From the comments:
I would be interested in more of your thoughts on western popular culture. Thanks for keeping up with this blog, I have learned a lot! For now, I quietly wait for a post that I can add insight to
Having lived basically my entire adult life in overwhelmingly coastal liberal US cities I’m not personally very familiar with “Red America” (though long-time readers will be aware that my adolescence was spent in the inter-Montane West, in a town not too different from what you might see in Napoleon Dynamite). So I’ve become fascinated recently about what one can learn by watching “bro-country” videos. Compare for example the video above of Florida Georgia Line’s Cruise remixed from the origin with the rapper Nelly, to the original below:
Even more explicit in terms of the cultural values which are at the heart of “bro-country” is their video for “Dirt”:
We tend to view past cultures through their production of literature and visual arts. The music of the United States naturally maps onto to subcultural divisions, and seems to me to be a great way to explore the diversity. Though I’m not sure how “cross-over” productions like the above with Nelly turn out, often the values and ethos are dissonant.
If you are new to this area, this critique of “bro-country” hits many of the tropes of the genre:
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