Arthur Erickson Quotes

Even some of us who make movies underestimate their influence abroad. American movies sell American culture. Foreigners want to see American movies. But that's also why so many foreign governments and groups object to them.

If there is cultural imperialism, it is definitely American.

You Americans, you have no idea how much your stuff infiltrates the rest of the world!

The opponents of this process have always tried to vilify westernization as a poor imitation.

Often, these downplay the power of cultural imperialism - in that sense, playing the game of US interests - by reassuring us that the global success of American mass culture is not as bad as all that.

One thing that is not to be underestimated is American culture's influence on the rest of the world.

The World Doesn’t Want to Be American

It is a myth that most people throughout the world hate America. They hate the American government and the American military …. They love American culture—they have made it the world’s culture.

When you start exporting ideas, philosophy, behavior, products, ways of living, it becomes an assault on the culture. Americans have to understand that.

So ubiquitous is Western influence that most of the time it is no longer seen as an alien element intruding into non-Western societies. It is an influence that has become integrated into the mind and body, the heart and soul of the non-Western human being. Western dominance, in other words, has become normal, it has become natural. By making it so natural and so normal to be 'Western', the centres of power in the West have achieved their ultimate triumph.

The things and ways the West took to the rest have become the ways of the world.

Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of Civilization--one for home consumption and one for the heathen market?

We have appropriated too many Moslem countries for them to have any real trust in our disinterestedness.

It isn't pleasant to surrender to the hegemony of a nation which is still wild and primitive, and to concede the absolute superiority of its customs and institutions, science and technology, literature and art. Must one sacrifice so much in the name of the unity of mankind?

Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as ‘enlightenment.'

We've built the largest empire in the history of the world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort.

In the past, the U.S. was the centre of the world, where everything was happening. I think my stories have always sought to question this, maybe even criticise it.

In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernize, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things.

The domination of western values, beliefs and way of life has angered many from the east and in developing countries.

American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.

I know that we're being inexorably taken over by the Americans. Without a doubt. I don't mean invaded or anything like that, just taken over. By degrees.

The uniqueness of the United States in human history is the United States is the first global power in human history which emerged far away from Africa or Asia, which is the main land of human history.

The U.S. has intervened more often in more countries farther from its own shores than has any power in modern history.

I wish Obama would focus on governing the United States and would forget his country's imperialist pretensions.

A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy.