New Yorkers will spend hours talking about how unique and special bodegas like other cities dont have grocery stores
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New Yorkers will spend hours talking about how unique and special bodegas like other cities dont have grocery stores
well, i watched some mormon missionaries speak about their missionary experience in the totally exotic culture of uh… new zealand. and they were just absolutely in love with the idea of a small grocery store on the corner, in walking distance. just in awe at this eldritch cultural practice. they’d never encountered anything like it (i guess they came from utah?)
so… uh… y’know.
Utah is a foreign country even within the context of the United Stated
Utah is a social experiment
cultural capital of the world
Wait 10 years and Shanghai will show you what is the cultural capital of the universe
New Yorkers really believe they are the center of the universe lol. And I say this as someone who used to live there for years.
the whole idea of there having to be a single “capital” of culture or science is euro shit, steeped in colonialism and the need to maintain cultural hegemony. The global south is home to thousands of cultures, more vibrant and alive than
s can even imagine, and they all have their centers and reference points, that are looking to the West less and less, as of late.I don’t think new york is even cultural capital of usa lmao
of course, it’s actually Hitlerville, Oregon
Wait 10 years and Shanghai will show you what is the cultural capital of the universe
No. I’m sorry that’s just not happening. Not as long as so much of Chinese cultural products exist entirely for internal consumption.
Edit: Right now if I’m going to consume Chinese media I have to seek it out, and I have to put in some effort if I want to consume it in a way that is legible to me as a person who does not speak Mandarin. If I want to see a thing that is entirely up its own ass about new york I have to turn on the TV, and I am not in America.
And even if that changed tomorrow, there would still be entire generations (In fact, every living generation) that grew up with and were influenced by American media and not Chinese media and it would take years upon years just to change that, and again that is assuming that tomorrow I would turn on the TV or the radio or turn on a popular streaming service and the first results would be Chinese media.I’m sorry that’s just not happening. Not as long as so much of Chinese cultural products exist entirely for internal consumption.
Not now, but I did say in 10 years.
First, Shanghai is not so much Chinese, but an international city. It is the most Westernized city far beyond anywhere else in China.
What makes NYC the cultural hub is not that it is the epitome of American culture (you can find more authentic American vibes in any Southern city), but that it is an international city made up of enclaves of immigrants who brought their own culture into the mix.
Like NYC, Shanghai is the financial center of the nation. Comparing Shanghai to other major Chinese industrial cities, say Zhengzhou in Henan, is like comparing NYC to, say, Atlanta. Very different vibes.
And like NYC, the rent and property prices are way beyond what most young people can afford, and the people there have a smugness not seen in other cities except for maybe Beijing and Hangzhou, though not at the level of New Yorkers yet.
Second, Shanghai already has the ingredients for becoming an international cultural hub, but it needs time.
How do I know this? First, we need to ask, what is it that makes NYC a cultural hub? I’ve mentioned above that it has a lot of immigrants of diverse backgrounds, but as a metric of cultural centers, NYC has international cultural activities that you simply cannot find in the vast majority of the cities in the world outside of their own places of origin.
This is going to sound funny, but bear with me: let’s say I want to learn a niche African tribal dance (just an example, it can be any form of international cultural activity), I can easily find an expert teacher in NYC. Believe it or not, these days you can similarly find them in Shanghai. You simply cannot find similar dance studios with such world-class teachers in most cities in the world. That’s what makes these cities candidates for international cultural hubs.
It is true that Shanghai does not yet have the immigration numbers compared to NYC, but the shifting in geopolitical power in the coming decades can change that. China does need to relax its immigration policy, and the recent K visas for foreigners can help, but the most important part is that the basic ingredients are already there.
What Shanghai will always lose out to NYC though, are all the stolen artefacts from other cultures and civilizations that you find in the Met.
China does need to relax its immigration policy
well that’s not happening anytime soon
most importantly cultural
What zero materialism does to a mf.
Also that’s just not true. Before social media, Hollywood was the center of global cultural production. Nowadays it’s too chaotic and individualized to have a center, but if it had one it’d be Silicon Valley.
broadway shows, woody allen films and 90s young-people-in-apartments sitcoms are what shapes global culture, actually
Musically, maybe failsons of the illuminati flying home from their Swiss boarding schools to start bands and do coke in NY dive bar bathrooms briefly after 9/11, for a couple of years anyway.
