Subculture Blend

You can't deny that the United States of America is a superpower that has affected the world, and it seems that in other countries its culture has been injected, the wrong way. Venezuela, being close enough to the USA, gets a lot of American stuff like music, products, movies, etc.

There is a problem, however, because the culuture becomes fashionable, and therefore to anyone who's lived in the United States, it doesn't make much sense.

Although most of Latin America speaks Spanish, a lot of the cable channels are named in English. There is one called Sony Entertainment Television, and the announcer says everything in Spanish but he says "Sony Entorrtainment Television", probably because it sounds cool in English. The Warner Channel is worse, they have a narrator whose native language is obviously Spanish, but he announces everthing in English. It's pretty annoying: "Smallville, the story of superman when he was a kid! Tonight on the Warner channel!" I have a feeling that he's the same announcer from the Sony channel, too!

Plenty of stores have names in English, but they're the silliest names you can imagine. At a local mall, there's a store called Shoes & Shoes, and another one called Glasses, Glasses, & Glasses. If it's not a name in English, then there's aphostrophe + s attached to the end, even though it's only common to use it in restaurants in American culture (and uh... Kinko's?), and it's misused. A common store name would be something like Brenda Clothing & Shoe's, or Perrockeros Burguer's. The word burger is also a common mispelled word, because the Spanish equivalent, hamburguesa, has a U in it. Some stores have brand names, though American companies don't seem to care over here. There's a Universal Video, using the Universal Pictures logo, a Panera Bakery and Cafe, which claims to be part of Panera Bread although the logo and name is not the same, and there's a swatch store at a mall that sells mostly Casio watches.

Finally, the subcultures start to blend in places. Girls can one day dress like yuppie girls ready for the club, while the next day they'll dress up punkish like that "Avril Lavigne" because it's fashionable and not because they believe that being part of the mainstream yuppiness is too corporate and they want to be alternative, or whatever. For the first time in my life I see a store with gangster clothing on display, even though not many people listen to hip hop and nobody plays American football. There's a tatoo and piercing parlor that has more action figures than a comic book shop, and they sell other things like bongs and pipes. Reggaeton, a new style of latin music similar to hip hop, has videos with booty and latino gangstas straight from New York, LA, or Miami, and yet nobody in Latin America dresses that way. Nike (in Spanish pronounced like nice but with a k) has become a brand very much like the Tazmanian Devil in America is for the white trash.

And there's many more. It really meses with my head and I will stop thinking about it, but you can check out some of the pictures that I've taken about the subject.