We get occasional snippets of American culture in the Amazon Prime show, like mention of the New York Yankees becoming the New York Valkyries, and we see that the West Coast has become heavily Japanese influenced, but our information is relatively limited. How do you think American culture will evolve over time, with Jahr Null and the de facto independence of the American Reich by the end of the show? How much of traditional American culture will remain, and how much will it become hybridized with German culture, for example?
Culture in The Man in the High Castle
- Thread starter Jedi Dragon
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Something I've wondered about for a while is whether figures like Charles Schultz and Theodore Geisel will still become prominent ITTL. They both served in the army, but Ted was in the Signal Corps, and Schultz only fired his gun once (and missed, by the way). Butterflies could easily relegate them to lives of obscurity, but I kind of like the idea of Dr. Seuss being a propagandist for the Resistance, or Schultz creating some version of Peanuts, possibly with subtle jabs at the Reich.
One of the things that many people don't remember about the Nazi ideology was that in many ways it held up America as something to aspire to: the deportation and extermination of an indigenous population and the exploitation of a racially defined slave caste. Hitler himself said that "the Volga shall be our Mississippi." Generalplan Ost called for the settling of Eastern Europe with Germanic smallholders in the way that the Homestead Act allowed many white Americans (and European immigrants) to have similar holdings in lands taken from indigenous peoples.
America by series' end will have a self-conception resembling the OTL 50s but nastier and with more influence from Nazi conceptions of race. It will be a society that glories in its origins in settler colonialism and upholds genocide as an honorable thing (note the opening scene of season 2 with Thomas going to school - there's an examination question in which slavery is shown to be positive, and another moment in the show that states that schools are conflating American treatment of indigenous peoples with Nazi practices in Eastern Europe). Indeed, this self-conception may ingrain them towards the Germans, having just done something quite similar.
In the West Coast, even as the Japanese withdraw, there will be some Japanese cultural elements still there. I can see food like sushi and tempura surviving there in the way that pasta has in Ethiopia or banh mi has in Vietnam.
And in regards to @Jedi Dragon 's post, I can see Shultz and Seuss and other similar figures providing the basis for something like OTL anime and manga, which came into existence during the national melancholy in Japan as they faced American occupation. In part, these comics and cartoons would be escapist, but there would also be some anti-occupation undertones (as there has been in anime and manga).
America by series' end will have a self-conception resembling the OTL 50s but nastier and with more influence from Nazi conceptions of race. It will be a society that glories in its origins in settler colonialism and upholds genocide as an honorable thing (note the opening scene of season 2 with Thomas going to school - there's an examination question in which slavery is shown to be positive, and another moment in the show that states that schools are conflating American treatment of indigenous peoples with Nazi practices in Eastern Europe). Indeed, this self-conception may ingrain them towards the Germans, having just done something quite similar.
In the West Coast, even as the Japanese withdraw, there will be some Japanese cultural elements still there. I can see food like sushi and tempura surviving there in the way that pasta has in Ethiopia or banh mi has in Vietnam.
And in regards to @Jedi Dragon 's post, I can see Shultz and Seuss and other similar figures providing the basis for something like OTL anime and manga, which came into existence during the national melancholy in Japan as they faced American occupation. In part, these comics and cartoons would be escapist, but there would also be some anti-occupation undertones (as there has been in anime and manga).
It's not clear exactly how long Jahr Null lasted, but we see that it left a major impact. Aside from the destruction of monuments, there were also the student mobs engaging in an American equivalent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, at least on a small scale. Maybe we'll see tension between the old, 50's style vision of America, and the more forward-thinking, string-up-the-reactionaries, view of the students.
I've wondered about Disney too. He may have held some ... less than savory opinions on other races, but he wasn't as bigoted as he's sometimes made out to be. I'm not sure if he would be willing to work for the Nazis, but I really can't say for sure. I don't think they'd purge all of Shakespeare's work; The Tempest has a mixed-race villain, for one. A lot of stories might be re-worked to be more explicitly ant-Semitic, like they did with fairy tales IOTL.
Pretty germanized, if not to the extent that OTL Germany is americanized -- Ideological purging is harder given the sheer size of the United States, for example.
I'll preface this by saying that I haven't watched past Season 2.
Given the scale of American cooperation and the fact that Smith eventually becomes the highest authority within the 'Greater Nazi Reich' would it be safe to assume that it is not the Resistance that restores a democratic America, but a rogue GNR that breaks away from Germany?
Given the scale of American cooperation and the fact that Smith eventually becomes the highest authority within the 'Greater Nazi Reich' would it be safe to assume that it is not the Resistance that restores a democratic America, but a rogue GNR that breaks away from Germany?
The finale implies something like this. A combination of the Resistance and dissenters within the Reich could eventually lead to reform, which is, in my opinion, the most likely course of events. Eventually we get an America that, while far worse than OTL, is still nowhere near as bad as it could have been if Himmler and co. had gotten their way.
I've always been fascinated about how the careers of figures such as Schultz and Geisel (plus Walt Disney himself as mentioned below) would've changed due to this scenario. Not only their careers but their views on politics and race as well. Not only do you have Germany and Japan dividing America in half but the Final Solution is moved to America as well, essentially killing off America's Jews, blacks, Chinese, etc. And I've been fascinated with how they could've been effected not just in this scenario but any one where WW2 is altered in some fashion like TL-191 or even the Anglo-American/Nazi War.
Seuss drew propaganda cartoons during the war, some of them being more than a little racist towards the Japanese, and in TTL, he probably won't feel the need to apologize. I get the feeling that anti-Japanese sentiment in this world is probably stronger than ever, a certain level of cultural blending aside. For what it's worth, relations between black, white, and Hispanic Americans might actually be somewhat better in the Pacific States, if only due to a shared hatred of the Japanese.
This is one of those things that everyone "knows," like how he was cryo-frozen after death, but there's no real evidence for it.
From what I understand, someone did a deep dive into Disney's life and actions and found zilch. Ironically, he did find evidence of Disney working with Jews without incident:
MaxGerke01
Banned
I think its a safe assumption that in the South the Lost Cause was found. A restoration of the antebellum South is carried out for the whole section-as far as possible for whites and unfortunately probably totally and then some for blacks...
In the 1920s and 1930s, Geisel also created cartoons depicting blacks, Arabs, and Asians as less than savory, at least by modern standards. Granted, I think one of them mocked Hitler simultaneously and another was in an anti-Democrat magazine (at the time Democrats were seen as THE party of racism, totally different from today’s Democrats), but still. For what it’s worth, he did support the civil rights movement though. With minorities sent to gas chambers in the eastern part of the USA (in the MITHC-universe) plus strong implications that the Germans basically exterminated the entire continent of Africa and a very different Middle East, I wonder how that would change his perspective.
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In an effort to re-rail this thread before it gets too far off-topic, can I ask what sports were probably like in the MITHC-universe USA?
We know baseball is still popular, but we don't really hear anything else on the show. I would imagine gridiron football is still around in the Reich. Martial arts are practiced in the Pacific States, possibly professionally. As a counterpart for the Reich, I would suggest fencing.
