My travels began on the West Coast giving me time to explore Los Angeles and California before I moved onto Texas and up through the mid-west to the East Coast for the final leg of the trip. It has been particularly interesting to see elements of British influence and presence and to try to understand what ideas this might be conveying about ‘Britishness‘ today.
The title of this post is appropriate because the Keep Calm and Carry On motto has made it across the Atlantic and adorns many notepads and pencil cases in the stationary stores I have visited in the States. As a phrase originating from World War II this can be considered a more old fashioned representation of Britishness: the idea of maintaining a stiff upper lip in the face of wartime adversity (insert picture of Winston Churchill here!). This association of Britishness with a sort of old fashioned chic was repeated to me when visiting the highly regarded British works of art and literature at the Huntington Library and Art Collections in San Marino, CA. In the early 1900s, American railway pioneer Henry E. Huntington sought older pieces from Britain to display in his Californian ranch and with Gainsborough’s Blue Boy (ca. 1770) being considered one of the most highly prized items in the collection I felt that Britain was again being associated with an enduring past. Moving onto Texas a conversation with a local revealed that he very much associated Britishness with the television show Downtown Abbey (a drama depicting British aristocrats in the early 1900s) and the idea of old-fashioned sophistication. I felt this theme prevail again in Michigan when, upon revealing my nationality, I was asked on more than one occasion what I thought of various members of the Royal family. Of course this is in no way a reliable picture of the influence and presence of Britishness in the USA today but from the snapshots I experienced I could feel a sense of admiration for Britain’s long history, the traditions that have come with that long history and remain today, and the sense of sophistication that seems to be associated with these traditions. The stiff upper lip motto Keep Calm and Carry On could be seen as encompassing aspects of both tradition and sophistication with the phrase’s connotations of robustness and quiet pride.
My experience in the USA has reminded me of a piece by Riz Ahmed, which was published in the Guardian in September 2016: Typecast as a Terrorist. In discussing his experiences as a British Muslim actor working in the USA, Ahmed writes, ‘The reality of Britain is vibrant multiculturalism, but the myth we export is an all-white world of lords and ladies.’ I had certainly felt this in my travel observations and now the big question is why is this myth exported? Why does British culture manifest abroad in ways such as the ones I experienced on my travels? What are the implications for this?
