Thread by @mariliacout

1/ How pop culture can help expats understand what Americans call "real America" and brace for it.

If you are an expat like me, chances are that you ended up as a #BaffledImmigrant as well.

2/ Curiously, we can read almost daily some essay or new book on the quest for "real America". Are they - the locals - also baffled? No, they are not. They are frustrated, resentful and unhappy with what they see.

3/ American nostalgia is one of the most dangerous trends in the world: it's the longing for an imaginary past of peace and happiness, of white peace and white happiness, that even for white folks, was mostly a promise.

4/ They felt is was their birthright, though. After all, they had almost successfully committed total genocide against the indigenous owners of the land and kept the African-American population as training ground for domestic terrorism.

5/ Remember watching "Deliverance"? Crazy fiction, right? Nope. I lived in a college town in the middle of Appalachia (Blacksburg, VA, lovely). Appalachia is that scary:

g.co/kgs/GX89S2

6/ There's a genre that expats need to study as if they are studying for a serious test: "Americana".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americana

7/ The stupid, apple-pie, white-fence, diner, blonde high school girl movies and the parody, horror, and critical ones like

theatlantic.com/entertainment/…

8/ It's not fiction, folks: these white rednecks having their rifles blessed on their evangelical churches exist - we were stupid and we thought it was fiction...

nbcnews.com/video/pennsylv…

9/ newyorker.com/news/on-religi…

10/ Watch @cw_spn . It's great entertainement and funny as hell but STUDY it. They are talking about "real America": the white, small town America where the law is "their" law, and demons, windigos, shape-shifters do as they please

g.co/kgs/i78zwt

@cw_spn 11/ Study the leviathans and how they violate every anti-trust law in the world, purchase all food and pharmaceutical industries to make the perfect food out of... fat, brain-dead, conservative WHITE AMERICANS:

supernatural.fandom.com/wiki/Leviathans

@cw_spn 12/ Easiest thing in the world: just dominate the high-fructose corn-syrup industry. Americans basically eat processed food and consume TV. They are "tasty".

@cw_spn 13/ American gods is classified in the "Americana" genre

g.co/kgs/wcuNz7

@cw_spn 13/ There is an incomplete overlap between rural America, "small-city" America and "real" America. Mostly, what those who refer to "real America" mean is this idealized all-white past that had an all-white brilliant future, which never materialized.

@cw_spn 14/ This is Trump's America.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

@cw_spn 15/ It's the small-town America in every tv show with its trailer trash meth heads and its blond sweethearts. Its opioid addicted conservative housewives.

axios.com/the-rural-amer…

@cw_spn 16/ Everyone knows that soccer mom or hoarding granny with their oxy and fentanyl (I do, so do you). They don't go to jail like the young black kids with their harmless joints.

thedailybeast.com/soccer-moms-se…

@cw_spn 17/ So expats, immigrants, quit las novelas un poco and study the "Americana" tv shows, movies and books. They are sociological experiments. THAT'S real America.

@cw_spn @threadreaderapp unroll