edible derangements

J. expressed concern today that he was one of “those people” (i.e., Americans, the only real people) who is really into Germany. You know: grouping their identities around lederhosen fandom due either to a tenuous genealogical bond or a young-adult interest in wizardry. Those people: throwing a Wanderung or a Gemütlichkeit into conversation and griping about how, silly them, they just can’t remember the English word. Those people: the foreVaters of the San Diego German American Society.

Not that people (i.e., Americans) should by any means forswear their ethnic backgrounds. It’s understandable to keep up cultural traditions in an isolated immigrant community, or by 1st/2nd/3rd generation immigrants. Like, if you’re a Waldmann from Wisconsin and irregularize the vowels of your past tense verbs and have had to perform in Schuhplatter competitions since you could walk — OK. But many of the Fulbrighters I’ve met — those people — just had some great-grandfather who would say Gesundheit instead of Bless You.

The weirdness is threefold:( 1.) Yes, many Americans can claim German ancestry, but that largely stems from an exodus 1.5 centuries earlier — their ancestors’ culture is fully assimilated into America’s, and has been through most of the 20th century; (2.) If you are a recent German immigrant, you’d probably celebrate your heritage by wearing angular glasses; and (3.) They are reveling in (and pining for) an ideal of Germany that doesn’t exist and maybe never did. By hoisting up their lederhosen and swallowing pickles whole and yodeling around Southern California, they’re celebrating an Anaheim-level of cartoon simulacrum, a fairy tale.

But, momentarily laying aside the snob: why do people (those people) throw themselves into this (or any) idealized ethnic culture? Is the draw simply a sounder, more stable identity? An interest or emphasized heritage that supposedly signifies individuality? The desire to be a part of something older and different, and therefore greater?

So, J., no: you are not one of those people. But this guy is: