World famous. Within your own borders
Forget proud traditions and cultural exports - a nation's identity is bolstered if Americans know about it. Just ask the Canadians, says Clive James.
In my homeland, Australia, the question of national identity is once again in the news as the assembled brains of the entire country wonder whether the new film about Australia, called Australia, will finally establish the national identity of our neglected island in the eyes of the world.
--snip--
The first thing is that the British enjoy a bungle. They have come to see a bungle as part of their national identity: a tilting train that tilts too much or doesn't tilt at all, a Millennium Dome with not much in it, a Heathrow terminal that separates passengers from their luggage on a long-term basis, a Lapland theme park with snow-deficiency syndrome. How very British. One might even say that the nicest aspect of the British national identity is that the British can laugh at themselves.
--snip--
Spot the Canadian
On the international scale of celebrity, Lapland scores low unless you are deeply interested in hearing the one and only real Santa perform in a Lapp accent, hoeh hoeh hoeh.
And very few Americans even know where Lapland is. Right there we get to the heart of this supposedly vital question about national identity. Small countries want the United States to have heard of them.
Britain counts as a big small country because it has a lot of people in it, but even the British are apt to waste time caring about whether the Americans have heard of them.
Not all their time, however, for which I bless their sanity. For smaller small countries - and I mean smaller by population - it can be a continuing obsession. The clearest case is Canada, which is large in area even by comparison with the US but is short of people.
Crucially, Canada is right next to the US, and speaks the same language. Everyone knows that Mexicans are Mexicans but few of us can tell a Canadian from an American unless the Canadian is speaking French. The Canadians are forever bothered by a sense of being dominated by their famous neighbour to the south.
The Canadians try to laugh, however. There was a Canadian best-selling book recently called Coping with Back Pain. It did so well that the Americans printed their own edition. But the Americans called it Conquering Back Pain because the US is a can-do nation that conquers, it doesn't cope.
Rest of Clive James' article: BBC Today
