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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13785 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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My impression of such galas, and I'm going off this third-hand, is that they are more attempts to demonstrate "We have McDonalds at home". That China now has enough native talent and ability to put on glamorous entertainment spectacles that they don't need to import Western (or Korean, or Japanese) culture, they can copy or generate that themselves now. They have robots! They have tech and glitz and glamour!

It's self-sufficiency, it's boasting their own culture and history, it's "we don't need the Olympics, we have the Asian Games" and so on. Making their own versions of Top Gun movies and Second World War movies (the evil Japanese invaders seem to be popular right now) and movies about the roots of the Glorious Revolution.

The American equivalent seems to be the Superbowl Half-Time Show which generated all the online comment. Probably not as overtly nationalistic an exhibition, but seems to be running along the same lines of "is this Americanness?"/"is this Chineseness?"

"we don't need the Olympics, we have the Asian Games" and so on.

That seems like an odd thing for the ChiComms to be saying in 2026, when they seem to be pretty competitive in most of the Winter Olympic events. They aren't winning Gold everywhere, but they had a few events that were nearly sweeps, and it seems like every event I see a PRC competitor on the broadcast.

The Super Bowl halftime show is not a big deal, particularly- the commercials are actually a bigger deal in mainstream culture- thé halftime show is intended as a sop to get a demographic which doesn’t normally watch a whole football game to pay attention(in the past this was often women but bad bunny was definitely aimed at an ethnic group that likes a different sport).

The Super Bowl halftime show peaked in the early 2000s, since 2016 or so there just aren't acts universally big enough to fit the bill.

The excitement over "ooh, who is going to do the Big Ad? What will it be about? Woke or traditional?" is, I submit, the essence of Americanness.

Again, thé superbowl commercials are a much bigger deal for all that.

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