Pizza is American (Midwestern), not Italian, not East Coast

Lone food post here as I'm investigating other topics in greater detail. But my comment about Pizza Hut providing a public space back in the good ol' days got me thinking -- what is the role of pizza in American ethnogenesis? I'm really trying to avoid the topic of food for now, but I couldn't help it.

Everyone knows the hamburger is an American invention, and so distinctive of us that foreigners call us "burgers". I already reviewed (perhaps in a comment) that burgers fit the usual pattern of American cultural creation -- belonging to the out-West region (from the Midwest to the West Coast), and taking shape after the Civil War & Reconstruction era.

If either sub-section of the back-East region were the definers of American standards, we would have nationally adopted either fish / seafood or chicken as our national meat, instead of beef (and hamburgers specifically).

But what about pizza, which ranks right up there with hamburgers in defining American tastes? Doesn't that have an Italian name, and wasn't it brought here by immigrants from Italy? Doesn't it stretch back into time immemorial, at least in the Olde Worlde, and we are just the most recent group of people to enjoy this ancient meal?

Not at all -- this is America we're talking about here. But it's really true of every empire, whose expansion accompanies (is driven by) a rise in collective cohesion (asabiya), which has been raised so high by the people finding themselves on a meta-ethnic frontier. In banding together and cohering so intensely, they produce a whole new culture, no longer the culture they used to be before they had been tested and transformed by their engagements with the meta-ethnic Other.

Claims about the invention of pizza go back no earlier than the 1800s, which is not even Early Modern. And because none of the claimants can agree, it means they're mostly making it up, to boost their regional hometown pride. Otherwise everyone would know where it came from, and perhaps even when -- like haggis being Scottish rather than from southern England.

The one specific claim of which individual or which establishment is Raffaele Esposito, who supposedly invented it in 1889 in Naples. If it had an older provenance, no one -- not even a southern Italian -- would have the gall to try and claim personal credit for its invention. So, something like pizza was being made at least by one guy in one city in Italy in the very late 1800s.

But the first pizzeria in America was opened in 1905 (Lombardi's in NYC), and several regional styles were already under way by the 1920s (such as New Haven style). Because pizza was not even widely established in Naples circa 1900 -- having been invented by one guy, or at least being a new trend, just 10 years earlier -- it makes no sense to treat it as an origin, and the American styles as derivatives or carry-overs.

They were contemporaries, or siblings, or peers -- not parents and children. It's just that some of those siblings were growing up in southern Italy, and other siblings were growing up in America (by people genetically related to the former, but becoming culturally assimilated into their new country, like dropping their Romance language).

And much like other forms of sibling rivalry, some siblings excel more than others, are more popular, and so on. Ultimately, by the mid-1900s, American pizza won over its southern Italian sibling. The whole world treats American pizza as the standard, for the unqualified term "pizza", and its former rival has to be qualified with "Neopolitan" or "Sicilian" or whatever. Americans are responsible for spreading pizza around the world by now, not anyone from any region of Italy.

We can go further than that, though, and trace the triumph among varying styles of pizza within America. Neither of the East Coast styles became the standard, and both are closer to the Neopolitan sibling style.

New Haven pizza does not require cheese -- and spiced tomato sauce on a baked flatbread is not pizza. It does not require meat or vegetable toppings of any kind. And the crust is thin, chewy, and easily foldable, similar to New York pizza.

New York pizza does require cheese, and it is spread over most / all of the surface -- unlike Neopolitan pizza, where spaced-apart hunks of mozzarella are treated as a topping rather than a base layer. But it also tends to avoid meat and vegetable toppings. The crust is very thin, chewy, and foldable -- and indeed, that is how it is actually eaten, folded over into what is actually a kind of two-faced sandwich. The mouthfeel is bread on the top of your mouth, bread on your tongue and lower mouth, with the tomato sauce and cheese oozing out of one side like a filling.

It's like a calzone, with some assembly required by the user. Literally nobody else eats pizza that way, and no one bakes the crust to accommodate that form of eating it. This is also why their slices are so huge -- they're meant to be folded in half, so they aren't so unwieldy in the hand, unless you mistakenly eat it like standard pizza (without folding, trying to hold up the entire lower crust with one hand).

Just like their low back rounded vowels that they refuse to give up after a national -- and by now, international -- standard has been settled upon, New York pizza eaters refuse to give up their "calzone with some assembly required" model of pizza. And they refuse to cover it with meat and/or vegetable toppings, preferring it with the base layer of cheese only.

Also in the first half of the 1900s, getting started sometime between the '20s and '40s, came the Chicago style. The timing makes it another sibling of the early period of innovation, not a derivative from another preceding style. Although not quite the national standard, this is much closer to what became the standard, and if any single style is the origin of the standard, it's Chicago style.

It's circular, cut into wedges, has a thick enough and solid enough crust that it doesn't bend or fold much in the hand, the perimeter has a noticeable height to it (helping to grip it), it's more of a deep-dish or pan thickness, and indeed it is baked in a pan (with walls to shape the outer crust upwards) rather than on a totally flat sheet. Most importantly, though, it added whole new categories of key ingredients -- meat and/or vegetable toppings, like pepperoni.

Pepperoni is so necessary for pizza, that it's hardly pizza without pepperoni -- or some other meat in its place, but ideally as close as possible, like Italian sausage, not ground beef (fine for burgers, but totally out of place on a pizza). And vice versa -- Americans almost only eat pepperoni on pizza, not as an all-purpose lunch meat (that would be salami).

The incredible thickness of Chicago pizza must be linked with the appearance of loads of meat & veg toppings, since it can withstand all that extra weight, and the perimeter is walled, so they're less likely to spill off over the side.

You simply can't pile toppings onto New York pizza, given how flimsy the crust is. You could hypothetically pile toppings onto one half of the slice, meant to be the lower side of the eventual calzone, and then leave the other half with no toppings, which would fold over the topping side like a blanket. If toppings were on both halves of the slice, they would spill off of the top half of the calzone when turned upside down to fold over the other half. Toppings on only half of each slice requires too much fussing around when spreading the toppings -- you'd have to slice it first, then spread toppings on half of each slice at a time, instead of spreading the toppings over the whole surface at once, then slicing it.

Similar to Chicago style is Detroit style, invented in the '40s, which is rectangular (and cut rectangularly), but also baked in a pan with high walls, making it deep-dish, the crust is not flimsy, and requiring meat / veg toppings. The only difference is the cheese is spread from edge-to-edge, forming a hard crispy edge of cheese around the perimeter where it's contacting the baking pan. Other than the lack of a familiar un-cheesed perimeter, it's close to the standard.

Quad Cities style, on the Iowa / Illinois border, and invented in the '50s, is another type close to the standard. It has a dense enough crust to support ample toppings, requiring meat (such as sausage), there's an un-cheesed and raised lip of bread around the perimeter, and the only notable difference is the cheese going on top of the sauce and meat, rather than between those layers. It's circular and cut into strips, not wedges.

St. Louis style is similar to the standard as well, only having a much harder and crispier crust, like a cracker, since the dough is unleavened. And so, despite being thin-crust, it's still sturdy enough to carry tons of meat & veg toppings without folding and spilling them. It's circular and cut into strips or squared-off pieces. I can't easily find when it first came out, but the main chain for this style -- Imo's -- was founded in '64, so no later than then.

There is still enough variation in pizza that it can be thin-crust or deep-dish, as long as the crust is strong enough to support lots of toppings. Even Chicago, famous for the deepest-dish style, also has a thin-crust style, but it too is sturdier and piled with toppings, unlike the East Coast and Neopolitan styles.

* * *

To recap -- it's all about the meat (and possibly vegetables). Neopolitan pizza does not require meat toppings, nor do New Haven and the usual New York styles (at most, New York style has some sparse pepperoni, not multiple / piled-high toppings). This transforms what would have otherwise been a mainly bread meal into something with animal protein and fat (some of which renders out into the cheese and sauce -- mmmm). It gives it a savoriness, crispiness, and well-roundedness that would not be there without the meat.

Sicilian style comes somewhat close to this concept, since it often (but not necessarily) includes anchovies -- yes, that's where this strangest of toppings came from. There's nothing more non-standard than putting fish on pizza, even though it is a meat. It's not the right kind, because it wasn't created in the right region of the world for pizza innovation -- the American Midwest. Perhaps related to the Midwest not having tons of seafood available, marking anchovies as suspiciously East Coast -- and by that mere fact, not feasible as an all-American standard.

Neopolitan pizza doesn't even cover most or all of the surface with a single vast expanse of cheese -- even New York pizza manages that!

Claiming that American pizza is merely Neopolitan pizza "with meat / veg toppings", as though it's a slight variation on an existing theme, is like saying a slice of bread with onions, lettuce, and tomato, and ketchup & mustard, is a "hamburger" -- the American hamburger merely adding the beef patty onto the existing, traditional "hamburger" that had no meat at all. Yeah sure. No meat, no burger. No meat -- especially pepperoni -- no pizza. And if there's no meat, it had better be loaded with olives, onions, and other vegetables to make up for it -- not a lack of toppings altogether!

* * *

Having established what makes pizza pizza, and roughly when and where it was invented, let's take a quick tour through the biggest pizza chains today, some of which are internationally dominant, and see where they're from.

Pizza Hut is by far *the* American pizza maker, and it's not from any of the 4 major Midwestern pizza regions -- but Kansas! Even further out West. But still resembling the other Midwestern styles, not the East Coast or southern Italian styles.

It was founded in 1958 by Dan and Frank Carney -- doesn't sound like their ancestors brought a recipe with them from Italy. Pizza is American, anybody can innovate on the basic concept, regardless of where their bloodline traces back to. And of course even with Italians, it isn't their genes that cook the pizzas, since their genes have been there forever, and Neopolitan pizza only showed up around 1890. But even broadening "family background" to mean culture, not genes, pizza is still open to anyone, even if your ancestors were culturally Irish.

Next is Domino's, hailing from Michigan, although not reflecting the Detroit style very much. It's similar to Pizza Hut, but with a less thick crust. Founded in 1960 by two brothers whose last name is Monaghan -- not very Italian, again. They did, however, acquire their first store from Dominick DeVarti, who is of Italian background.

Third by number of US locations is Little Caesars. Perhaps you thought of this chain when reading about the Detroit style, and in fact they were founded in Detroit in 1959, by Mike Ilitch -- a first-gen American whose parents were Macedonian (i.e. southwest Bulgarian). Although they do offer the standard style, they have usually included a Detroit style as well -- Big! Big! Cheese, Pizza by the Foot (some of the best pizza I have ever eaten), Pan! Pan!, etc. Their standard style was good, but their Detroit style rivaled Pizza Hut for deep dish goodness, without the "grease sponge" texture that Pizza Hut was known for. And that crispy caramelized ring of cheese around the perimeter really does add something crunchy and burned-y that standard styles don't have.

Next-biggest chain is Papa John's, founded in southern Indiana (on the border with Louisville, KY), much more recently than the others, in 1984, by John Schnatter -- not an Italian-American. It's in the standard style, with a pronounced lip of dough around the edge, mimicking the look and feel of a deep-dish style (which they do offer separately).

After them is Papa Murphy's -- another non-Italian name -- which hails from all the way out West on the Pacific Coast, originating in a 1995 merger of one store from the Portland area and another from the San Francisco area, now headquartered in Vancouver, WA. They offer a standard array of styles, and their distinction is the take-and-bake model instead of baking them in-store with ovens and equipment that only a specialized pizzeria could afford (you use your own oven and sheet).

The last chain with over 1,000 stores is Marco's, from the Toledo, OH area. It was founded by an Italian immigrant, Pasquale Giammarco, somewhat earlier than Papa John's (1978), but looks pretty similar to it or Domino's. Standard style.

Several rungs below in the ranking is Sbarro, with about 300 locations in America, which is the only East Coast style pizza that most Americans have ever had, due to its staple status in mall food courts. It was founded by immigrants from Naples to New York City, who opened their first pizzeria in 1970 in Brooklyn. It's more likely to have meat toppings, and less flimsy in its crust, than the typical New York slice, but it's still squarely within that style. Even when we were at the all-American food court, at an all-American mall, we could still tell that this was not all-American pizza -- it had to be qualified with "New York style" or whatever.

Americans treat New York pizza like a curious and amusing novelty, not as the ur-form to be revered as sacred -- much like how we treat New York accents (or Southeast accents, for that matter).

Ranking right up there with hamburgers, the most all-American of foods -- pizza -- is not an Italian creation, not something that originated on the East Coast and spread out from there, not something even created by people of Italian genetic or cultural ancestry. The inclusion of meat and/or vegetable toppings, especially the practice of piling on multiple toppings, and the requisite durable crust (thick / deep-dish, or cracker-like thin-crust), marks this as an entirely distinct meal from the flimsy flatbread + tomato sauce + scattered hunks of mozzarella.

It is fundamentally Midwestern American, particularly near the Great Lakes, but extending through the Plains all the way out to the West Coast. And it was invented in the early-to-mid 1900s.

This all lines up with the ethnogenesis of the Americans -- strongest where the frontier with the Indians had been most intense (including the Old Northwest, where Indian Wars were still being fought post-Independence), and taking place after our Civil War & Reconstruction, i.e. from the late 19th C. onward. That determined which Americans were the most American of all Americans, to set a national standard -- those out West, including the Midwest, not those back East.

"Stream Me" (parasocial slow jam, Silk parody)

Getting more into the '90s revival, I got caught on the slow jam "Freak Me" by Silk (lyrics here). I just had to adapt it!

So without further ado, a soulful serenade for all those streamer sisters out there...

Pronunciation guide: the chorus follows the original rhythm closely, and the verses have the same prosody -- four feet of da-DA (sometimes leaving out the first unstressed syllable).

* * *

Stream me, baby
Stream me, baby
Stream me, baby
Stream me, baby

Let me click you up and down
Till your PC pops
Let me fave all your content, baby
Like your one-man bot
Let me boost all the signals
You want me to boost
'Cause online, baby,
I wanna get streamy with you

Don't care if we catch a ban
Your card's so hot we hear the fan
My frame is gonna fill your screen
And we'll be making more than memes
Customize your site controls
And give your mouse the smoothest scroll
I wanna click you up and down
So baby please unmute your sound

Let me click you up and down
Till your PC pops
Let me fave all your content, baby
Like your one-man bot
Let me boost all the signals
You want me to boost
'Cause online, baby,
I wanna get streamy with you

We lead the board, the perfect team
Our bantz so hot you'll priv the stream
Girl, you such a naughty nerd
So shocked it's hard to type more words
Don't want your fine lil' frames to skip
So I'm-a come upgrade your chip
Let me access all your posts
'Cause your content's what I gotta host

Let me click you up and down
Till your PC pops
Let me fave all your content, baby
Like your one-man bot
Let me boost all the signals
You want me to boost
'Cause online, baby,
I wanna get streamy with you

Dance music is a back East phenomenon in America, unlike most other cultural domains

Let's take a break from looking at how the Western frontier has defined our distinctly American culture, as separate from the Old World nations we came from, and have a look at another exception from back East.

A recent post looked at the naturalistic trend in American narrative or dramatic culture, drawing inspiration from both Russia and Scandinavia -- together with America, the group of outsiders to the Western Euro club of Early Modern empires that defined high culture.

In a series of comments beginning here, I pointed to one exception -- pro wrestling -- that is very much a back East phenomenon. In that way, it's like ballet, opera, and musical theater, which have always been centered back East. But pro wrestling was not inherited from the Old World, unlike those other formats. And sure enough, pro wrestling has a choreographed, theatrical, not naturalistic style. It could never have emerged from Los Angeles, the center of American naturalistic narrative culture -- movies.

Now let's have a look at popular dance music, and the popular dance culture generally. Although every culture has popular, as opposed to artistic, dances, ours is distinctly American -- and yet, not defined by the Western frontier. It is distinct in its drawing on African sources, particularly the heavy use of syncopation and complex rhythms.

These sources were not directly from Africa, as though African groups toured America or Americans visited Africa. They came through African slaves in the New World -- whether living in America proper or the colonies that we later won, like Puerto Rico and Cuba, and the people from there who migrated to America proper.

So it doesn't sound exactly like the European folk or art dance music traditions from the Old World. But it is highly theatrical, choreographed, and not contributing to a grand narrative about who we are as a people -- other than that we, unlike Europeans, live with the descendants of African slaves and have access to some of their source culture. Therefore, it is best suited to the East, like pro wrestling.

That's not to say that there are no major dance bands or showcases out West, but they are mostly jumping on trends that originated back East.

* * *

Empire-defining culture has to wait until after the first of three long-term stages that empires go through, from expansion to consolidation to fragmentation. Between the first and second stage, there is a major civil war between two organized -- *not* anarchic -- factions for control over the *unified* future territory. Crucially, not a "civil war" where everything is breaking down and anarchic, where the winner does not incorporate the loser, and where the territory remains broken into pieces forever after.

Before this point between stages 1 and 2, the empire has not settled on a shared collective identity, and ethnogenesis is still somewhat up in the air. After one side of that civil war wins, and incorporates the losing side, plus anything to come in the future, only then is there a sense of a single united culture spanning the entire empire.

The first stage is the reaction to external pressures, namely along the meta-ethnic frontier with a highly different Other. But there is still an indefinite, up-in-the-air question of "which we are we" or "who among us counts most as we"? Just because a bunch of people on one side of the meta-ethnic frontier share an interest against those on the other side, doesn't mean there still isn't diversity and conflicts of interest within the one side. That culminates in a civil war, where the pressures are internal. The winning side of that war determines what the unified and consolidated "we" will be like into the future.

To take the familiar example of the Roman Empire, the first stage corresponds to the Republic (although it was very much an empire, expanding territorially through conquest), the second to the Augustan through the Severan eras, and the third to the Crisis of the Third Century and after. The three canonical Roman poets -- Virgil, Horace, and Ovid -- are from the Augustan era, and the Silver Age that follows them lasts into the 2nd C. AD, before Roman literature bit the dust during the 3rd C., along with imperial disintegration.

And really, it had already died during the pre-fragmentation crisis represented by the Severan era (coming out of the Year of the Five Emperors). The last major Roman work was the Golden Ass by Apuleius, probably during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (author of the Meditations), circa the 160s or '70s. I highlight this because we are currently in the Year of the Five Emperors, and it's plain to see that American cultural production has more or less stopped. It was clearly over for the Roman empire and its culture by the 190s -- they just hadn't descended into all-out endless anarchy just yet. And it is clearly over for America as of 2020, even if we aren't splitting up formally just yet.

The main point is that the Golden and Silver Ages were not produced by the Republic stage, because the empire had not yet defined itself through internal conflict -- only external, based on the meta-ethnic frontier against the Celtic and later Carthaginian invaders. Only after the Crisis of the Roman Republic was there an internally defined "us vs. them", and the winning side would set the tone for "us" going forward. And so, without wasting any time, the Roman national / imperial founding myth of the Aeneid was written after the civil war had yielded a winner, who was to be glorified and legitimized through a new sacred narrative.

* * *

Distinctly American music, high or low, begins in the 1890s, as with American architecture, and slightly later than that for American drama (stage or movies). This followed the Civil War and Reconstruction eras -- that turning point between stages 1 and 2 of the imperial lifespan. Before then, we had been expanding primarily against the Indian frontier. The nature of future westward expansion was still up in the air, whether its economy would be based on slave agriculture or not, and this finally brought the internal conflict among "us non-Indians" to a head in the 1860s and '70s. The anti-slave agriculture side won, and it defined American identity through the consolidation stage of imperial life.

American dance music and the dances themselves, defined by heavy syncopation, were born with ragtime music in the 1890s. It did begin in Missouri, in the Midwest, but it migrated eastward rather than westward, and became established in the East Coast. New Orleans, also right near the Mississippi River border, gave birth to jazz, which also moved eastward rather than westward. Jazz came to define uniquely American music, especially in its dance-oriented function. It remains an East Coast genre to this day.

From the early Jazz Age forms and the Charleston dance of the 1920s, it evolved into Big Band music and swing dances during the '30s and '40s, lasting into the '50s, including the early stages of rock 'n' roll when rock music didn't have its own style of dance (it never would, evolving in a different direction from jazz, and migrating westward in typical American fashion).

The big dance crazes of the '60s were from back East, too, epitomized by the twist, introduced by Philly musician Chubby Checker.

Dick Clark's American Bandstand TV show, which showed young people dancing to contemporary hit songs and broadcast to a national audience, was filmed in Philly as well. It aired from the late '50s through the late '80s, setting the standard that all Americans looked up to for "what today's dances look like". Later dance shows like Dancin' on Air / Dance Party USA (for the USA Network) were filmed there, too. All-American audiences tuned into Club MTV and then The Grind between '87 and '97, both filmed in New York City. The only similar shows filmed out West were Soul Train, but that was aimed at a black audience, not Americans as a whole, and Solid Gold, which was the also-ran of the genre (both were filmed in L.A.).

After the dance crazes of the '60s, the East Coast continued to define dance music with disco in the '70s, post-disco or electrofunk in the early '80s, and freestyle / hi-NRG in the late '80s, all of which were made from New York to Miami. We still know the names of certain crucial clubs like Studio 54, Danceteria, and the Palladium (all in New York). And far from being a narrow niche for blacks and Puerto Ricans, it was mainstreamed to all of America by the likes of Madonna (from "Holiday" through "Into the Groove") and Debbie Gibson ("Shake Your Love"), both based in New York.

House music and '90s techno in general was still centered in New York (like C+C Music Factory, Robin S., etc.). As the house / techno style of the '90s and early 2000s gave way to electropop in the late 2000s and 2010s, the center remained in New York, primarily Lady Gaga, but also Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, and Bebe Rexha (fellow Albanian-origin dance diva Ava Max was raised in Virginia, and worked with Canadian mega-producer Cirkut, who's from Nova Scotia and Ontario, not British Columbia). By the late 2000s and 2010s, though, much more of our dance music was imported from Europe.

* * *

A final note on some ethnic angles.

The '80s saw the emergence of "Latin" dance, starting with Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, the Miami-based DJ remix of "Macarena" (originally flamenco-meets-pop from Spain), then Pitbull as well as reggaeton during the 2000s and 2010s. Puerto Ricans from New York took part as well, such as Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, and Marc Anthony in the '90s and after. I put "Latin" in quotes because it has to be Caribbean, linked to the influence of African sources, rather than Mexican or other Central American, let alone South American, Latin styles. Maybe something like samba from Brazil, as part of the Brazil craze of the 2000s. But not the seemingly obvious choice of Mexican music, given its importance to influencing Western American culture.

The danceable strains of rap have always been centered back East as well, from the Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, Young MC, Salt-N-Pepa, and many others from the New York metro area in the late '70s and '80s, where breakdancing originated. Then it was Will Smith from Philly during the '80s and '90s, Vanilla Ice from southern Florida in the '90s, and the entire genre of crunk music and twerk dancing from Atlanta and the Southeast during the 2000s and 2010s.

There wasn't quite as much danceable rap in the '90s because that was the heyday of West Coast rap, which was more in the vein of American naturalism -- narrative, depicting daily life, more sober and restrained than the more theatrical and choreo-friendly East Coast rap styles. Naturalism crossed from music and into drama with Ice Cube appearing as a main character in the movie Boyz n the Hood. The only big dance-driven rapper from the West Coast was MC Hammer (from Oakland, CA). Even one-hit wonders from back East still scored major dance hits, like Atlanta's Tag Team -- "Whoomp! (There It Is)" -- and Jacksonville FL's Quad City DJs -- "C'Mon N' Ride It (The Train)".

This is crucial to show that it isn't about African DNA, but historically contingent facts like the eastern founding vs. westward expansion of the American empire. If it were about genes, we would've gotten one danceclub banger after another by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 2Pac, Nate Dogg, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Kendrick Lamar, etc., rather than naturalistic narratives about daily life. Really the only party anthem rump shaker from that entire scene was "California Love". Likewise, LMFAO was an L.A. exception during the 2010s.

Then there's the mostly white dance genre of industrial music, which is centered in the Great Lakes region, mainly among Ellis Islanders rather than founding stock Americans. The two biggest acts here are Chicago's Ministry, and Cleveland's Nine Inch Nails, both of whose early work is very danceclub oriented. This is east of the Mississippi, despite being the Midwest (and Old Northwest). But it is still a bit too far west to be central to dance music and club culture, like New York and Miami are.

"Virtual Angel" (valentine for Gawr Gura, parody of the Penguins)

To celebrate today, a tribute in the style of duwu-wop. Performing tonight, the group that's got all the sharks' a-swoonin'... The Parasocialiners.

This is technically written in first-person singular, but it's on behalf of the entire fandom, not just one crustacean crooner.

Lyrics here. The original is by the Penguins (here), though below I'm embedding the more dramatic arrangement of the version from Back to the Future. It was also covered by New Edition around that time for The Karate Kid Part II (here). I'm imagining a rendition that combines the lead vocal and instruments of the BTTF one, and the group vocals of the original or the New Edition one (since the BTTF version sadly only has the one voice).

For the sweetest shark in the sea. Muaaa! ^_^

Pronunciation guide: "lols and loli-ness" have the same stressed vowel (as in "all"). To squeeze "virtual" into the space of "Earth," use the rest beat in the line. There are 4 beats, with "ang-" landing on 1 and 3. In the original, beats 2 and 4 are rests, with "Earth" coming in on the off-beat after 2 and 4. So, put "vir-" on beats 2 and 4, with the two quick syllables "tu-al" trailing into the offbeat after. It's a bit more packed than the mellow original, but at least it fits.

* * *

Virtual angel, virtual angel
Will you be mine?
My sharky dear
On and offline
I'm just a noob
A noob whose buff is you

Virtual angel, virtual angel
My heartache unborked
Together so edgy
Ebi and shork
I'm just a noob
A noob whose buff is you

You swam right through, the cathode tube
Uplifting with your lols and loli-ness
I post and I fave, to repay
And be uplifting of your chat, chattiness

Virtual angel, virtual angel
Please be mine
My sharky dear
On and offline
I'm just a noob
A noob whose buff is you

You swam right through, the cathode tube
Uplifting with your lols and loli-ness
I post and I fave, to repay
And be uplifting of your chat, chattiness

Virtual angel, virtual angel
Please be mine
My sharky dear
On and offline
I'm just a noob
A noob whose buff is you

Girls think dreams are real, guys think they compete against reality (childlike vs. grown-up nature)

Well, I wrote a whole 'nother post in the comments section again, but this time it's quite a bit off-topic and something I normally don't write a whole lot about, so figured I'll draw your attention to it here in a new post, if you don't read the comments.

I won't copy-paste it, just link to the first comment in the chain. You can react here or there.

It's the mixture of tones you expect from the most interesting person on the internet -- comical, serious, pop cultural, academic, totally unexpected yet immediately relatable, etc.

And it all started with a little vignette from a vtuber's stream -- aside from their entertainment value, and social-emotional bond, good streamers provide inspiration for discussion. Couldn't have done it without you babes. ^_^

Distinctly American religious architecture: Mormon temples standardized Block Symphony style

In the previous post about the highest civic architecture in America -- state capitols and city halls -- I mentioned that political and religious buildings tend to be the most resistant to change.

Most state capitol buildings are some kind of Old World LARP (usually Roman), and the handful of exceptions are located along the old meta-frontier with the Indians, not close to the nation's origin. These exceptions are mostly of the American Block Symphony style, separating our national style from those of the Old World as described in the post before the last one.

Now we come to religious buildings. We are in a very lucky position in America because we don't have to look at the buildings of existing popular religions, to see how well they've adapted our national architectural style -- on the whole, they have ignored it, preferring various Old World LARP styles (Romanesque, Gothic, etc.). We're talking about the big impressive kind of buildings, not the more informal weekly meeting houses for every neighborhood all around the country, few of whom have enough money to build something impressive in any style.

* * *

We can do better, and look at the new global religion that was created in America -- Mormonism. It is not Christian or otherwise Abrahamic. (None of those religions accepts it as their own, and religious communion is socially constructed -- if they say it's not, it's not.) It's brand-new, created right here in America, with a distinctly New World genesis narrative, and a whole new set of sacred texts (Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, Pearl of Great Price). It does posit links to Old World roots so it doesn't feel so historically invalid, although generally the links are to the ancient Saharo-Arabian sphere like Egypt and Syria, not Greece or Rome or Medieval / Early Modern Europe (where we actually trace our roots to). In their genesis narrative, ancient or medieval action takes place in the New World with a mixture of New World and Old World ethnic groups.

The buildings most suited to impressive architecture are not the weekly meeting houses, but the Mormon temples -- a separate building for different functions. This is where Mormons hold their initiation rituals (endowment), wedding ceremonies (sealing), and baptism of the dead. This building has no counterpart in Christianity, where the daily / weekly meetings and the rare big special events like marriage, baptism, conversion, etc., are all located in a church or its surrounding complex.

Unlike Christian churches in America, the Mormon temples not only adhere to the American Block Symphony style, they were early adopters of it. Yep, you heard that right -- the supposedly stodgy, conservative Mormons were the avant-garde of American religious architecture. How else could it be? -- they just invented a whole new religion, why wouldn't they choose a whole new building style as well? If you want narratives that take place entirely back in the Old World, and a building type like Gothic cathedrals, you can join the Catholics. If you want New World narratives, and American blocky architecture, you should join the Mormons.

These developments both stem from the Mormons being a literal pioneer group that headed out West during their collective identity formation, before the frontier with the Indians was closed circa 1890. They eventually made Utah their base, but they spread out all around the West, and into the Pacific Islands and Latin America and other American frontiers that trace back to the Southwest gateway out of America proper (and even up into the Rockies and Pacific Coast of Canada). Shedding their back-East Euro-origin identity as they were trekking through the American Plains and Mountains, facing New World Indian foes, they needed a distinctly American religion to unite them in a sacred way, and a distinctly American style of architecture to express that.

For contrast, there was a splinter group early on that rallied around a blood relative of the founding prophet Joseph Smith, rather than the not-blood-related figure of Brigham Young. This splinter group did not head out West, choosing to stay in Missouri, no further out West than where the movement initially cohered, in Illinois. This not-so-pioneering group did not adopt the distinctive Mormon practices -- polygamy, temple underwear, Masonic iconography and initiation rituals, etc. They do believe in the Book of Mormon, and its New World genesis narrative, but none of the other stuff we associate with Mormons. They keep changing their name to disaffiliate more and more with the Mormons, so I won't bother looking it up. By now, they're de facto just another American Protestant group. And their architecture reflects that -- they never built temples at all, let alone in a distinctly American style.

So, even within this uniquely American religion (the Latter Day Saints movement), we can trace its distinctly American character to the fact that it made the out-West pioneering trek, well before the frontier was closed and safe. Their former fellow travelers who didn't want to travel with their fellows out West, never built distinctly American religious buildings, and were not at the vanguard of a distinctly American style.

* * *

To survey the evolution of Mormon temple architecture, see this list from Wikipedia, and eyeball the thumbnail, hover over them, or click and view a larger series of images for that temple.

When the movement began in the 1830s and '40s, they built two temples, in Ohio and Illinois, neither of which looks like a new style -- they're eclectic borrowings from various Old World styles that were popular at the time.

By the time they reach Utah, they start building temples for real, and the first examples are completed between the 1870s and '90s. The first one, in St. George, is clearly derived from Medieval / Early Modern European sources. However, notice how minimalized it has become, compared to more elaborate and faithful revival styles back East at that time. Much blockier and simplified in form, with sparse ornamentation. Also note that unlike Romanesque, Gothic, etc., cathedrals, or Medieval castle keeps, the main entrance for this temple has the highest tower in the center, rather than two high towers or turrets flanking a shorter central portion. The entrances are two, to either side of the center, unlike the central portal of a cathedral or castle keep. Finally, note the bright white color -- no drab dark grays, muted browns, heavy brick reds, slate blues, or anything Old World-y and back-East like that.

The Logan and Manti temples are a bit more openly LARP-y, and highly eclectic, reflecting the fact that they were still groping around for their own style. Still, they are restrained for ornamentation and as blocky as such revival styles can get. The Logan temple has more dark earth tones, although the Manti temple is more light and bright.

The last of the early temples, the global pilgrimage destination in Salt Lake City, shows them still groping for an answer to, "what if it were European, but in an undone way?" The grouping of three spires at either end has the center one being tallest, again unlike European cathedrals or castles. And the windows on either end are arranged into vertical columns, rather than horizontal rows ("stages") as in various historical European styles. Americans are obsessed with spires, towers, and skyscrapers, because they let us escape placing windows into the horizontal stages of all European styles that predate us and were created in the Old World. Still, although it looks minimalist compared to the source material, it does look like an attempt to "do European in America".

By the time the next temples were designed, in the 1910s, the American revolution in architecture had taken place. Now the Mormons didn't have to invent their own style -- they could take the new American Block Symphony created in Chicago, and be one of the many out-West adopters of it. The Mormon architect duo of Pope & Burton immediately seized on the Prairie School approach of Frank Lloyd Wright, and with the temples in Laie, Hawaii, and Cardston, Alberta (Canada), they began the standardization of Mormon religious architecture to adhere to American Block Symphony, rather than grasp at European roots or do outright Old World revivals. The Mesa temple from the late '20s is also minimalist and blocky.

There are isolated examples of non-Mormon religions building a blocky American style church -- including the Prairie School, such as the Unity Temple (for Unitarians) in Chicago, from a decade earlier, in the 1900s. And there's a '30s Art Deco building for Catholics in suburban Detroit, Michigan (National Shrine of the Little Flower Basilica Catholic Church).

However, no other religion took this style and standardized it for their future buildings. Only the Mormons have made the American Block style sacred and inviolable, rather than an amusing fad in the fashion cycle. Nearly all of the roughly 200 temples by now have respected that choice, however it may sometimes syncretize with local styles outside of America -- or indeed, back East, where the culture is only kinda-American, and kinda-Old-World-LARP. (One of the few major exceptions is located in WASP central of Hartford, Connecticut.) Mormonism is the only religion for whom so-called "Modernism" is traditional, historical, and sacred.

The only stylistic innovation left after those three from the early 1900s was the inclusion of a strong vertical form, since Americans have to have a spire, tower, or skyscraper. The next temple, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, was planned in the late '30s and mostly built by the early '40s, although the interior was delayed by WWII until a final dedication in 1945.

Borrowing from Art Deco or Streamline Moderne, it was the first to put a single spire jutting up from the rest of the block symphony, in this case atop a step pyramid of sorts (supposedly recalling New World pyramids, although just as plausibly a typically American blocky pixelation or low-res-ification of a smooth shape from Europe, like the tetrahedronal or conical roof of a tower.) Aside from the block symphony, this temple also cemented the "central tower" profile, in contrast to the "two towers or turrets flanking the shorter main entrance" from Europe, or fairly uniformly flat roof of Ancient Greek temples. And it made bright gleaming white the ideal to strive toward, also in contrast to every European style before it and on another continent.

If anything, it looks futuristic or space age-y. But we were still an expanding empire, growing in a continent we had only recently settled, and where Mormons were a brand-new religion. It *had to* look futuristic, because Americans were forged into a new, not-European culture by their meta-ethnic frontier with the Indians. And Mormons were forged into a new, not-Christian religion by the same process, more than other religious groups, since they were pioneer settlers out West before the Indian threat was over.

In a world used to Ancient Greek architecture, the Roman revolution that produced arches, vaults, and domes all over the place must have seemed futuristic as well, especially for engineering projects like aqueducts that the Greeks could not have dreamed of.

* * *

Crucially, it's not about a technological discovery -- the main one in America was steel reinforced skeletons, and Mormon temples don't use that to make skyscrapers. Nor do they have neon lights or anything futuristic like that. It's a purely stylistic choice to do blocks in all sorts of sizes and scales, grouped into complex arrangements, that makes it American. Ditto for Roman arches, vaults, and domes -- they didn't need to discover concrete to make those, it was a stylistic choice to distinguish themselves as a wholly new culture, where before they were just borrowing the Eastern Mediterranean standards.

New architectural styles do not wait for a technological revolution, but a social psychological one, whereby a large group of people start to feel closer together, united in a struggle against a foe on the other side of a meta-ethnic frontier. Without that, they don't feel like a special newly forged ethnic group requiring their own new architectural style to embody that.

Well, it also has to wait for a political event, too -- healing after a civil war during the initial imperial expansion. The Roman style had to wait until the late 1st century BC, after the Crisis of the Roman Republic, and peaked in the 2nd century AD, before the collapse of the empire during the Crisis of the Third Century. Likewise, the American style -- whatever it could have been -- could not have emerged until after the Civil War and Reconstruction was over, yet before the current fragmentation, collapse, and anarchy of the post-2020 stage of our empire.

But that is a topic for another post, requiring more empires to survey.

Olde Worlde LARP vs. American architecture in state capitol buildings: the Western frontier and American ethnogenesis

[Edited for Florida discussion]

Getting back to the topic of distinctly American architecture, the previous post outlined its basic features, so now we can go looking for examples around the country systematically. Architectural styles are rarely uniformly the same all around a country, especially a large one like ours. This also ties into why we even have a distinctive branch of architecture to begin with, while others do not.

To summarize the meta-ethnic frontier model of imperial origins, popularized by Peter Turchin in War and Peace and War, when two highly different groups are pitted against each other over the long haul, the pressure exerted by the initial advancing group forces the other group to cohere strongly enough to resist them -- and perhaps ultimately to overtake them as an empire of their own.

This process takes a century or so, not years or a few decades. And the intensity is proportional to how different the two sides are -- language, religion, subsistence mode (farmers vs. herders, for example), clothing styles, skin color, anything that heightens their awareness of being different and opposite and "this town ain't big enough for the both of us".

The Roman Empire was created in response to the invasion of the Celts over the Alps and through northern Italy, and secondarily the Carthaginians invading from the south and west (based in today's Tunisia). This is why Rome and the northern half of the Italian peninsula was the base of the empire, while the southern and eastern part -- Sabines, Samnites, etc., speaking Oscan rather than Latin dialects -- was not only sitting on the sidelines but often allied with the invaders to thwart their Roman neighbors from controlling their entire peninsula.

The American Empire was created in response to the Indians, sometimes allied with the French Empire and later allied with the British Empire after American independence, as well as the Spanish Empire and its off-shoots in Mexico. The meta-ethnic frontier was strongest and lasted longest out West, so American collective identity has been shaped mostly by developments out there, and not so much by back-Easterners.

For a refresher, see the Wikipedia article on the American Indian Wars. Conflict in the East Coast / original 13 colonies region was largely wrapped up with the Seven Years War in the mid-1700s. But it continued into a brutal spin-off war in the Old Northwest, or Great Lakes region, in Pontiac's War during the mid-1760s, then the full-blown Northwest Indian War from 1786-'95, and Tecumseh's War (part of the War of 1812).

The meta-ethnic frontier was strong here because the American settlers faced a large organized confederation of Indian tribes, not just isolated tribes here and there. And the Indians were backed by the British Empire, who were still planning to take back America.

This is why American identity begins in this Great Lakes region (or the part of the Midwest east of the Great Plains), before spreading out West during the Jackson years and later, during Manifest Destiny. And that's why Chicago is so central to the formation of American identity, rather than New York or Atlanta -- especially in architecture, from Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School, Art Deco, the International Style, and beyond.

The only other region back East that saw intense warfare by Indians, after the French and Indian Wars, was central-to-southern Florida, during the Seminole Wars of the 1830s and '40s. But even here, the Indian wars didn't last long -- just the Seminole Wars, as opposed to the deep and enduring conflict in the Great Lakes region, and then out in the Plains, Mountains, and Pacific Coast. Still, this does explain why central-to-southern Florida has remained a more all-American region of the country, without a non-standard accent of its own, in contrast to the Florida panhandle which is more a part of the South.

It's impossible to imagine the East Coast branch of Disneyland, originally from out West (southern California), to be anywhere other than central-to-southern Florida. It just wouldn't be as all-American hearing a Noo Yawk accent or Southern drawl from the local workers. Touring a plantation, or the Statue of Liberty, OK -- but not at Disney World. Nor is it possible to imagine the American Block Symphony style to define the local architecture along the East Coast, outside of central and especially southern Florida (mainly of the Art Deco / Streamline Moderne form).

* * *

In order to take a systematic look, though, we need something other than international theme parks -- something that every state has, and where there is a clear expectation that its style be important, not just an afterthought kind of building. And where the distinctiveness of American architecture could be seen against the backdrop of Old World LARP-ing. Crucially, where the building relates to who we are as a highly organized society, nation, empire, etc.

So we'll look at state capitol buildings, whose pictures you can browse in a Wikipedia list.

Almost all of them do imitate Old World styles, mainly Ancient Greece or Rome, via the Neoclassical revival of the late 1700s in the Euro empires that seeded the future American empire (Britain and France). Once that became the standard in the nation's capital, with the Capitol Building, it set expectations for the state capitols as well. If not Neoclassical, they tend to still be Gothic, or some other Old World style.

In this light, the most distinctly American political building in the political capital, of iconic status, is not the Capitol Building, White House, or Lincoln Memorial -- it's the Washington Monument. A jutting tower, angular / no curves, minimal ornamentation. It does have a small tetrahedron at the top, but it's not reminiscent of European castles, but of the Egyptian pyramids and obelisks -- which is still Old World, but not as much of a blind following of our earlier traditions. It's not as though British culture came from Greece or Rome either, but Egypt is even further removed from Britain.

It also represents the uniquely American take on Old World LARP-ing -- identifying with the Saharo-Arabian cultural sphere rather than the Indo-European one that we actually come from. But Indo-European is too close to European, and our whole national project is to distinguish ourselves from Europeans -- so pyramids, obelisks, and ziggurats it must be for us. Nothing Islamic either, with its curves and Medieval origin, we need something ancient to deeply root our LARP-ing, since we have such shallow roots in the New World.

Political buildings, along with religious buildings, tend to be the most resistant to change style-wise (unlike buildings such as residential or commercial, which are less important for defining a cultural collective). However, there are a handful of exceptions -- the 9 colored red in the map below, indicating some kind of block-based style, which is definitively American:

Notice that nearly every one of them is west of the Mississippi River, and in fact all but one of those is on or west of the Missouri River. It's clearly a Western phenomenon. And it's not a northern or southern trend within the west -- Alaska, Oregon, Nebraska, and North Dakota are northern, while Hawaii, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Florida are southern.

You can quibble about the New Mexico "roundhouse" building not being part of American Block Symphony, but the point is simply that it's not an Old World LARP, but something New World-y. Too much of an emphasis on circles and curves does take away from it being part of the American blocky style, but it's still a regional revival style -- Territorial Revival -- rather than imitating Ancient Greece, Rome, Gothic, etc. The circular form is a cylinder, not a dome or arch or cone -- and when we think of Old World LARP, really only the Colosseum in Rome has a similar profile, so its roundedness is not very Old World LARP-y after all.

Plus, the complex that it belongs to also includes a clearly American Block example, the Bataan Memorial Building, whose tower is a clear example of the American love of towers that jut high above the rest of the complex.

Arizona is included because the legislative and executive offices have been moved into new buildings in the Blocky style, from their original Neoclassical home nearby, which has now been turned into a library and museum. American state governments are executive-based, like the nation as a whole, so if only the legislative offices have split off, I'm excluding those cases (like Nevada, Alabama, and North Carolina).

As far as aesthetic value, the states that were admitted after the Frontier was closed circa 1890 don't look as impressive -- Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, and Hawaii. They're out West, and willing to do something distinctly American / New World-y, but either they weren't settled early enough, didn't attain statehood early enough to have their own sense of special identity, or something else.

The ones that struck while the American Block Symphony iron was at its red-hottest, during Art Deco, belong to the Lewis & Clark territory -- Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Oregon. The North Dakota and Oregon buildings are a bit too sparse compared to the ones from Nebraska and Lousiana. Best overall is the one in Nebraska -- more color on the exterior, and much richer colors / materials / American motifs (including Indian motifs). But Louisiana is a very close second. Image search for these buildings, to get a feel for how striking they are, inside and out, aside from the simple overview thumbnail in the Wiki list. Make sure to see the details toward the top of the towers, where the forms get really intricate compared to the rows of windows in the tall mid-section.

BTW, the Louisiana capitol development was personally spearheaded by the populist governor, Huey Long, who sought to modernize the South after the Civil War and Reconstruction. The new capitol was built slightly before the New Deal era, but still part of the Great Compression after WWI, during a period of falling inequality and bringing treasure from the elites to the common people. But it wasn't just any ol' impressive structure for the people -- he could've built an Old World LARP palace for that purpose, too. He wanted something distinctly New World, and American, not European. It came on the heels of the Nebraska capitol, and Long ensured that it was slightly taller.

Normally Louisiana is lumped in with the South, owing to the slavery plantation agriculture economy, leaving the Union during the Civil War, the historically large black population, and back-East non-standard accent. On the other hand, it does lie west of the Mississippi, and was part of the Louisiana Purchase from France, not an original Anglo-founded colony, so Anglo-Americans were pioneers and settlers in a strange land. It was more of a frontier than the rest of the South, at any rate.

The continental states with American style capitols used to have Old World LARP capitols originally, so the presence of a blocky building today represents a deliberate break with the past. It's not that the originals looked boring or poorly made -- the Old Louisiana State Capitol looks like a Medieval European castle with kaleidoscope of Gothic stained glass inside. However, looking cool and being well made was not enough for the western frontier spirit that wanted to forge a new American cultural identity -- they wanted cool, well-built, AND in a new distinctly American style.

BEGIN EDIT

Florida has been added to the list of states with non-LARP, block-style capitols. Every picture of it, from the Wiki list through endless pages of image search results, shows what is in fact the "Old Capitol" building, which is Old World LARP.

But similar to Arizona, this building is only preserved for historical value, while the executive and legislative politicians actually meet in and rule from the "New Capitol," which is a jutting skyscraper in the American Block style built in the '70s. It is somewhat syncretized with Old World LARP in the lower buildings to either side of the skyscraper, with their domes and columns, although stripped down in minimalist fashion.

Fortunately, I have already noted that Florida is an exception in being a back-East state that was subjected to Indian wars far later than other places back East, not having a non-standard back-East accent, and mirroring Newfoundland in Canada. Turns out, it mirrors Newfoundland in having an American-style capitol building as well.

Tellingly, the battle between the Old and New Capitol buildings reflects the main dividing line in Florida, between the northern panhandle that is part of the South, and the central and southern region that is part of the frontier and is all-American. In the 1960s, state politicians from central and southern Florida tried to move the capital entirely from Tallahassee (far in the north) to somewhere toward the central region such as Orlando. State politicians from the north wanted it to stay put, and wanted to keep the capitol building the same as well.

The political capital remained in Tallahassee, but the compromise was to build a new state capitol building and complex on the site of the Old Capitol -- the American Block style skyscraper and surrounding structures. However, locals from the northern part of Florida saved the Old Capitol from demolition, and it remains in place right next door to the New Capitol, although it is no longer the meeting place for the government.

Here we see the conflict within the state between the Not Quite American -- the northern panhandle, part of the South (back East), lighter on Indian wars, and preferring Old World LARP buildings -- and the All-American -- central and southern, frontier, heavy Indian wars, preferring distinctly American buildings.

I take no blame for having to make this addendum, since I already predicted something like that by emphasizing the exception of central/southern Florida within the Eastern region for its intensity of Indian wars lasting after the mid-1700s, it being a frontier, and the presence of Art Deco etc. in local architecture. It confirms rather than undercuts my thesis. Maybe if New York or Virginia had an American Block Symphony capitol, that would be a counter-example or outlier. But not Florida, considering the civil war within the state over who promoted the New Capitol and who wanted the entire seat of government moved to the center of the state instead of the panhandle.

It's just that every picture of Florida's state capitol points to the Old Capitol, and doesn't even bother explaining that the government meets in the skyscraper that is often not in the picture at all, let alone identified as the New Capitol.

END EDIT

* * *

Now, a brief aside on Canada -- and I will be ignoring the fussy micro-conventions of Canadian political lingo. Their founding settlements were in Quebec, from the French Empire. That is their "back East" -- and like America's, it has its own non-standard dialect, indeed separate language, Quebecois French. Montreal is their New York, and it remained the largest city until Toronto eclipsed it only in the 1970s (Toronto is nearest to Buffalo, at the far west of New York state, in the Great Lakes region).

The people of what is today Canada rarely encountered hostile tribes, let alone large confederations, of Indians, and to the extent they did, they tended to ally with them against the nascent American Empire (whether it was still nominally British or independent American). So the meta-ethnic frontier that existed in America was minimal in Canada, which is why America rather than Canada became the empire -- and set the cultural standard for the entirety of the New World north of the Rio Grande.

The Canadian standard accent sounds 99% like the standard American accent, and only a handful of common fossilized words give it away by pronunciation (like how "sorry" rhymes with "glory"). Usually you have to wait until they use a different vocabulary word altogether, not the pronunciation -- like if they call the last letter of the alphabet "zed" instead of "zee" or refer to a "marmot" instead of a "groundhog".

And yet, Canadians did have to migrate outward from Quebec and Ontario in order to settle all the land that they currently do. Mainly that followed the American pattern, since their original settlement was also back East. Their frontier is mostly out West, beginning in the Prairie and going out to the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Coast. But they also traveled up North, toward Yukon, the Northwest Territories (including the spin-off Nunavut), and northeastward into Newfoundland.

In the same way that the Sun Belt has played a central role in American culture, the Ice Belt plays a central role in Canadian identity. Even though most of them live right along the American border, they still identify as "true North strong and free", Arctic expeditioners, and ice sports fans. No different from Americans in Ohio or Oregon identifying with the Texas cowboys, Valley girls of SoCal, and so on.

Canada uses a parliamentary system of government, and here is a list of their provinces with images of their legislative buildings, akin to our state capitols. As in America, political and religious buildings are strongly resistant to change. Most of them are an Old World LARP, although inflected through French rather than British traditions -- French Neoclassical, Beaux Arts, etc.

However, there are 4 exceptions (map not shown) -- Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Newfoundland, all of which are in the American Block style. The NT building does have a somewhat circular nature, but it is more pixelated or low-res, where a regular polygon approximates a circle in its cross-section (as well as its dome). The jutting tower only shows up in the Newfoundland building, making it the most overall similar to the American style.

Three of those provinces are out West, and all up North. Newfoundland is technically on the East Coast, but it is similar to central/southern Florida in being settled later, representing more of a frontier far from the original settlement. And it only became a province of Canada in 1949, almost as recently as Alaska and Hawaii attained statehood.

Compared to their American counterparts, the Canadian examples aren't as impressive, because their sense of collective identity has not been intense like ours has been (no Indian wars). They mainly go along with their Old World origin, or shoulder-shruggingly adopt whatever the Americans are up to at the time, whether accent or architecture.

* * *

Finally, no survey of the Western influence on standardizing American cultural identity could be complete without California. The state capitol is an Old World LARP, and so are the city halls of Sacramento and San Francisco, also in the northern part of the state. But have a look at other city halls in California, and see just how American Block Symphony the style gets toward the south. Already by San Jose, there's a compromise with a blocky tower and a curvy rotunda. Fresno's is hideous, but also not an Old World LARP.

Once you get to southern California, the big city halls are Art Deco -- Los Angeles, Van Nuys, Beverly Hills, San Diego. Bakersfield's is also American Block, but of the Midcentury International Style.

This matches southern California being the center for the uniquely American forms of art and culture -- movies and pop music. Northern California has always been more of a financial and commercial center (physical or digital) than a cultural center.

SoCal is more a part of the broader Southwest, drawing greater cohesion and intensity from its proximity to our rival nation Mexico. During the Mexican War, most of the fighting in the Conquest of California took place in the southern, not northern, part of the state.

I don't know their entire catalog, but I'm willing to bet the Beach Boys refer to American Block style buildings in their lyrics, rather than any strain of Old World LARP. You can't get more definitively all-American than that.

Imperial European ornateness vs. Block Symphony in American, Russian, and Scandinavian architecture (American ethnogenesis series)

In an earlier post on the rise of realism and naturalism in stage drama, the 3rd section was a brief aside on modern architecture. The same three regions pioneered these two unrelated trends, in order to distinguish their culture from that of the Western European empires who had dominated taste-making for centuries up to that point -- namely, the empires of America and Russia (including its incarnation as the Soviet Union), and the never-imperial region of Scandinavia.

We'll fill in some more details on the outline about architecture, in this and other upcoming posts. But basically, what we call "modern" architecture is really just American and Russian architecture of the 20th century, and the late 19th in America, where it originated in Chicago specifically. I'm focusing on the American strand of this convergent evolution, since we pioneered it. But for the curious, just look up Stalinist architecture or the Seven Sisters skyscrapers in Moscow, and notice how close they look to American Art Deco of the same period.

(Scandinavia played less of a role in the architecture field, but more of a role in the related fields of interior design, furniture, and other manufactured goods. Building lots of huge grandiose structures does require imperial-level wealth, something Scandinavia never had. But making tables, chairs, lamps, etc., is entirely do-able for non-imperial societies.)

I don't like the nondescript term "Modernism," although it at least says it's a conscious separation from many earlier eras -- which it obviously is. But that makes it sound like an internal development in those countries that spawned the earlier styles, like the Italian Renaissance, British Victorian Gothic, and so on.

But it was not -- it was born in America, which had no deep historical layers of styles of its own, owing to the colonial / settler nature of our founding. And it was born in Chicago and carried further over the Midwest out to the Pacific Coast, where there has been even less of a historical foundation to react against, unlike the relatively older (but still young) settlements along the East Coast.

So, the point of it being against or beyond or not like the Italian Renaissance, or Ancient Greeks, or Victorian Gothic, or the original French Gothic, etc., was not about a temporal succession or another phase in a fashion cycle.

Rather, it was the announcement that America is a whole new nation, society, culture, and empire -- and we're not in the Old World. Our new collective identity is being forged here in the New World, especially out on the Western frontier, where the meta-ethnic division has always been the starkest (that's where the battles against the Indians were fiercest and longest). Therefore, we cannot just blindly borrow from past cultures -- we're a whole new people, and we need something wholly new to distinguish ourselves culturally from our ancestors and distant cousins back in the Old World.

I'm going to simply call this "American" architecture, to make this ethnogenetic basis clearer. It's not one temporal era declaring itself separate from earlier eras in time -- but one region declaring itself separate from other regions in space (and time). Maybe you could modify it with "American Minimalism" or "American Block Symphony" or something, I don't know. Future historians will not nitpick and hair-split over decade-long micro-trends, in their view -- they're going to lump as much as possible, and it'll have a geographic term (American, obviously), and one or two words about its style per se.

This term encompasses everything from Louis Sullivan / Chicago School, Frank Lloyd Wright / Prairie School, Arts and Crafts, Art Deco (not Art Nouveau, which was European and highly ornamental, unlike American tastes and trends), Midcentury Modern, the so-called International Style (Second Chicago School, which went international as America replaced all Euro empires other than Russia after WWI and WWII, absorbing many outright into NATO), and so-called Postmodernism (really just a late / self-referential / weird stage of the entire unbroken evolution).

To the extent that its imperial reach spread outside the borders of the core nation, it assimilated local elements that were compatible with it -- and kept out those that were not. Where earlier European interest in Far East culture borrowed from the intricately ornamental side (Chinoiserie, Japonisme) in order to fit in with Rococo or Art Nouveau or other highly ornamental European styles, American interest in those same cultures eschewed that in favor of Zen Buddhism, bonsai trees, rock gardens, and other minimalist forms.

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What characteristics define the American Minimalist style? Well, it was a conscious separation from the styles of the existing / rival European empires, especially Britain and France, who seeded the culture of America and Canada (Spain in Latin America). Nothing that would look like a Gothic cathedral, Medieval castle / fortress, a rural chateau, Baroque, Neoclassical, Renaissance revival, or whatever else from the Old World.

Specifically, no simple curves or circular forms -- no domes, no columns (or turrets) with a circular cross-section, no cones for roofs (even of a little tower), no arches, etc. No tetrahedrons (pyramid-type shape) for tower roofs either -- maybe elsewhere, and in a larger scale, but atop a tower looks too much like an Old World castle or chateau. We don't like triangular forms atop a series of columns either, because it looks too much like an Ancient Greek pediment. As a design element for decoration, like zigzags or chevrons, triangles are fine, though -- just not as a main structural feature (unless functionally required for domestic buildings, like in a roof profile to send rain and snow down off of it).

Certainly one or two of these elements may appear, but too many of them together make it look like an Old World LARP, whether trying to ape a specific foreign style (like Ancient Greek) or being eclectic with Old World styles from all over time and space.

Unlike earlier structures built for defense, ours would have tons of windows, with a large cumulative surface area, right on the front of the building. We just about wiped out the Indians, and there has been no other empire to battle us on our home turf, so we don't need to be so defensive at home with our buildings. This reached an absurd logical conclusion in the "all-glass box" trend of the 2000s and after.

A huge tower, culminating in our unique contribution to architecture -- the skyscraper. Old World empires had buildings that were fairly level around the top, and the artists of the day complained about the Eiffel Tower dominating the Paris city-scape, with buildings that were not merely much lower in height, but fairly even in height around the rooftops. Even Medieval castles with a tower, or a bell tower next to a cathedral, do not jut as highly toward the sky as typical American towers do from their surroundings.

(Domestic buildings are exempt from the tower trend, since few homeowners have enough wealth to build it.)

Removing circular or curved forms, and most triangular forms (especially their combination, a cone -- perhaps the least American-looking architectural element), yields the defining block-iness of the American style. In lazier hands, it's just a boring simple box or a regular grid (like the Seagram Building). But in skilled hands, the boxes have a wide variety of scales, interwoven with each other, in different orientations, making a symphony of blocks (like Art Deco, the peak of American architecture). And there still may be a suggestion of a non-block shape, but it will be made up of clearly distinct blocks of various scales and orientations -- for instance, a V shape made up of rectangular columns of shrinking, then rising heights, next to each other.

Similar to the low-res / pixelated look of 8-bit video games -- or, for that matter, the most popular video game ever to this day, Minecraft, affectionately known as "block game". That was invented by a Swede. The earlier related Lego blocks were invented in nearby Denmark. So, Scandinavians can indeed participate in the American Minimalist evolution in architecture, if it's at the scale of children's playthings, which doesn't require imperial levels of wealth to build huge structures IRL.

Arrangements of blocks of varying scale may result in something from earlier eras and foreign places, like the ancient Middle Eastern ziggurat, or the Central American step pyramid. And since those are not too close to Ancient, Medieval, or Early Modern European styles, they're permitted as long as they don't try to merely copy the ziggurat or pyramid.

We do need to integrate earlier forms from the New World, to draw a historical link between us and earlier civilizations here, so we don't feel too new-born and rootless. And we have always been more obsessed with connecting ourselves to the ancient Near East, like Egypt or Mesopotamia, rather than Greece or Rome (too Euro). "We" -- I mean, the culture-makers of our unique American identity. We'll get to geographic differences in how American vs. Old World LARP-y the local architecture is, in posts to come this week.

Bigfoot, our national cryptid, shows out-West center of American ethnogenesis

Returning to a favorite theme here, the western frontier as the incubator for American collective identity, have a look at this map of the most famous cryptids (legendary creatures) of each state.

Only one of them is nationally renowned -- Bigfoot / Sasquatch, from the Northern California / Pacific Northwest region, way out on the West Coast. No matter how hard the locals try to shill their own state's cryptids, the American people as a whole simply do not pay them any attention. Outside of the state in question, 99% of Americans have never even heard of these names, let alone what their defining features and narrative legends are. There is only Bigfoot.

Indeed, he is so central in our consciousness that the only foreign cryptid we have incorporated into our own culture is a variation on the Bigfoot theme -- the Yeti or Abominable Snowman, from the Himalayas. There is no historical continuity between the two, it's just that we're so obsessed with Bigfoot, we naturally chose something similar to popularize when we learned of it from a totally unrelated culture.

And contrary to lazy claims that all cultures have some kind of legendary figure like this, and that such legends trace back hundreds or thousands of years, Bigfoot did not exist in American culture before the mid-1800s, when we reached the West Coast and began interacting with the natives there, absorbing some of their legends, while putting our own spin on them over time -- and absorbing their proper names, like Sasquatch (from a Salish people's language). Bigfoot, with that name, became popular during the mid-1900s, and has since become an icon of American folk culture.

Why did Americans settle on an anthropomorphic cryptid for their national legendary creature, rather than a reptilian, avian, ghostly, plant-like, or other form? I think it's because Americans have shallow roots in this land, and we have always been insecure about the lack of ancient or prehistoric signs of human existence. We lack a compelling Genesis-esque origin narrative older than a few hundred years.

This has led to an American obsession with placing ancient Near Eastern civilizations in North America from ancient times themselves, thereby linking today's Americans all the way back to the ancient Egyptians, Israelites, and so on -- just their off-shoots that came to the New World before the Western European colonists of the Age of Exploration a mere 500 years ago. This is most notable in the origin narratives of the Freemasons, and one of their off-shoots that became America's only native global religion, with a mythological origin narrative in the New World -- Mormonism, which is yet another out-West innovation.

But that is human civilization. We are also insecure about the lack of ancient non-human ape-like creatures. Our European cousins have the Neanderthals, not to mention far older hominids inside and outside of Africa. To feel rooted in the deep history of this land, we really need some kind of "cave man" native to the New World, yet don't find much evidence, and certainly not one who we resemble.

Bigfoot allows us to both feel like we live where ancient hominids once lived -- or in fact, still do -- while not feeling out-of-place, since Bigfoot is not characteristically Native American, Amerindian, Eskimo, or anything like that. He resembles us, the descendants of European colonists, as much as he does the Native peoples who were here before us. Compared to Bigfoot, Native Americans and European colonists are equally newcomers, alleviating our anxiety about the Native Americans settling North America before we did by thousands of years -- which is an eye-blink on the deep historical time-scale where Bigfoot, or his ancestors, originated on this continent.

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There's another anthropomorphic big hairy beast who acts as a protector of nature, and has been an American cultural icon ever since he was created in the 1940s -- Smokey Bear (who I always heard called Smokey *the* Bear), the mascot of American nature conservation, reminding us that "Only YOU can prevent forest fires". And sure enough, his origins are out West, signaled by his campaign hat, blue jeans, and bigass belt buckle.

Wide-brim hats, and his style specifically, are an out-West innovation in America, adopted by cowboys and the frontier military (including as well the frontier paramilitary in Canada, the Mounties, who originated in the Wild West of the Northwest Territories at the same time).

Blue jeans were created for cowboys and miners out West, spearheaded by Levi Strauss in San Francisco CA. Lee jeans originated in Kansas, and the only old jeans manufacturer from back East is Wrangler (NC).

Large decorative belt buckles come from cowboy culture as well, beginning at rodeo performances and other ritualistic events, but by now common in everyday wear.

These clothing markers all originate in the westward expansion against the Indians in the Plains and Rocky Mountain regions, during the second half of the 1800s. They are central to the construction of American national identity during that time and place, they are not some timeless trope that has found its way into our present culture.