Tony Bennett: 'America is Culturally Void'

[kskiska]

Legendary singer TONY BENNETT has slammed his home country of America for not contributing anything other than jazz music to world art and culture. The IF I RULED THE WORLD crooner feels that Europe and Asia offer far more culturally than America does. Bennett says, "I have travelled around the world to Asia and Europe. They show you what they have contributed to the world. The British show you theatre, the Italians show you music and art, the French show you cooking and painting, and the Germans show you science. "The only thing that the United States, which is still a young country, has contributed culturally to the world is jazz - elongated improvisation. It's tragic." And Bennett feels that Americans don't even appreciate the impact of jazz in popular culture. He says, "Fifty years from now people will be bowing to DIZZY GILLESPIE and CHARLIE PARKER, just like impressionist painters like MONET, who were starving in their day. The Americans don't even know what they have come up with."

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/tony%20bennett%20america%20is%20culturally%20void_1005988

[ComerPerro]

1. Hey! Take that back!

We gave the world Die Hard! and Total Recall! and Rambo! and other incredibly blood thristy movies.

[unkachuck]

7. death and destruction....

....good point....we are good at that....

[ComerPerro]

11. glamorizing death and destruction

[karlrschneider]

14. You forgot American Idol!

:eyes:

[Kutjara]

2. What's he talking about? We've given the world plenty.

Chuck E. Cheese, Miracle Whip, Holy Family-shaped sandwiches, Scientology, Creationism, "have a nice day," "you want fries with that?", the atomic bomb, depleted uranium, the Unitary Executive, Dumb n' Dumber, Deuce Bigalow, Kenny G., type-2 diabetes, "Supersize Me", gas guzzlers, drive-bys, Wars on Terror, Disney, Agent Orange. I could go on and on.

Our contribution to the world has been huge. It's just that not a lot of it has been what might ordinarly been called 'positive.'

[DavidDvorkin]

3. I'd rate most of those ahead of jazz

Ugh.

[BlueJazz]

12. Yep... Simple music for Simple Non-Cerebral Minds.

Jazz takes an IQ above cornball.

[bluerum]

4. and lets not forget, the grand demon himself - GW, the original

monkey boy king.

[Telly Savalas]

5. People already are bowing to Bird and Diz like they do to Monet.

What's this 50 years from now shit all about?

[porphyrian]

6. It must be nice to be so isolated, Tony.

In the America most of us have to live in, there's culture out the wahzoo. The only problem is a corporate entertainment industry that keeps mass-producing shit and trying to force-feed it to us as if we asked for it.

[BlueJazz]

8. When I played in Europe the Popular Joke there was:

"How do you tell if a Band is Shitty and Simplistic and meant for non-musical tastes?"

Ans: Americans like it.


Tony is right though...Europeons are much more Hip about music than your average
3 chord American.

[tuvor]

9. "When I was a boy, we had so much more culture than you young'uns today."

Tony Bennett's dad to his son, ca. 1935.

[tocqueville]

10. this is not true

America has produced (produces) a lot of culture in a wide array of fields : music (even classic), literature, philosophy, painting, movies and science. Art is not limited to jazz even if it's true that jazz is more popular today in Europe, specially France than in the US. On the other hand there is a production of commercial "culture" on such a scale that it's dumbing the great American achievements.

[KoKo]

15. Yep...the Massive Corporate Media Controlled Enfotainment Giant has

beat back local and regional culture so that we will all be the same Mass Consumers at WalMart. It's been going on for about 20 years but reached critical mass under the Bushistas. It's horrifying the "control" over all of us..what we see, hear, eat and read. Like lemmings rushing after the same things.

Those of us who don't end up feeling very alone and congregate on websites looking for some semblence somewhere of what we've lost. We are the last remnants of what was left of culture in America. It's something we don't talk about here.. We are very busy trying to remove Bushistas hoping there will be something left afterwards. But the effort might produce some really good stuff when it's looked back on years from now.

[OwnedByFerrets]

22. But if the neocon/fundies had their way

we could kiss our Cultural Achievements away. We would all be singing Amazing Grace and I'll Fly Away. :puke:

[oscarmitre]

13. Hah, some claims you're making

who was it who gave the world Steve Irwin? Come one, who was it? Trouble with this Bennett bloke is he doesn't recognise culture when he sees it. :D

[Journeyman]

16. Kurt Vonnegut once observed that as an American he has no culture. . .

". . . just a bunch of silly commercials running around in my head."

[ComerPerro]

17. everything about our culture is commercialism and consumerism

[misanthrope]

18. Yeah, sure, Tony...

...Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Wyeths, Jackson Pollack, Mark Twain, Henry David Thoreau, Frank Lloyd Wright, Aaron Copland, Steve Reich, Martha Graham, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Ernest Hemingway, George Gershwin, John Steinbeck, Arthur Miller, Kurt Vonnegut, James Beard, Chuck Close, the untold numbers who created Creole and Cajun cuisines and countless other hacks have produced absolutely nothing in their lives.

[allalone]

19. nice

this from a pop singer

[Bluebear]

20. West Side Story.

If only that, America would have contributed plenty.

[Vidar]

21. Sounds about right. We are basically an anti-culture, bottom line folk