The arts get stifled

Let's say that in an alternate America the arts are stifled leading to America no longer dominating the entertainment industry due to timeline shenanigans. What would the effect be and how would the country turn out?

This would mean Hollywood would be an almost unknown minor player. Little of the international bestseller books would emerge from the country. A vanishingly small amount of internationally popular music emerges from the country, with what does emerge being seen as niche for the region and enjoying limited success even inside the country. Famous art from the region is rare. For most of these the world turns to Britain and later France as the British Empire declines.

The country starts the century with a strong STEM and tech investment though. Does hobbling the arts significantly cripple the nations ability to create inventions or retain those who may become inventors? Can we get a situation where most of America speaks French in order to understand popular culture?
 
The only way this is possible is if the United States has a fraction of the population it does and is a closed off, repressive dictatorship (basically a nuclear civil war). America is so big and so economically powerful that even if the rest of the world derides it's cultural exports and for some reason few become popular that it's musicians, writers, and film studios will still produce some of the world's most successful and best-selling material just from the American internal market alone. The scenario doesn't make sense economically or demographically.

Why would the British Empire decline means its cultural output declines? British Invasion, Harry Potter, etc. is all in the "decline" of the British Empire, and I'm sure we can cite Australia and Canada too. And if Britain can said to have declined, France has declined just as much, if not more.

The country starts the century with a strong STEM and tech investment though. Does hobbling the arts significantly cripple the nations ability to create inventions or retain those who may become inventors? Can we get a situation where most of America speaks French in order to understand popular culture?

Not many important people would move to Britain or France or wherever because they enjoy their culture more. Or maybe they would (like some people who move to Japan), but it wouldn't be the first reason they were moving there. Links with the English-speaking world would keep Anglo pop culture strong. There's a ton of Canadians, Australians, and Britons out there, and throw in Irishmen and Kiwis too.
 
You need to eliminate WWII at a minimum (the Germans were creating AMAZING movies borne of the trauma of WWI and the Soviets were experimenting in numerous narratives).
 
Or eliminate WWI, French movie industry was very influental in the begining of the 20th century, but was all but shut down for WWI and never really recovered.
 
Good point everybody. I guess the timeline is more of a thought experiment. There's a few people saying that arts don't contribute anything of worth. It's something I disagree with though. What if those people had got out of control? A nation in which there's a strong stigma against those in the arts? People would stigmatize writers, directors, actors and musicians and these would clearly occupy the lowest rung in society.

How bad would this affect society if the society still pumps funds and respect into the "practical" professions? Would such suppression of the arts scare many of the nation's best minds overseas? One can imagine inserting such a sigma into society might require some rather unpleasant methods. How would the nation continue to function?

Good point about a nation in decline still producing good art. I suppose with the stigma in place the creation of popular culture would be distributed among many cultures. Everybody can get used to subtitles or perhaps it could the impetus for many of the world's population to become multilingual? Learning one language won't get you most of the popular culture anymore. You'll need a few of them if you want to understand popular culture in its original language.
 

Jerry Kraus

Banned
Let's say that in an alternate America the arts are stifled leading to America no longer dominating the entertainment industry due to timeline shenanigans. What would the effect be and how would the country turn out?

This would mean Hollywood would be an almost unknown minor player. Little of the international bestseller books would emerge from the country. A vanishingly small amount of internationally popular music emerges from the country, with what does emerge being seen as niche for the region and enjoying limited success even inside the country. Famous art from the region is rare. For most of these the world turns to Britain and later France as the British Empire declines.

The country starts the century with a strong STEM and tech investment though. Does hobbling the arts significantly cripple the nations ability to create inventions or retain those who may become inventors? Can we get a situation where most of America speaks French in order to understand popular culture?

You'd probably have to eliminate the First Amendment to the Constitution, that's really what makes Americans so prominent in the Arts. Freedom of Speech is the basis for the Arts, after all. And, if you eliminate the First Amendment, it's not really the America we know, at all. Could be a dictatorship, not a democracy.

Also, there's no very clear distinction between Arts and Sciences, except in university curricula. Much of science and science fiction, for example, could easily be interchanged, in terms of how they're actually classified. Many mathematicians, for example, consider mathematics to be much more of an art, than a science, because it's really just about agreement between mathematicians about what makes sense, logically speaking, and doesn't necessarily correlate with anything in the real world, at all.

So, if you stifle the arts, you probably stifle the sciences, as well. And, without the sciences, it's difficult to proceed in engineering or technology.
 
Or eliminate WWI, French movie industry was very influental in the begining of the 20th century, but was all but shut down for WWI and never really recovered.
There is a strong argument that WWI made Hollywood. The European (and Empire) film industries got strangled of funds during and afterwards.

Freedom of Speech is the basis for the Arts, after all.

Really? Do I have to point the the complete lack of freedom of speech for most of human history and the existence of Art?

At the end of the day the US is a large population of people with free time and money. They will produce art. Just like everyone else.


As an aside it always tickles my fancy that the US had the same appreciation of copyright as the modern China, until it started dominating the arts after WWI.
 

Jerry Kraus

Banned
There is a strong argument that WWI made Hollywood. The European (and Empire) film industries got strangled of funds during and afterwards.



Really? Do I have to point the the complete lack of freedom of speech for most of human history and the existence of Art?

At the end of the day the US is a large population of people with free time and money. They will produce art. Just like everyone else.


As an aside it always tickles my fancy that the US had the same appreciation of copyright as the modern China, until it started dominating the arts after WWI.

The fact that Freedom of Speech isn't enshrined in government documents doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. If it didn't exist at all, there couldn't be any art. People wouldn't be able to express their views, in any form at all. So, a government might be rather tolerant of freedom of speech, merely by social convention.

However, it does help when it is enshrined in the Constitution of a country, as a very fundamental right. More repressive societies tend to be less creative, and less artistic. Although, given the attitude of the British Government to freedom of speech, I suppose an Englishman and an American might tend to disagree on this particular point.
 
You can certainly make America's cultural strength weaker by comparison, by making everyone else stronger.

However, as everyone else has said, making American-derived culture effectively disappear is hard.
 
You could argue that this is what happened In OTL from the 1930s through the early 1970s in film and from the 1950s through the 1990s in television. Every movie had to equivalent of a G rating. On television there were limits on how law enforcement could be depicted or certain subjects including sex could even be mentioned.
 
OTL US entertainment industry from the 80s onwards, thanks to focus groups/trying to aim every piece of media at EVERYONE by avoiding "offense".
 
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