How The British Recaptured America

The Queen of England gave the President of the United States the evil eye.

President Obama deserved it. He raised his glass over the band’s rendition of “God Save the Queen”. Her Majesty glared. The Commander In Chief bit down on his lower lip. The band played on. And just like that, the most powerful man on Earth was chastened—the one-time clarion call for Change hushed—by a starchy, octogenarian grandmother.

Alas, the Queen’s wordless reproach of President Obama was only the latest and all-too-public of reminders: Mother England has grounded the rebellious son.

America has suffered her indignities at the hands of England before. Beatlemania. The unfortunate Spice Girls-Weakest Link-Teletubby triumvirate of the late 1990s. But from Piers Morgan to the Royal Wedding to the premiere of X-Factor, the British at last conquered American culture in Fall 2011.

In the pantheon of Empires, the Romans turned the Mediterranean into their own lake. The sun never set on the British Empire. And America made the world its TV room. Until the British Empire struck back.

Perhaps American is chastened. Humbled after a rough-and-tumble decade of wars and truculent unemployment. Or maybe we need Mel Gibson back. Because ever since the Aussie actor stopped lobbing spears and musket-balls at the British (1990s) and started spewing diatribes at minorities (2006-Present), the British recaptured America one TV room at a time. They invaded not by sea but reality TV shows.

The British already came to a theater near you. Colin Firth and the “King’s Speech” plundered the Oscars. English shape-shifter Christian Bale scored Best Supporting Actor as the drug-addled n’er-do-well brother in “Fighter”. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 hexed box offices all summer, grossing $1.3 billion and soaring.

Meanwhile, America’s chief entertainment exports in 2011 are the Jersey Shore to Italy and the deranged musings of Charlie Sheen. Update: Abercrombie & Fitch requested The Situation no longer don their clothes in a thinly-veiled marketing stunt. Charlie Sheen—ever the Winner—now lives with his mother.

Jack Bauer defused bombs, tortured terrorists and foiled the Chinese, but he proved no match for English spirits. The actor was found inebriated, filthy, and shirtless, giggling to himself in a London gutter last April. But Fox coasts on thanks to British franchises. Rupert Murdoch’s daughter convinced the media baron to introduce a London talent show she took a liking to stateside. That talent show became American Idol. Yet the curmudgeonly Simon Crowell outgrew Idol as he debuted X-Factor this Wednesday.

American networks subsist only off of British imports. Twenty three million Americans tuned in for the Royal Wedding coverage this May. NBC limps along off of the American adaptation of Ricky Gervais’ The Office. MTV’s most controversial show was not The Jersey Shore but Skins. The adaptation of the British series stunned American audience with borderline teenage pornography. Larry King endured seven wives and the Jurassic Period before finally relinquishing the CNN baton to Piers Morgan. HBO airs two Ricky Gervais shows (Extras, The Ricky Gervais Show) along with his Out Of England comedy special.

Indeed, Ricky Gervais is the field general. The portly front man for a new wave of cheeky British comedians pummeling American double-standards one punch-line at a time. Gervais ruthlessly skewers Red State ignorance to Scientology to, most memorably, the Golden Globes:

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Russell Brand rode Judd Apatow’s coattails to prominence as the irreverent, drug addict (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him To The Greek). Brand is yet such a name in America, but he did wed “America’s sweetheart” Katy Perry.

Sacha Baron Cohen hijacked movie theaters and dorm rooms everywhere in the summer of 2006 with a “very niiice” catch-line and unhealthy obsession with Pamela Anderson. Yet Borat served as a Kazakh Tocqueville of sorts exposing not what made Americans great but what made Americans afraid. Cohen’s Trojan Horse assault fizzled out with the disastrous Bruno follow-up, but not before he married The Clinger Girl From Wedding Crashers.

With apologies to Louis C.K. and Larry David, it is as though America’s funnymen quit trying. Our hungry SNL comic legends of yesteryear are the well-fed studio play-things of today. Adam Sandler and Chris Rock contend themselves with effortless line-ups of For-Them flicks: Grown Ups, Just Go With It, etc. NBC stopped soliciting Jerry Seinfeld for show ideas. Scientists remain baffled how Tyler Perry has a career.

And Dave Chappelle lost it. A hefty white guy in the third row laughed maybe too hard at maybe the wrong moment during a Chappelle Show racism sketch. Chappelle never finished the skit. He walked off the set, fled to Africa, and now plays World of Warcraft on an Ohio farm he named Hollywood Sucks. Chappelle sometimes reemerges for marathon stand-up sessions in LA comedy clubs. But grainy YouTube clips of and two boxed sets of Chappelle Show are all that truly remain of our generation’s Richard Pryor:

FX is the seedy last bastion of American TV comedy. Louis C.K. copes with societal issues from gay marriage to getting laid with a biting self-deprecation and sensitivity. The cast of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, with its utter lack thereof.

In sports, England feverishly plans for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Stateside, we survived an NFL lock-out and are in the throes of an NBA one. America’s twenty-something prodigy (LeBron James) dumped his hometown team on the grandest of stages. A year later he remains ringless but is now the most loathed player in the game. England’s twenty-something prodigy (Wayne Rooney) stayed with his team, endured the wrath of tabloids over alleged infidelities, and bicycle-kicked his way into Premiere League immortality.

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The most exclusive party of 2011 rocked not South Beach or Las Vegas but the bucolic countryside of Southwest England for Prince William’s bachelor party. A Claridge House spokesman was mum on the weekend’s festivities. But the royal brothers and twenty mates reportedly soaked up a decadent weekend of drunk water-skiing and floating pub crawls.

Younger brother Prince Harry served as emcee. The rabble-rousing red-head once crashed a friend of a friend’s party dressed as a Nazi. He now dates a distant cousin. Imagine how Prince Harry celebrated his brother’s send-off into monogamy.

Snoop Dogg even penned a song for the bachelor party—eloquently entitled—“Wet.” Snoop’s PR team released a statement: “‘Wet’ is the perfect anthem for Prince William or any playa to get the club smokin’.”
The Queen was unavailable for comment.

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This is Part One of the two-part series “How The British Recaptured America”. Please check back for Part Two.