some thoughts*
By diana on Apr 23, 2011 | In talking türkiye
* i really need to come up with better titles**
** But puns I don't fancy,*** and melodrama makes me barf. I need a good alternative.
*** As titles, I mean. Otherwise, the more awful the pun, the more I like it.
I got off shift this morning and caught a ride with Bernt (if you try to pronounce it, you'll probably mangle it--he's German, so call him "Big B") into town. Night shift breeds good friends. He will retire in four years to Macedonia with his wife and young daughter; he's learning Macedonian now. (I know you're wondering, so I'll tell you: Macedonian is like Croatian and Slovanian. Happy?)
I was at the BX complex late enough to be let in but before almost any of the shops opened. I had an hour to kill. I bought* a cup of tea and joined a couple of the cooks who were watching one of the X-Men movies on AFN.**
* I didn't have any American cash--where do you use that here, really?--so they gave it to me on mental credit: "Pay me next time." This is Turkish for, "It's free, unless you really want to pay me.)
** Armed Forces Network, the brainchild of the mildly retarded who know we hunger for American pretty-much-anything and systematically provide the most pathetic shows on TV, punctuated by undisguised military propaganda.
But being mildly retarded myself, I kinda like the X-Men. As I watched it, I was again--as I am with all feature films adapted from comic books--overwhelmed by the artistry of the cinematography. Then again, how easy is it to produce a visually stunning comic book film? You already have the shots laid out for you.
But I wallowed in it. Then came the point where they rescued Xavier and he said, "We have to get to Washington."
I glanced at the Turkish cooks sitting at the next table. They seemed unphased. I guess they take American self-absorption for granted, having been exposed to Western television, movies, and music for so long. But it pricked me. I couldn't help thinking how all our our media, including our entertainment (with a few notable exceptions), are all American-centric. You may not think this is a big deal, that's there no harm in little Johnny believing America is The Big Cheese (because it is), but I believe it's extremely harmful.
Our propaganda, from the time we're young, is that America is "the world," and that others aren't even out there--and if they are, they don't really matter. Atheists make fun of Christian and Jewish lore involving ancient stories of "the world"--which clearly involved Palestine and Rome and Egypt and Greece and not much else--but then we buy into this stupid idea that WE are the world. What hogwash. This is the shit that leads us into wars we cannot ever win because we only recognize one culture--ours. Because we are all that matters. See?
I knew where Macedonia is, but Bernt offered this information anyway. He wasn't being insulting. He was being politely respectful; after all, I am an American.* Odds are, I don't know where Macedonia is.
* My interpretation of what was going on. But in all sincerity, I have yet to truck with a European who does not have an intimate understanding of America and her politics. We can't say the same of Europe.
I know where it is only because Alexander the Great captured my imagination, though. It isn't because I learned about its history or even its whereabouts in geography. I looked it up, as an adult, because I read a book and thought, "Wow! Alex the G was badass!"
You might say he put them on the map.
Interesting fact, only tangentially related, and in a way that I won't bore you with the retelling: the population of Istanbul alone exceeds that of Greece in its entirety. You hear me? The heathens are outbreeding the Christians. Get busy, y'all.
I've long known that Turkey, like Russia, is considered a "Eurasian" country, in that it doesn't really fit into either culture but fits into both. What I didn't realize (and a course in geography would have relieved me of this ignorance) is that it literally has portions on both continents. Instanbul is on the European side. We're on the other.
Anyhow. Now you'll notice how many movies end with Washington somehow being considered the end-all be-all of world salvation. And I want you to think about it. Yes, we are the only extant superpower. At the same time, we aren't The World. And we should teach our children this.
d
7 comments
Diana,
I suspect “the most pathetic shows on TV” translates readily to “most cheaply obtainable shows for TV.” (Does AFN have paid advertising? I can’t think of much they’d advertise. I imagine your shopping choices are more constrained there.)
Your point about American-centric thinking has been on my mind for a long time. I’m not sure what drives it, unless it’s because Americans don’t think about other countries because they don’t have to. (And when forced into it, they don’t want to.) I’ve tried to teach my kids that there’s much more to the world than what we see, and that not everybody thinks or does things the way we do. But without concrete examples to show them it’s hard to get the point to stick.
I’m regularly reminded how much attention people in other countries pay to our politics. I’ve had people from Ireland and England ask me questions about people and events that I had no clue about until I looked them up. It’s a little bit embarrassing, frankly.
I’ve also been lectured by a Brit about how our method of electing a president separately from the legislature is ridiculous, because if they’re from different parties they’ll never cooperate. My defense at the time was that Britain’s unemployment rate was something like 12%, so “how’s that Prime Minister thing working out for you?”
Dave
D,
I hope this discovery is not new to you… the most common subject of American action movies (and sometimes other genres too) is how America single-handedly saves the world from all kinds of disasters. I thought ‘The Day after Tomorrow’ was fresh, in the sense that it depicted, for once, how America screwed us all, and the third world was the place where they escaped to :P
I think nowadays the US IS the center of the (Western) world, and that this was achieved precisely by convincing the rest of the world that it is. You hear it in so many movies, in so many speeches, you read it in so many books, for so many decades… you end up believing it. Especially when, besides culture (in the strict sense of the world) you find their electronics at the supermarket (they are made in China, but nobody cares), and their chain restaurants are cleaner and more efficient than ours.
“The heathens are outbreeding the Christians.”
This has been the case for about a decade now. Europe had very modern population control campaigns. As a result, they stopped having kids. Europe is now a continent of old people. At the same time, they had massive immigration, especially from the north of Africa, because of the hard social conditions there. These people DID reproduce, and in big numbers. Some countries, such as France, are having major cultural clashes within, because Islamic population is growing to almost the same amount as… whatever the French are (I don’t think they’re Catholic anymore). Some other countries, such as Belgium (as far as I know) have started incentive programs for people to have more babies ("if you breed, we’ll pay for your diapers", and things like that).
Maybe is the Catholic residue in me… but I’m glad attempts to implement the same birth control programs in Latin America are not as effective. I don’t want a country full of practical old people.
Mee.-
Hi Diana,
Because of the size of its population, the economics of TV and movie production work for the US and thus allow it to export a lot of its culture through entertainment media. The US networks rarely buy outside programming finding it too foreign. So, we Canadians know more about US politics than they do ours.
As an aside, X Men was shot in Vancouver. Our church had some goofy things in it for a week or two while it was being used as a location for the X Men movies. A Canadian city standing in for the US so the US can export their culture to the world. Hmm.
L.
Lorraine,
By all accounts, it’s just easier to film in & around Vancouver than anywhere south of the border. So if you’re not a co-conspirator, you’re at least an enabler. (grin)
Dave
It gets worse; my son wants to be an extra in those movies.
L.
Well, let’s see—–America is the world. I’m not sure I have ever even unconciously thought that way, but maybe I acted like it all along. I love to see movies, of course , that someone in my country comes out on top, but let’s face it: that is movie life, not real life. If America is the world, why do we buy cars here that are 95% Korean, Flags made in Japan, furniture made in China, and most of our labor–well, a sizable portion anyway, comes from Mexico? Our “American” vehicles have about 30%Canadian parts, while overseas manufacturers use virtually no American parts. Hmmmmmmmmm. Am I missing something? Even (GET THIS. This is important, more so than you may realize)our banks and businesses are now accepting the euro, as well as Mexican, Canadian, etc coinage. This is going on while other countries are beginning to reduce their dependence on the American dollar. They are choosing to use SOME OTHER CURRENCY to avoid using US funds for international business. For americans who are not awake, It is almost too late to wake up. “THE SUPERPOWER” is on a downward spiral, and will be suffering within years, if not months. Sorry, I just don’t buy into the concentric americanism idea. A view point held, I’m sure, by millions, but they have to be willingly ignorant to continue to be so.
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