Exoticizing America

Quality of life here is very, very high. But I got into a disagreement today over whether, all things considered, L.A. has a better QOL. I argued that it does. Now, New Zealand certainly has advantages over LA, a few of which are: better public schools, relative racial harmony, and better air quality. But when I presented my list of the pros and cons of each of the two locations, I got a reply that I'd missed something crucial. This answer came from an American who has lived here for about 5 or 6 years and an Australian who lived in the U.S. for about 8 or 9 years. Their answer?

Crime. Now, there is undoubtedly more crime in the US, and it's undoubtedly true that it's better to live in a place with less crime. But just in terms of my personal life, I haven't noticed much difference in my attitudes vis-a-vis the place of crime in my life compared to when I was in the US. But the American and Australian reported a much higher degree of fear when spending time in the US than when spending time in NZ.

Now, sure, there are some bad neighborhoods and all, but I have rarely felt this kind of fear, personally. And I don't think that kind of fear is well-founded (exception coming shortly) for the average person walking down the average US street. My general lack of fear can plausibly be explained by some obvious facts: the neighborhoods where you have to really fear random crime are fairly few and far between and the violence in them is actually often non-random (and I've tended to live elsewhere, barring an exception or two), and because otherwise random violence is relatively rare, and finally because I try to avoid hanging out with people who might bring non-random violence upon yours truly. And these things are also true of the two people I was speaking with (relatively similar socio-economic status, similar career paths and interests, etc., and similar neighborhoods, I imagine). But only they feel personally safer here; I don't, at least not by much.

So what explains their higher degrees of fear? A plausible explanation is that this is an unexpected (to me, anyway) way in which the US is exoticized. Just as it is often protrayed in popular culture as a place of ridiculous wealth for everyone, so it is portrayed as a place of ridiculous crime for everyone. Just in ordinary life, you're bound to be car-jacked, kidnapped, mugged, or otherwise subjected to violent crime. (Then you give up your acting career and become Governor of California.) But this is, of course, ridiculous. It's like one aspect of the exoticization of L.A.: it's portrayed as if everyone has plastic surgery, but it's fairly uncommon (a few key locations aside) to just randomly see a bunch of middle-aged men with no facial wrinkles or a bunch of young women with gravity-defying breasts. Even if most Angelenos wanted it, which is doubtful, it's simply not affordable for most of the population.

Here's the exception: violence against women. Arguably worse than the differential wages for equal work aspect of US sexism is the aspect that women are subjected to unique kinds of violence, often random violence, to which men are not subjected. Therefore, to the degree that women have an elevated level of fear of random violence when walking down the average US street, this reaction seems justifiable; whereas, as far as I understand, that fear subsides for many women over here (justifiably).

So if I had that differential experience, I might feel safer here. But that doesn't explain the phenomenon in need of explanation, since my interlocutors in this debate are also men. The best explanation I can think of for their much higher fear-of-crime levels is that they have purchased the exoticized picture of the US as more randomly violent than it actually is.