Did anyone else laugh at this??
-
andrea-kathleen — 15 years ago(July 08, 2010 11:54 PM)
I definitely laughed at that comment myself.
I took a school trip to Russia and during the orientation, the director of the group taught all the non-Russian speaking students to say "I'm an American" in Russian. This is one of the things they were supposed to stay if a Russian started shouting at them and they didn't understand. Of course it sort of makes sense in that context - it's supposed to imply "I don't speak Russian"
But we still ALL laughed at that. I don't think MOST Americans are ACTUALLY that naive (though some certainly are.)
Then again, we were a group of students choosing to spend all our extra money on a trip to Russia. I'm not sure if that makes us a good cross-section of America.
But, on the other hand, doesn't the detective later kind of sat the same thing? When the other guy wants to shoot the husband doesn't the detective repeat "They're Americans."
Did anybody see that movie 'Hostel'? I think they paid extra to torture the Americans. I guess most American directors just think we are worth more.
-
Screen-7 — 16 years ago(September 28, 2009 08:03 PM)
They said something like: "You can't do this to us, we're American!!" I watched this in Spain and here the audience laughed at that line, and I think it wasn't supposed to be funny.
I think it was supposed to be humorous but in an "insider" way.
Like how some conservatives don't realize that The Colbert Report is actually mocking them. It makes it all the funnier knowing that. -
buddy6102 — 16 years ago(September 29, 2009 10:48 AM)
As an American I can tell you that we are truly spoiled by our Constitution. We've never had to worry about our homes being invaded or being "questioned" by corrupt police officers. Most of us have never known poverty, starvation or desperation. Things like kidnapping, organized crime, and human trafficking are federal crimes and they rarely enter our personal radar and if they do it's only on the news and we are only shown how the FBI has "broken it up". Never that it's ongoing.
But as my wife, who's from Mexico City, says all the time, "Gringos never think that anything bad can happen to them."
So yeah we chuckled a little bit but kinda understood it. -
ganiscol — 16 years ago(October 12, 2009 07:02 AM)
All the points you state are also true for most of europe - I guess we're also spoiled by our countries
I'm saying this, because you (from my point of view) seem to imply that this is an almost exclusive privilege of being a US citizen, which is of course false and sort of nails the point home of the thread starter.
-
buddy6102 — 16 years ago(October 12, 2009 07:53 AM)
No no no, please don't get me wrong. I didn't try to say it's an exclusive privilege of being a US citizen. Even though I've been to other countries, I feel I can only speak on my views and observations and things that I've witnessed in my home country. As well as casual conversations I have had with foreign nationals. I possess no education or experience in Foreign Governments and was simply trying to offer up my opinion as an everyday, John Q. Public American as to why the character said what he did out of desperation.
Plus, if you watch a lot of movies like The Ruins, Turistas, Trade, Taken, or Hostel you will see a lot of Americans in foreign countries making really bad, incredibly naive choices and then say, "But we're americans?"
And for the people that say, "Oh these are just bad movies.", think of the 18 year old American girl from Alabama who went missing in Aruba back in 2005. She appears to have been a gullible, ignorant girl who smoked pot and drank with some locals and now she is gone forever because she most likely thought "that nothing bad could happen". We know her story because she came from money and her parents offered up a huge reward and her stepfather had a little political influence. Imagine all the stories we don't hear about. -
Screen-7 — 16 years ago(January 10, 2010 10:20 PM)
As an American, I totally got your original point that many Americans have an almost abstract view of catastrophe. It's something that happens to other people.
It not only makes us feel invulnerable, I think it also makes us insensitive to the suffering of others outside America.
Of course, this is probably not just an American thing but we should only speak for ourselves. -
Dollhouse_89 — 16 years ago(November 01, 2009 12:15 PM)
i am an american. when i heard that line i sort or raised and eyebrow and chuckled. i thought "is that supposed to mean something"?
i didn't know if they were supposed to be under the impression that their american origin somehow made them important or if they wanted the other people to think "hey someone is going to come down hard on this place if these americans go missing". -
Sabracad — 16 years ago(November 07, 2009 07:29 PM)
Yes it was meant to be funny and yes there is a perception that all Americans think they are untouchable and the words "we're American" will solve all problems.
I'm not sure where this perception came from.
I almost came as a Shark actually, but then I realised that an Eagle was slightly better. -
g-463 — 16 years ago(December 06, 2009 03:30 AM)
It's meant to be kinda funny, yes. But it's also something someone might say in a situation like that. They're under the impression that this is how Russians take care of business. They don't yet know that Ben Kingsley's character is a crooked cop.
Plus, the movie recognized that this was a humorous line. That's why Ben Kingsley's character said, "They're American. Shoot him in the knee." -
LawDawg95 — 16 years ago(December 29, 2009 04:37 PM)
like Roy & Jessie would never say that.
But to most Americans who rarely travel outside the U.S. this would seem like a reasonable protest to make. It would seem like a realistic statement to most Americans.