Don’t Underestimate The Cultural Influence Of The City Of Los Angeles

Don’t Underestimate The Cultural Influence Of The City Of Los Angeles

Don’t underestimate the cultural influence of the city of Los Angeles. Many people look to New York City as the epicenter of American culture, and there’s no denying the dominance the Big Apple has in terms of finance, theater, tourism, and even international prestige as the headquarters of the United Nations. However, the city of Los Angeles might actually have more global reach.

Los Angeles and its cultural impact come in predominantly three different forms. The first is through music. LA is definitely an epicentre for several genres, namely R&B, rock’n’roll, hip-hop, and pop. During the so-called Golden Age of hip-hop, nearly everything broke down to East Coast versus West Coast, and it was LA that dominated the West Coast rap scene.

The second notable form of cultural influence was called the ‘California dream‘, which for a while became the American dream. This happened a lot in the booming 50s and 60s decades after World War II. Cheap land and plentiful job opportunities drove millions to Southern California in search of home ownership, personal prosperity, and successful family life.

The biggest form of cultural influence centered around Los Angeles is that of entertainment, be it the big screen or the small screen. Major movie studios have headquarters and presence here, and they’ve been making movies for more than a century. They’ve also been making quite a few television shows along the way too.

Movies and TV might just be the biggest cultural export America has to offer the rest of the world. Other countries are so dominated by these forms of entertainment that some pass laws requiring local theaters to reserve a certain percentage of screen time to local/domestic artists, just to preserve their cultural heritage.

Love it or hate it, Los Angeles is a cultural powerhouse, not just across the United States, but around the world.