- Wojtek:
By contrast, Europeans, but especially British tend to have the right balance between the emotional and the intellectual/introspective.
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This statement is delightfully ironic inasmuch as one the movies generating Oscar buzz -- "The Queen" starring the exquisite Helen Mirren -- is entirely focused on the very unbalanced and very emotional response of much of the British public to Diana's death.
[WS:] I am talking works of art and culture in general, not the reactions of the riff raff. As HL Mencken aptly observed, the latter is "quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even comprehending any save the most elemental, men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand." This is true of any place.
The difference between the UK and the US is that in the latter this riff-raff aesthetic is one of the dominant tenors in the mainstream culture, while in the UK it is relegated mainly to tabloids, while the high culture remains relatively free from it.
Wojtek