America: the new black

I went to a screening of the documentary America Unchained the other night at the Clapham Picture House, followed by a Q&A with the film's star, comedian Dave Gorman (this is the cover of the companion book). It is sort of a 'set yourself a Morgan Spurlockian task' type doc: Gorman and a director try to travel across the US from California to the East Coast without buying anything from a chain store or big corporation. It is, as you might imagine, a difficult task. Filling up the gas tank proves most daunting, particularly on the highway, so Gorman ends up driving along the back roads through small town America.

The film is a trifle contrived, of course, but compelling, and it shows how in many ways Western society has lost a lot of its soul with corporate homogenisation. I say Western because this McDonaldisation is not just an American disease; just look at any UK high street.

A thing that struck me, though, was that the film was respectful, if not positively flattering, of most of the Americans in it. Small town Americans are easily caricatured, and often are, as thick-set, guileless, gun-toting, bible-bashing loons. But the people in Gorman's film are friendly, decent, curious and overly generous (for example he is invited to a family Thanksgiving dinner by a guy who runs the mom and pop hotel he is staying at).

There seems to be some sort of thawing of at least British attitudes towards Americans. The BBC's North American editor Justin Webb recently brought out a book eulogising how brilliant America is. This is a new, and slightly disconcerting experience for your Expat. I've not experienced much overtly hostile anti-Americanism since living abroad, except once having a pint of beer poured over my head by a fat, mustachioed Serb in Budapest during the height of the Kosovo conflict. But this was the sort of place where knife fights would occasionally break out, so I got off lightly. Mostly any anti-Americanism is subtler; people think I must be stupid and irony-free, speaking to me slowly and rather patronisingly.

The has gone by the board with goodwill from the Obama honeymoon continuing without abeyance - people are excited to talk to me about the US, ask me if I'm upset to be away at this historic moment, etc. There are smiles and thumbs up from my normally sour, scowling neighbour who once told me whilst we got talking at the recycling bin that the US was responsible for all the evil in the world and he hated all Americans ('you're not too bad, though').