After flipping through several articles, I noticed that almost all of them showed outrageous things that Americans would do, which shed a bad light on certain American laws, policies and culture. For example, the first one is titled, "Suing the people who saved your life". It briefly talks about a man in Colorado who is suing the people who rescued him from a flood, just because he thinks that they didn't rescue him fast enough. The man (Roy Ortiz) shockingly said, "I'm really happy to be alive, but I'm looking for some help in paying my bills." Only in America would someone take advantage of the justice system to basically steal money from the people who saved his life.
Some of the stories are much more severe, as the next one that caught my eye was "Throw a snowball, get arrested". This one is about a 13 year old kid who threw a snowball at a police officer, and was charged with a felony and got arrested. Only in America would a police officer arrest a kid for being a kid.
It is interesting to think about the American values that the authors of this series are trying to portray. I began to notice a trend within this series. It seems as if these Americans were taking advantage of their power with self gain in mind, which shows the American value of the individual over community. It also shows people overreacting and taking seemingly harmless situations to an unreasonable level. In the eyes of many (specifically foreigners), the actions of American people (especially the government) seem ridiculous, and I think that this series is trying to show the American people how crazy some of the everyday occurrences that might go unnoticed really are.
1 comment:
Great post Madeleine: a very interesting find! I agree with your statement made about the trend of people overreacting to harmless situations. But what I really found interesting in this was the fact that they titled the series, "Only in America". It seems that this is a very strange thing to say. Do the authors really believe that people would only do something like this because they are American? I also think that it is interesting that they make these things seem common, making these bad incidents seem like a "stereotypical" American. To me, making this stereotype is a bigger deal than the photos themselves. But all in all, very interesting!
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