> Generally, we don't, and the result is an America that is hypercommercialized and ugly, with very few cultural achievements

I've seen this viewpoint before, but it doesn't seem right at all - people drastically underestimate how amazing some of the America's cultural achievements are in a very short time.

The United States has got a pretty impressive literature tradition in less than 250 years. It doesn't stack up with, say, England's, but they've had a lot longer to build theirs... Our industrial design is out of the-world-good, one of the best of all time. Movies, of course. I'm not sure, but the best video games might wind up being studied and looked at as high art later - not sure which, I get the feeling the Planescape: Torment is incredibly high art, very philosophically deep and makes you think on some really interesting questions but who knows if that'll stick around, and who knows what else will.

Comic books and graphic novels have been criminally underrated as art until very recently, and I didn't even like comics that much as a kid. I only got into it when a friend of mine gave me some Frank Miller stuff, and I don't like all of it, but the good stuff is pretty amazing.

We've had some pretty amazing cartoons, animation, and amazing drawing and rendering in those mediums, ranging from Walt Disney's time to Pixar and so on. I'm in China right now and I was watching some Mickey Mouse dubbed into Chinese, and it's amazing how accessible it was. There was one cartoon with Daffy Duck going hunting and they analogized it to the trench warfare in WWI - amazing how it mixes deep themes about violence, animals, the barbaric nature of man trying to conquer and get trophies with some comic humor and pretty scenery that keeps kids interested. I don't even agree with that particular cartoon's political stance, but it's impressive that the visuals alone could tell a rather complete story without me understanding the language.

By the way, on a personal note, do you mind if I ask if you're an American? I see lots of comments on American culture from you, and I can't tell if you're from the States or Europe or elsewhere. I'm an American myself, grew up on the East Coast and in the middle of the country, have since lived, worked, and/or traveled through 30-40 countries or so.

I know some Europeans pooh-pooh American culture because we don't have as much classical high art in painting, etc, as Europeans do. But damn man, it's been 250 years, we've done some bloody marvelous things in that time. And I'm not even talking about talking about the technology necessarily - American movies, literature, animation in both cartoons and feature films, American architecture, American design and industrial design, American innovations in music... America's done some cool stuff in not very long. It's currently considered "pop culture", but all high art starts out that way. Some of the most celebrated European artists were lambasted or ignored for deviating from the classical Academy style of painting. From England, The Beatles were considered pop culture, and are now evolving to be considered high art.

Likewise, if you like at the IMDB Top 250[1], I'd bet many of those films are studied and debated and talked about for quite a long time, and the bulk of them are American.

[1]http://www.imdb.com/chart/top