
Rammstein - Amerika (Official 4K Video)
About this video
The official music video for Rammstein's 2004 song Amerika, a satirical take on American cultural dominance and its export around the world. It was shot in the ruins of a former chemical site near Berlin.
Why it appears in the archive
HN mostly cites it as a pop-culture reference in discussions of American cultural influence, sometimes jokingly.
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From the Hacker News discussion
Authors addendum: This post was a mistake on my part. Please downvote this post. Thank you! I would rather have a retract option, but there is none here on HN. Original post: Apologies to you on behalf of people who made you feel uncomfortable. Full disclosure: I had (still have?) negative biases/sentiments/stereotypes towards Americans: being ignorant, self-absorbed, reckless, careless etc. And this almost made me have a knee-jerk reaction to the expressed desire to make the content in question available in English. As if I am tired of you Americans Americanizing everything you touch[2]. This sentiment is also expressed in Ramstein's song "Amerika"[3]. But that's why it is called a "stereotype". I shouldn't stereotype a population of +300 m out of a small sample size (that includes YouTube/Twitter too). I lose a lot of potential good/bad experiences if I continue to do that. And even if, for the sake of the argument, 90% match my silly stereotype, I still should have an optimistic modus operandi. Pessimism/cynicism is a counterproductive trait. You should be an optimist[1]. But putting all that aside, what makes you think that the inquirer is an American? He could be a French person knowing Japanese and Russian besides English. Anyhow, we shouldn't follow protectionist policies. Nothing good comes out of that. We should be thankful/appreciative to people who are willing to share content with others (open source, creative commons, etc.). References: [1] Algorithms to Live By
Read original comment ↗> I think the whole success of the Hollywood is based on their ability to create films that cut across all the cultures. Good time for Rammstein's _Amerika_ video: [VIDEO] Their point is that the USA _exports_ its culture to the rest of the world, and Hollywood is one of the main ways in which it does that.
Read original comment ↗From Wikipedia: Collodi often used the Italian Tuscan dialect in his book. The name Pinocchio is a combination of the Italian words pino (pine), and occhio (eye); Pino is also an abbreviation of Giuseppino, the diminutive for Giuseppe (the Italian form of Joseph); one of the men who greatly influenced Collodi in his youth was Giuseppe Aiazzi, a prominent Italian manuscript specialist who supervised Collodi at the Libreria Piatti bookshop in Florence. Geppetto, the name of Pinocchio's creator and “father,” is the diminutive for Geppo, the Tuscan pronunciation of ceppo, meaning a log, stump, block, stock or stub. It seems to me there's a lot of cultural references here that are elided for non-Tuscan audiences. I imagine that could be frustrating. I think it would not be easy for Americans to be sympathetic to this kind of thing. Hey, this is a cool song. It's a bit how Europeans can feel about American hegemonic cultural dominance: [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗Germany was occupied for decades after WWII. However, it's hard to imagine that it's still under US occupation now. I mean, how could something like that remain secret? But on the other hand, how would I know? And see "We're all living in America" aka "Amerika" by Ramstein < [VIDEO] .
Read original comment ↗I doubt anyone contests that point, least of all Lindemann: [VIDEO] (I think we're heading for the classical Oceania/Eurasia/Eastasia split, but I could have read too many entirely fictional books in my formative years. Personally, I'd have preferred to have been in the timeline with centrifugal bumble-puppy and feelies)
Read original comment ↗