Didn't the Hunger Games get its plot from some Japanese novel anyway?
It's similar to a movie called Battle Royale, but Suzanne Collins says only heard about that after the first draft of the book and was advised to ignore it. She says she was inspired by footage of the Iraq War juxtaposed with reality TV.
Similar in that the plot of the first book/movie is almost identical, save for the wider universe trappings.
I should add that Battle Royale was a novel and then a manga before it was a movie.
I'm probably being oversour here, but I don't see that this indicates the US is getting back soft power - all this is is a hand gesture that came to be in 2014 and stuck. And arguably we shouldn't: from the rest of the world's perspective, we keep alternately making big promises of good conduct and then electing smashers.
To the extent the US is losing cultural soft power (as opposed to diplomatic soft power, which is a bit more measurable), I think that's more of a slow decline that started long before Trump, and is likely still going on.
Sergio Leone is my copyright attorney.
8: Then, who am I supposed to be rooting for?
Penguin.
5: I didn't mean to imply that US soft power was growing,* merely that it exists.
we keep alternately making big promises of good conduct and then electing smashers.
Over the era of US dominance, at least since 1945, I think you've actually been a lot more consistent than that. Though obviously there's a bad trend line.
*Although, now that I think about it, it probably is, in absolute and possibly in relative terms, though not for any reasons related to your presidents.** Considering changes in wealth, technology, and censorship regimes since any point in Cold War, US culture is almost certainly reaching a bigger portion of global population than ever before. For one case, Hollywood as a whole is AIUI breaking sales records year after year, with the non-US share steadily growing; and that's just one vector of influence, you also have massive things like migration flows and US evangelical churches.
**Although, lots of non-Americans love Trump (and did love GWB, I'd guess to a lesser degree), and he did add to US soft power. I'm not saying net addition, definitely net loss. But on a few highly destructive dimensions US power has certainly grown since 2016.
Gotta get a new name.
Something that reflects the local admiration of Jesse James. Child Soldiers? Raging Sociopaths? Pistoleros? Robbers?
But on a few highly destructive dimensions US power has certainly grown since 2016.
Yes. That's among the things I find most worrying because I'm afraid were in a period of general rise of authoritarianism.
I didn't mean to imply that US soft power was growing,* merely that it exists.
Yeah, that was to heebie's addendum.
Considering changes in wealth, technology, and censorship regimes since any point in Cold War, US culture is almost certainly reaching a bigger portion of global population than ever before.
I was taken recently with what seemed to be the Indian equivalent of a boomer meme, comparing traditional wives with decadent modern women, but the traditional wife was grinding something (spices?) in one of those huge mortars. A lot more change in material culture!
7: People are now speculating that Aung San Suu Kyi was cooperating on the Rohingya to try to forestall a coup. It doesn't really let her off the hook, but it does complicate things.
17: Weren't her pronouncements on the Rohingya extremely blase and dismissive? Like, she wants to empower the people, but doesn't include minorities in that, or at least non-assimilating minorities. Pretty common in US history.
She went to the ICC and defended a genocide in person. That's above and beyond the call of 11D chess.
(Which is not to deny it's complicated. It's incredibly fucking complicated.)