In Italy, when you do what you have to do that day depends on the time of your meals.
In America, the time of your meals depends on what you have to do that day.
In Italy, when you do what you have to do that day depends on the time of your meals.
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When an American food producer puts the words "Now stays fresher longer!" on a package of bread, this is meant to be a good thing.
When an Italian customer sees, "Now stays fresher longer!" on a package of bread, they will ask, "why?" And then they will buy different bread. In Italy, the fundamental question for the business owner concerning products is: how good can I afford to make my product and still make a nice profit?
In America, the fundamental question concerning products is: just how crappy can I make this product and still get people to buy it? The classic American feel-good movie plot is as follows: successful young person is arrogant and jerky until suddenly it all goes wrong. He/she is then forced to rely on others for help [to get out of the desert, or to come back from the injury, or to find a new job, or whatever the case may be], valuing interpersonal relationships for the first time ever. In the end, he or she senselessly turns down [the big promotion, the trophy cup, the mansion in Bali, or whatever] and decides to marry some boring person from a small town.
The classic Italian feel-good movie plot is: there is no plot. And he doesn't get the girl. But everything is super beautiful and, in the end, they're all friends still. In America, there is working, and there is getting paid.
In Italy there is working. Then there are the tens of hours that you spend trying to get paid, in which you are told a dozen times to fill out what, as it turns out later, was the wrong form. Then there is the confusing period in which you have no idea what is going on because every time you call they tell you that they just finished processing your payment, but then nothing ever shows up in your bank account. Then there is probably a vacation at this point. And then you miiiiiiiiiight get paid. We win. Italians draw a distinction between reasonable exceptions and unreasonable exceptions to rules. In America we regard all exceptions with a strong sense of suspicion. It's not that we Americans don't break the rules. It's that we have a deep-seated fear that, if rule-breaking is actually allowed in some semi-official way, all hell will break loose. Rule-breaking is like a crack in a dam in the American mind - it starts as a trickle and soon you'll need scuba gear. It all seems reasonable and maintainable at first, but then things began to slip out of control, and before you know it - mayhem. What's more, a person in an authority position who makes exceptions to the rules is perceived as personally weak, and is in imminent danger of being pressured, manipulated, or made a laughing stock by the crushing hordes of would-be rule breakers. Teachers who don't crack down on student rule breaking will soon be walked all over and humiliated. Parents who have unruly small children don't stand a chance when the kids get to high school. Italians simply don't feel the same way about rules and authority. A prime example are school teachers, who frequently stand at the helm of unruly classrooms without dolling out punishments or even trying to get everyone to sit down, but whose self-esteem is somehow unscathed. Or pharmacists. Italian pharmacists will probably give you prescription medication if, say, you drag your sick kid in and explain convincingly that your paediatrician is on vacation. The American feelings about the danger of exceptions apparently come from our Anglo-Saxon roots, because they are perfectly summarised in this episode of the British cartoon Peppa Pig. In it, Grandpa pig dangerously allows the two-year-old children to cut the line of older kids and go first on the slide. It's a reasonable exception. But obviously since Grandpa Pig has now demonstrated his weak and pliable approach to authority, he can't possibly rein in his exception-making, and soon this leads to an avalanche of rule-breaking and disaster. It ends with children openly heckling and spitting at Grandpa Pig. Luckily Mummy Pig arrives and reinstates the rules, and the children stop being animals and go happily off to play. Does this sound like it was almost Lord of the Flies (Piggy...)? Yeah cause that was British, too... For Americans, people are basically animals, and the rules are there to ensure that they live according to some kind of established order.
For Italians, people are basically inclined to live in a somewhat orderly way, and the rules are there to bust their balls. The other day I was at a party with friends, and discussion turned to the exciting topic of child-rearing.
I explained that my three made-in-Italy toddler daughters, Achilles, Hector, and Patroclus, are sometimes perceived by Americans to be a rowdy and, well, RUDE set of individuals. Respectable American families, I explained, expect some degree of good manners, particularly in adult-child interactions. For example, children are not expected to directly and bluntly contradict an adult who has asked them to do something. Does this sound normal to you? Because it sounds normal to me. But then... The Italian parents burst out laughing. Two of them turned to each other to say, "Poor kids! What are they supposed to say if they disagree!" And then, hoping to clear up what seemed like an unbelievable account of American parental harshness on my part, one of my Italian interlocutors said: "But, it's not actually like that STILL NOW, is it? We're talking about how it was a long time ago, right?" Cultural differences... In America, when a child disagrees bluntly and directly with an adult or an authority figure, this is a negative behaviour known as "talking back."
In Italy, there is no such subcategory; it's all just talking. Italian money - the euro now, but even more so the lira way back when - with it's multicolored, multi-sized bills and its undignifiedly contemporary collection of portraits may give the well-meaning American the impression that Italians just don't take money as seriously as we do.
An Italian would absolutely agree with that. |
AuthorI'm an American living in Italy and making gross generalizations about it. Categories
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