How real is the world we see? I mean how much of it have we really experienced and how much have we experienced only via television or cinema? When I was a child the sight of Spider-man swinging past the Statue of Liberty was not incongruous. At ten years old New York City was just as fantastical as a man with the proportionate powers of a spider. I realised this a couple of years later when an Alan Moore story had Captain Britain fly past Big Ben. There was a thrill at seeing the fantastical juxtaposed with somewhere that I had actually been to.
I am not the biggest traveller – but then even if one travels to the USA how well can one know it? It is a traveller’s experience, not the experience of living there. It is the USA that is so important in the post 1990 world, not just because of its geopolitical power, but also its almost monolithic power over cinema and television.
Most entertainment requires some form of disbelief suspension. Indian cinema means you have to accept that people will burst into song occasionally. Watching Midsomer Murders means that you have to believe that all those murders happen in that small area.
When a series is set abroad how does one know what is fantastical and what is real? In Bones there is a murder each week where the corpse is decayed badly, or just a skeleton. How many of those really happen in the USA each year? And does the FBI really let an anthropologist partner one of their leading field agents. I doubt both but I do not know. At least in iZombie there is a reason for all the murders, a zombie outbreak, of course then you have to suspend a disbelief in zombies. It says something about me that I find that easier than the issues in Bones.
In Britain there is a thoroughly distorted view of the USA. Prom nights and Halloween have invaded UK youth culture. Yet a huge number of American High School dramas were filmed in the same school on the West Coast (Buffy, Bring It On, Clueless all those late 90s films with Freddie Prinze junior). Usually they are full of rich, white students who have nice cars and plenty of money – like Beverley Hills 90210. Yet the problem presumably exists in reverse – all the USA knows about foreign countries are the distorted (and limited) experience they get from the media.
In middle school our library had a wonderful series of books about other countries. Tailored to tweens (not that the term existed then) it covered what school was like, what TV was popular, how their political systems worked, etc. Understanding other countries should be part of the curriculum at school. It might help stop some of the xenophobia that is growing in this country.
America is a deeply divided country between Republicans and Democrats. People usually refer to red or blue states. A former colleague of mine, Charles Bond, pointed out that this was actually a vast oversimplification. America is split between urban and rural. When you look at voting patterns the Democrats win urban areas, even in red states and the Republicans win rural ones in blue states. It is the proportion of rural and urban that gives the result. From Britain how well do most people really understand the USA?
(Charles is a fascinating man who knows the result of each constituency in General Elections going back years. He also has the weird distinction of his father being born in the 19th century, he was born in the 20th century and his sone was born in the 21st).
Of course the reverse holds true. The USA is notoriously introspective – how many people in the USA still think Central America means Kansas? There are a huge number of Americans who have never gone abroad. Who think Socialism and Communism are the same thing. Their huge entertainment industry means that they have never been subject to that foreign cultural influence that Britain, or other countries, has been.
Yet there is hope. Netflix. Netflix buys up series from countries all over the world and subtitles them (a lot of people hate subtitles, but no one is going to bother subtitling crap, so you are likely to get something good). Series like Crash Landing on You or Money Heist are now on the streaming platform, providing a subverting influence. Now they may not be realistic views of South Korea or Spain, but they are views beyond CSI: whatever city and Law and Order. Maybe the USA will start showing empathy for other countries, well maybe when the Democrats are in charge
24 Hours From Tulsa
Five Miles Out 