What impressions of other countries would you get soley from looking at their media

Cafe Society
1

Riffing off some of the current discussion in this thread, what are the impressions you would get about a country if all you knew about them was based on their media (tv, movies, music)

My impressions:
The British spend at least half of their waking hours in pubs. All housing consists of either London flats or country houses dating back to the 1700’s

Japan has at least as many guns as the US, possibly more, but its not too much of a problem since any 80 year old grandma can hold her own against 30 men in their prime.

India is in the midst of a giant epidemic of choreomania, with frequent uncontrolable bouts of highly choreogrphed routines breaking out spontaneously.

Nothing good ever happens to anyone in Russia, and most Russians would probably kill themselves except that it would require them to take their attention away from brooding about the meaninglessness of their existence.

2

I’ll subvert this a bit: judging from American media, Germans are all pretzel eating, beer drinking, lederhosen or dirndl wearing, yodeling Bavarians.

And to stay on topic: judging from German media, we are a technocratic, bureaucratic , existentially brooding society of engineers.

3

Why not both?

4

Beer drinking, existentially brooding and engineer fits in my case. Bavarian, not so much. :laughing:

5

I have something to add to this: We may come over as all which I wrote, but the other side of the coin is: hopeless romantics. That also has long been a theme in German media, to this day. Think the films of Wim Wenders for a relatively current example.

6

Ok, this is fun, so what I gather from having watched hundreds of French films: French people are either always on the brink of nervous breakdown, or tough as a nail.

7

From watching anime, I’ve learned that Japanese people have enormous eyes.

8

Is “pornography” considered a subset of “media?”

9

Speaking as an American, who has watched a fair amount of Canadian TV:

Canadians are all very nice, but most of them are kind of quirky (in a mostly-harmless way), and hockey is the state religion.

10

Watching British cop shows, I get the impression that the small towns and villages there have murder rates that rival that of any major American city.

11

I’d think that would be a genre.

12

Korean teenagers are so intense!

13

Russians drink vodka, hug bears, go shirtless in winter, smoke, are mafia-ish

14

And earnest…so damn earnest.

15

Having grown up there and still having family there, all I can say is:

  1. Not entirely wrong
  2. Sorry.
16

Oh, and Canadians also apologize for everything. :smiley:

17

Are you mixing up Georgians and Geordies ? To the best of my knowledge Geordies don’t hug bears.

j

(OK, I don’t know if the word Geordie is known in the US. Inhabitant of Newcastle Upon Tyne. Well described in @Velocity ’s post. Apart from the bears thing. )

18

There are a LOT of murders in the Cotswolds.

19

Every window in Paris has a view of the Eiffel Tower.

20

Italians are ridiculously loud around the dinner table and are usually arguing.

j