While visting my parents in Florida, we went to a Romanian restuarant named Transylvania. I was worried it would be horribly inauthentic and cater to Anne Rice fans. There were some pictures of Vlad. But, the staff, the music and the food was authentic. At first, a few relatives were worried about eating Romanian food. When we asked for explanations of some of the names, it turns out that much of it was the same food my Ukranian great grandmother used to make.
Though the lack of records make research difficult, it seems Dracula is as much a part of my heritage as borchst.
If furriners are so worried about our pillaging their culture, they should immediately stop buying Levis, stop showing 'Merkin TV shows on their (2, Government-owned) TV stations, and stop listening to Rock & Roll, Rap and Jazz altogether. Maybe then their people will be able to see the inate superiority of the “Old Ways.”
You mean the ancient and cherished Native American folk tradition that the profit-mongering Brit Gerry Anderson appropriated to make his Euro-centric self-aggrandizing creepy puppet show?
All too many of us Americans, I’m afraid. All too many.
I dunno, but it would seem to me the people with the biggest gripe would be the descendants of the Grimm Brothers, Perrault and Andersen, against Disney for turning their cautionary tales into saccharine kiddie fare (Gimme a Cinderella where the stepsisters end up maimed and blinded!). But when I stop to think of it I realize something: most of them are NOT griping! Most of them are carrying on with their lives and not caring if someone in Hollywood makes a buck off some old story. So really, who are we trying to shout down, a handful of no-lifes? Speaking of whom, the annoying ones to me are the ones claiming that Americans are carpetbombing the planet with our pop culture and driving out everyone else’s. Hey, there IS an off-switch on the radio; if your kids are listening to Britney Spears and eating at McDonald’s, maybe it means they DON’T LIKE their homegrown stuff. (And having watched the Eurovision music contest I can imagine why.)
Meanwhile, Doper Darth Nader wanders the Transylvanian mists looking for the thread in which he had intended to post, which probably shared with this one a reference to pirated DVDs…
