Some indeterminate number of days ago I committed the unforgivable sin of looking into the most terrible corner of the Internet: any TikTok video’s comment section. Of course, this fatal mistake of mine was punished with exposure to a really bad take. The comment I saw this time said something to the effect of “Why would I watch that? It’s not American”.

There is just something about this idea that really irritates me. This complete refusal to consume media made by people from outside your nation shows such a myopic vision of the world that it makes me want to punch them.

I almost feel sorry for them. They are missing out on so much. Of course, there are many American-made pieces of media that are incredibly good (Breaking Bad immediately comes to mind), but so much of my favourite art was done in faraway countries, by people with very different cultures to mine. Here are a few examples:

  • My favourite game, Disco Elysium, was made by a cultural collective of Estonian artists.
  • Many of my favourite TV shows are animes made in Japan, such as Shingeki No Kyojin, Zankyou No Terror, Death Note, Steins;Gate, Shigatsu Wa Kimi No Uso, and more.
  • Fleabag and Magnus Archives are a TV show and a fiction podcast respectively, both extremely enjoyable, profound, and British.

Sure, my range of countries from which I have consumed media is not as wide I would like (I’m still missing the entire continent of Africa), but I couldn’t imagine myself not watching a show just because of where it was made. The whole point of this text is probably a milquetoast take: media from other places can not only be very good, but it can also both enrich your worldview, and make you realize how much you have in common with people from a different cultural background. Most people already kind of know this, I guess, but I was mildly annoyed by someone on the Internet, so I had to express it somewhere.