Misperceptions: Polite, White, and Old-Fashioned
Before arriving to London, I had many assumptions about the ‘British’. I assumed they had polite senses of humor, they were old-fashioned, and they consumed foods completely different from Americans. However, I did piece together that not all ‘British’ people were wizards, as Harry Potter would have led me to believe.
Fictional movies and television shows influenced my perception of the ‘British’. The movie, Mary Poppins, created the idea that the ‘British’ were old-fashioned and lived in the culture of their country’s past. The clothes worn by the characters were old and formal. There were chimney sweeps and old buildings along old winding roads. I thought that the ‘British’ would be forever stuck in their old-fashioned ways. Pride and Prejudice led me to assume that the ‘British’ were always proper, polite, and constantly worrying about their social status. I figured they wore formal clothes and talked in a dignified manner.
After watching The Crown, I assumed the ‘British’ always consumed fancy and formal meals. Every meal was served at a prim and proper dining table with fancy china tea sets. I thought the ‘British’ were against quick and simple meals and took the time every day to sit down and eat a respectable meal. The movie Notting Hill created the idea in my head that the ‘British’ only inhabited residential areas that looked like the beautiful parks. The movie depicts Hampstead Heath as a normal stop on a walk home from your friend’s house. The Harry Potter series created an idea of what ‘British’ cursing sounded like. I supposed that cursing was beneath Brits. If they did curse, they did so politely, but only if they truly needed to. The character Ron Weasley mainly uses the modest phrase, “Bloody hell”, as his “worst” curse phrase.
Reading up on British culture in the media led me to believe that the ‘British’ consumed foods like fish n’ chips, Yorkshire pudding, and Shepard’s pie for every meal. I thought that any food eaten in Great Britain would be completely different than the normal meals I would have in the United States. The internet led me to believe that the ‘British’ stuck to their traditional meals and had their own unique food culture. The media has never led me to believe that the ‘British’ have sarcastic and dry senses of humor. I understood ‘British’ humor as modest and kind. The focus on the royal family through the news created an assumption that Britain had an extremely white population. I expected a lot of rich, white people.
Reading about Great Britain in school history books influenced my perception of the ‘British’. It led me to believe that Britain was and will always be a country of the past. The people still supported executions carried out by the monarchy. It is an old country with a lot of history, so I assumed that it was the same old country living in the same history that I learned about in class.
Music from Queen, The Rolling Stones, and the Beatles convinced me that the ‘British’ only listened to rock band music. British rock bands seemed to attract the most attention and I was unaware of the British popularity of other music genres, so I did not think the ‘British’ listened to any other music genre; being ‘British’ meant only liking rock music.
All in all, I believed being 'British' meant being polite, white, and old-fashioned.
