Also, anyone who goes to Japan notices, that they go for totally-over-the-top-ness
Strike Japan, replace with "America", and every last one of my coworkers would agree with this statement.
Here's the man on the street view: "When Americans build a car, you see, they don't think of putting it down a tiny little street into a big driveway. They think it is a covered wagon, travelling out west like you see in the cowboy movies. So they make it HUGE. And then you go to their cities and do they make little rinky dinky 10 story office buildings? No -- they make GIANT HUNDRED FLOOR office buildings. They're also culturally predisposed to liking swagger, because of the cowboys. That is why John Wayne and George Bush are so popular."
Yeah, I used a bad example. It's not really over-the-topness in terms of size or expense, like in the U.S. (where it's really an obsession with number-one-ness).
Have you ever seen the "Human Tetris" video? It's a Japanese gameshow. You might think that it's just one gameshow, but no ... all the gameshows have crazy-haired announcers who yell wild-eyed the whole time. I mean that kind of over-the-top-ness .. to me it's quite different :)
Yes, but an honest question from a non-American: Isn't that much/more/most/greater/grander of "everything" rather than over-the-top?
Over-the-top, to me, implies a taking something to-the-extreme-and-then-some, and it's in this latter phase of and-then-some where the essence of over-the-top-ness is happening, because it requires something new to happen. Making a building just more tall isn't any "new" it's "only" much/more/most/greater/grander of the thing that's already there.
Not that scyscrapers aren't impressive or anything and they are new in the sense that such thing haven't always been around.
To me, Pulp fiction has something of over-the-top-ness, but Rambo never had.
Strike Japan, replace with "America", and every last one of my coworkers would agree with this statement.
Here's the man on the street view: "When Americans build a car, you see, they don't think of putting it down a tiny little street into a big driveway. They think it is a covered wagon, travelling out west like you see in the cowboy movies. So they make it HUGE. And then you go to their cities and do they make little rinky dinky 10 story office buildings? No -- they make GIANT HUNDRED FLOOR office buildings. They're also culturally predisposed to liking swagger, because of the cowboys. That is why John Wayne and George Bush are so popular."