Greek Influence On American Culture

The country of Greece has, historically, been one of the most advanced and influential civilizations for humanity. Its scholars, astronomers, philosophers, architects, and artists have transformed the world and are still prevalent and admired today. From the Ancient Greek empires, to its ahead-of-its-time military force, to its artwork and architecture, Greece has paved the way for many of the things we see around us. While most of the time the media’s representation of a country or culture is historically inaccurate, for the most part, the portrayal of Greece by western media has been historically correct. It seems that American culture has been greatly interested in producing and viewing media based on ancient Greece. For example, the movies
Cinema was first introduced to Greece when John and Miltiades Manakia first began recording in Macedonia. The 1950’s and 60’s were considered by many scholars to be the “Golden Age of Film” in Greece. During this era, similarly to American culture, directors and actors were thought of as important historical figures, and many gained international fame (Ellie Lambeti, Dinos Iliopoulos, Irene Papa). More than sixty films were made per year, some notable titles include, Η κάλπικη λίρα (1955), Πικρό Ψωμί (1951), Δράκος (O Drakos, 1956), Stella (1955) (Just Greece). Greece continues to have a successful cinema industry, and cinema is one of the mediums in which Greece
Firstly, there is a clear demand by the Greek population for western media as seen in it’s history involving Television. The original government controlled networks were nearly put out of business by networks broadcasting American TV and film via satellites. Also, many of the original Greek TV programming was based of off American of European style shows. Like many countries who held a semi-peripheral status until recent years, its home-grown media was sub-par in comparison to core nations whose TV and film products were of a higher quality, either because of greater budgets or better use of technology. Either way, the reason that western media was more advanced than Greek, was because these core nations had greater amounts of money, technology, and talent directly related to their core status. Semi-peripheral and peripheral nations simply did not or do not have the monetary funds needed to create film or TV which is measurable to its western