Culture of the United States

The development of the arts and entertainment in the United States--music, movies, dance, architecture, literature and the visual arts--has been marked by a tension between two strong sources of inspiration: European sophistication and domestic originality. Frequently, the best American artists have managed to harness both sources.

American culture has a large influence on the rest of the world, especially the Western world. American music is heard all over the world, and American movies and television shows can be seen almost anywhere. This is in stark contrast to the early days of the American republic, when the country was generally seen as an agricultural backwater with little to offer the culturally advanced world centers of Asia and Europe. Nearing the end of its third century, nearly every major American city offers classical and popular music; historical, scientific and art research centers and museums; dance performances, musicals and plays; outdoor art projects and internationally significant architecture. This development is a result of both contributions by private philanthropists and government funding.

American culture also exhibits a tendency to hybridize pop culture and so-called high culture, and generally questions normative standards for artistic output. This is likely an effect of the country's egalitarian tradition, and the nation's history of constitutionally protected freedom of speech and expression, as enshrined in the First Amendment.

### American Popular Culture

American popular culture has expressed itself through nearly every medium, including movies, music and sports. Mickey Mouse, Babe Ruth, screwball comedy, G.I. Joe, jazz, the blues, *The Simpsons,* Michael Jackson, *Gone With the Wind*, Michael Jordan, Indiana Jones, Catch-22--these names, genres, and phrases have joined more tangible American products in spreading across the globes.

It is worth noting, that while America tends to be a net exporter of culture, it absorbs many other cultural traditions with relative ease, for example: origami, soccer, anime, and yoga.

It can be argued that this ablilty to easily absorb parts of other cultures and other languages is its greatest strength and helps American culture and language spread. Americans in general do not worry about protecting their "indigenous culture"(see below) but instead eagerly create and adopt new things and then change or modify to make them their own.

### Exportation of Popular Culture

The United States is an enormous exporter of entertainment, especially sports, movies and music. This readily consumable form of culture is widely and cheaply dispersed for entertainment consumers world-wide.

For better or worse, many nations now have two cultures: an indigenous one and globalized/American popular culture. That said, what one society considers entertainment is not necessarily reflective of the "true culture" of its people. More popular syndicated programs cost more, so overseas entertainment purchasers often choose older programs that reflect various, and dated, stages of the United States cultural development. Pop culture also tends to neglect the more mundane and/or complex elements of human life.

### Notable Cultural Figures

#### Notable figures in U.S. literature

In American literature, authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, and more recently, Ernest Hemingway, J. D. Salinger and Flannery O'Connor, mastered the "short story." Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler pioneered gritty detective fiction that has had great influence on other genres and in other countries. After World War I, authors like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald developed new techniques for novels.

Other noted American writers include Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Ayn Rand, Zora Neale Hurston, Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carson, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Willa Cather and Toni Morrison.

U.S. poets with international fame (or notoriety) include: T. S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, Charles Bukowski, Robert Lowell, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Ogden Nash, Shel Silverstein, William S. Burroughs, E. E. Cummings, Maya Angelou and Robert Frost.

#### Notable figures in U.S. music

American music has a long and diverse history and has been an important influence on popular music worldwide. Some of the U.S.A.'s more famous and important musicians and singers include Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Chuck Berry, Mariah Carey, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Kurt Cobain, Bing Crosby, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, Eminem, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Benny Goodman, Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holliday, Buddy Holly, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Robert Johnson, Janis Joplin, B. B. King, Carole King, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Madonna, Willie Nelson, Thelonius Monk, Stevie Nicks, Charlie Parker, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Frank Sinatra, Tina Turner, and Hank Williams.

American classical composers include: Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Charles Ives

#### Notable figures in U.S. film

American inventor Thomas Alva Edison played an important role in the invention of motion pictures, and David Wark Griffith pioneered a filmic vocabulary that still dominates. Other famous American film directors include Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, John Ford, Spike Lee, Woody Allen, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Iconic American actors include Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, James Cagney, Bette Davis, James Dean, Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Julia Roberts, Jimmy Stewart, Meryl Streep, Shirley Temple and John Wayne.

#### Notable figures in U.S. dance

American dancers of note include: Martha Graham, Isadora Duncan, Jerome Robbins, Robert Joffrey, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Gregory Hines, Savion Glover.

#### Notable figures in U.S. visual art

American visual artists of note include Thomas Hart Benton, Andy Warhol, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mary Cassatt, Frederic Remington, N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, Winslow Homer, Man Ray, Dorothea Lange, Robert Capa, Ansel Adams, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John James Audubon, Alexander Calder, Dale Chihuly, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Norman Rockwell, Dr. Suess, and Jackson Pollock. Major American architects include Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Kahn, Buckminster Fuller, Louis Sullivan and Frank Gehry.