Comments by "Lynott Parris" (@DenUitvreter) on "American Reacts to Weird Things Europeans Call "American"..." video.
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Here in the Netherlands we have American car clubs and events. Mostly V8's but it's about American or not and an American saloon that is big with a big engine is called simply an "Amerikaan", everybody but American car guys know enough. It's a seperate subculture. We have filet Americain, which should Armoricain actually (Northern France beef breed)but got misinterpreted long ago. There is a famous "American Hotel" in Amsterdam, often called Americain because of the Grand Cafe with that name in it, it was probably about the architecture, or a certain style of service, or maybe it had an elevator early. 'Short American' was the name of a haircut, the crew cut.
American pizza is a thick frozen one that I never tried and I believe that's not just the marketing of just one brand. It's used a lot in other marketing and branding but usually without meaning something outside that specific brand. An American fridge used to be just an XL fridge I believe, and often those had a bit more extravagant styling compared to the boring European fridges. I owned an old one, it wasn't easy to clean because of all the styling. Before the internet people also had a lot of imagination about what was American.
And of course we have "Amerikaanse toestanden", " American situations", which is kind of derogatory term for something exaggerated, excessive, hectic, extreme, wild, but from Western culture, often to describe a negative development in society. It's not used to be negative about America, but related to America as the country of unlimited possibilities and a country of extremes.
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