheaded moves on the part of the CFL (blacking out home games, leaving those who might have become local team fans to watch whatever football they could find on TV–which was usually the NFL or US college football), the end result was that fans of the CFL and the Canadian game of football are literally dying off due to aging, while generations of Canadian kids have become fans of the American game only.
As I said, it’s not strictly due to the actions of the Americans or of the NFL; our own people must share some of the blame. But it is a pity. I’m old enough to be able to appreciate the Canadian game and the strategy and skills it requires, and I would hate to see it die because Canadian football fans believe that great marketing and promotion and TV availability by the NFL means that the American game is somehow better. Really, while they are very similar games, they are different enough that a football fan should be able to enjoy both for what each offers.
I don’t think the fast food really plays into it, let me clarify that with an ‘anymore’.
Macca’s, KFC, Subway, etc, etc, etc, have become such a normal sight, that I don’t think it invokes “American Culture” anymore.
The big impact I believe is the near saturation of TV & Music. The Australian government supposedly has restrictions in place about percentages of locally produced versus overseas produced content for TV and Radio, but it doesn’t stop the massive influx of American shows (and films).
I can only surmise that it’s due to the music and TV exposure that more and more teenagers, and young adults are adopting Valley Speak, and Gangsta dress, and the like. There is nothing quite so funny as seeing a bunch of young Australian white kids from the burbs, dressed and acting as if they’re fresh out of South Central 
[Here’s hoping I got that location right? - South Central is one of the real ‘bad’ areas of LA right?]
I think one of the things about Australia, is that we don’t really have a set, defined culture of our own. Apart from a few ‘foundations’ like Mateship, Giving a Fair Go, and the like, we don’t have a strong stand alone culture, we tend to borrow and assimilate.