The Quarantine of Information and Imagination

I was taking to someone who was not from this country (United States) and was visiting here from another place. This was a real treat, but bittersweet. They told me how, from the outside looking in, American's are being continuously misled about world news. How their own News stations, media, and the like seem to purposefully undermine, alter, or ignore important facts and events in the world and in their own nation. Things that are seen plainly by everyone outside of the nation.

They also notice the suppression of American freedoms and art much more clearly than Americans seem to. and not merely through direct elimination but through the inflation of "garbage" forms of art and imagination. Psuedo-art that is merely a bland repetition of old art and an appeal to the basest of our human instincts- crash, flash, sex, boom, and bucks. It's prevalent everywhere. Notice the difference between the original European version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and the Americanized Version. Notice the difference between the European version of "Let the Right One's In" and the Americanized "Let Me In". The real art and sublimity of both were substituted with an inflated sense of punk, attitude, flash, bomb, and bang.

It has inspired me to begin reading and listening to media outside of the nation, and viewing art forms and histories and stories of all genre's from all across the world. I also try to piece together information about what is happening in my own country from sources outside of it. Isn't that wild? I have to sift and wade through sources of information thousands of miles from my homeland in order that I avoid the misconceptions local to it.