Foreign Pop Culture

Lemme explain what I am getting at with this thread.

I regularly buy dinner at a local Mexican taco joint. As well as having great Mexican food, the place goes light on cliched Mexican kitsch (i.e., sombreros, pictures of Acapulco), though this is probably because it's relatively small. Anyway, one of the restaurant's interesting features are the movie posters inserted in its plexiglas counter. The posters are of old Mexican films (I'm guessing late-Thirties to early-Sixties). There's one poster with Cantinflas, who was apparently a very famous film comedian in Mexico. Another poster is of a film with a child star (the Mexican Shirley Temple?) Yet another is a gangster film, starring some guy named Wolf Rubinski -- the really interesting thing about this poster are the paintings of the co-stars (colored in a very Grinch-y looking green, and they even look like the Grinch). There are also other movie posters from comedy films, a costume drama or two (Mexican Merchant and Ivory?), another detective film, etc.

What strikes me, and has motivated all this, is the real and interesting oddness of it. If one wants to learn about Mexican history or culture, there are probably tons of good books that talk about, say, the Aztecs or Pancho Villa or Frido Kahlo. But how many books are there (in English, anyway) about Cantinflas, cheapo Mexican films, Mexican pop-stars (Selena excepted, though she was really Mexican-American so perhaps she doesn't count in this discussion after all), or Mexican pop culture in general? It's all so odd, of course, simply because I'd not been exposed to it before.

I don't know if all this is making any sort of sense. I guess what I'm trying to get at is, one's reactions to the pop-culture of another, different country, to the kitsch and bric-a-brac of a different culture. Like walking into a Japanese department store or hearing Japanese pop (invitation to Momus!) Or an American (or Canadian, so that means you Dave Q.) coming to the UK and watching some run-of-the-mill BBC sitcom (not "Monty Python" or "Father Ted"). Or a non-American coming to the US and, say, tuning into one of the zillion Clear Channel stations.

Then there are visions like the Elvis Mexican restaurant here in OC. And it's great, I should note.

Just discovered and read the "Y Tu Mama Tambien" thread. Which I think that I'd like to see. And which is pretty close to what I'm getting at here.

"I am your chocolate: I am your Russin mate."

I think that the Mormons' encounter with Hanle y would fall under this thread's topic ...

Funny moment from my Mormon experience. When I first walk in the door Nun " Are you here for a tour?(which I hear as a 'trinity') me " whats a trinity? Nun " the father son and holy spirit. me " what?

I think, if you don't stir out of one country for a while, there's a tendency to regard its pop culture as natural, inevitable, just, universal. F'rinstance, living in Britain in the 90s you could be forgiven for thinking that Chris Evans was very very famous all over the world. Then you travel and realise that every country has its own local mega- celebrities who mean nothing once you get out of the range of the local TV tower. Each one presents a meld of global pop culture and local peculiarties. The global is subtly re-represented to fit the local tastes.

So, Madonna appears in Mediterranean countries as an inverted Catholic icon, and in Britain as a media magnate uberceleb, and in Japan as... well, to be honest I haven't seen a single image of Madonna here, so she's probably remembered as a cute 80s girl's girl who wears a lot of bangles.

And in Britain Madonna will be appearing alongside our more domestic star, Kylie, whereas in Japan she'd be appearing alongside Morning Musume or something. So the whole flavour and context would change.

Japan is a special case, because more of the pop culture here is totally homegrown. The music charts are dominated (I think 70% to 30%) by domestic artists. So whereas many countries (perhaps Mexico) would have their domestic culture as old local culture and their global culture as new American culture, Japan has *new* local pop culture which even manages (karaoke, Pokemon) to be global when it's exported. It also has new purely local pop culture: the insane blipping clatter of pachinko parlors, or the color screen internet services (games, porn) everyone is tapping into as they walk down the street or ride trains totally fixated on their iModes.

the metro now goes to sunderland

Japan I think was in a terrific position to develop a unique pop culture because it was very very prosperous at a time when pop culture was important and money-making but the US hadn't yet aspired to the kind of monopoly-status it now does. Also it was a capitalist democracy, the condition under which "pop culture" as we know it (maybe as opposed to "folk culture", I don't know) seems to thrive best.

The example of foreign popcult currently fascinating me and Andrew Lloyd Webber is Indian film music, which is recognisably doing the same sort of thing as 'pop' does here but has completely different conventions and tactics when it comes to getting to the catchy-song endpoint.

I disagree actually with Momus when he says that you get an inflated sense of your own country's importance when you don't leave it - rather you get an inflated sense of the US' importance, you tend to think that what has been imported to you must be huge and inescapable everywhere. Chris Evans isn't big in Japan? Tell me something I don't know. Madonna isn't big in Japan? Wow, that's interesting.

(This doesn't apply if you live in the US, obv.)

i was in India at the time Apache Indian was there - it was amazing

Actually, I can dig Tom's point about the magnification of US culture outside the US. One of the surprising things about living in the US is that it doesn't feel like Leicester Square, for example: Starbucks and Tom Hanks. Where I lived in Manhattan felt like Shanghai. Not a Starbucks in sight.

You also think the US is incredibly violent when you watch US movies and TV, then when you move there you find it's safe and amazingly polite.

I think misunderstandings like these were one of the triggers of 9/11. Bin Laden and others, raised on US popular culture and determined to respond in kind, delivered the kind of fireballs and sensational macho moralism they'd seen in American films. The people they hit, though, were Bengalis, Swedes, Indonesians, Chinese, Irish, Polish, the whole gamut of global people who comprise the average New York street. But not the average American movie.

i once did a story in morocco (about a proposed marrakesh annual pop festival which in the event never materailised): there were half a dozen brit journalists — our guide was a very well-known (in morocco) actor, i guess in his mid-40s. He was well-known in Morocco because he had MADE IT IN HOLLYWOOD!! What this actually meant was that he had been the lead villain in Friedkin's remake of The Wages of Fear (s/t Tangerine Dream), which was a big worldwide hit in the late 70s, and on the strength of this had got a lot of work. After the third swarthy terrorist-thug-minion, he began to sense a pattern: after the 15th he got bored and went home, where of course he could command vast fees and pick and choose his roles: judge, poet, bee-keeper, hero whatever. Naturally he was a charming, funny, highly intelligent and cosmopolitan man.

The High Prince of this gulf is Omar Sharif, a bit of a camp joke in the West, a (deserved) high-arts legend in Egypt, where he was discovered as a young man by Chahine, the grandfather of Egyptian art film, and (some argue) a more interesting and significant director than [well, insert appropriate better-known name here].

(ps i like momus's 9-11 and the movies idea)

Saw an Austrian movie about the Trapp family, made about five years before "The Sound of Music" -- set design, costumes, dialogue, camera positions, nearly EVERYTHING in TSOM was ripped off entirely from this movie -- except the last scene, where the evil American burocrat (played by an Austrian with a very goofy accent) in Ellis Island refuses to admit the Trapps into the US until he is moved by their loevly singing.

Japan is a special case, because more of the pop culture here is totally homegrown.
And if they try to copy American Culture, they want the products to be made locally. It's really funny in a way. Looks american (down to the dark skin and dreadlocks) but somehow they want to remain Japanese.

I dont think there is any country where the biggest part of pop culture is imported from the US or the UK, i say that theres a lot but not most of it.

I downloaded a Puffy song (the J-Pop band), it was pretty cool!

Bin Laden and others, raised on US popular culture and determined to respond in kind, delivered the kind of fireballs and sensational macho moralism they'd seen in American films.

Islamic fundementalist hard-liners learned macho moralism from American films?

The fireballs they were imitating were inspired by ones they'd only seen in the movies?

This is like arguing that porn creates rapists.

Answer to mark s. quiz: "Sorcerer"!

Actually, Tad, there are vocal American devotees of some kinds of Mexican pop cinema, the most obvious example being the Mexican Wrestling Film ("El Santo will save us!"). I also suspect that you bump into more Anglo fans of Mexican Pop Music the closer to the border you get...though now that I think on it some, there have been some mild rumblings in the media about 'Rock En Espanol' in the last few years. Chuck Eddy's a big fan, too.

It's as good a time as any to address this issue that's been bugging me for a while. I think it's safe to say that in 2002, your typical member of the rock intelligentsia knows quite well that at least since the sixties, absolutely amazing things were happening in many places not part of the continuum of over-familiar nations (USA/Canada/UK/Ireland/Australia). Yet where was the Western rock intelligentsia in all this when this stuff was going down? When not treated with silence, anything I can remember written circa 60's/70's about pop from other lands was, at best, mildly contemptuous -- you know, anything these other countries might come up with would probably just be shoddy imitations of the Real Thing by lame copyists in Beatle wigs.

[OK, I know that's not strictly true. Germany and Jamaica got hispter coverage back in the '70's and there were plenty of other isolated counter-examples, like "Je T'aime" and ABBA. This is all probably much more true in the UK than America. We don't have anything remotely like the Eurovision Song Contest, after all.]

Am I being myopic here? Was there serious consideration of, say, Japan, Brazil or West Africa by Rolling Stone, Creem or the NME from the late sixties/early seventies that I just don't know about? Or are my suspicions of cultural pariochalism by the early Western rock media right, and if so, why has this changed? (You could argue it really *hasn't,* if you'd like.)

I don't think Western pop media is particularly clued-up now, either. But certainly there's no excuse for the 60s/70s attitudes, when the innovations abroad were taking place on their core specialist subject, i.e. rock music.

Islamic fundementalist hard-liners learned macho moralism from American films? The fireballs they were imitating were inspired by ones they'd only seen in the movies? This is like arguing that porn creates rapists.

Not exactly what I meant. I meant they decided to respond in kind. This was, in their view, 'the only language the Americans will understand'.

I was in a Japanese video store last night (here they call them 'culture convenience clubs') where they have sections for movies from all over the world. You don't even have to look at the country title, you can tell the American section because there's a man holding a gun on the cover of about half the DVDs. This is not the case with Japanese, Chinese, Brazilian, French, Italian films (although it is the case with British movies directed by wannabe Americans like Guy Ritchie). You also don't see people with guns on American streets. (I never did, anyway.) If it's not guns, it's explosions and sheets of fire (usually a backdrop to the main characters on the cover, or a scene on the back). Hollywood employs many, many pyrotechnicians.

So, in the porn and rapists parallel, this is more like saying a person who wanted to communicate with a compulsive pornoholic (with globally broadcast Turette's syndrome) might feel the need to talk dirty, or even get his dick out. just to get the guy's attention.

...And where my argument dovetails with Tom's is in my belief that this is a tragic misunderstanding of the lingua franca of US life, which is not about violence but about trade.

(not to interrupt momus's point, which is good, but GEOFF *SO* TO THREAD!!)

Hmm, maybe I need to clarify my position here. My point about terrorists:

A. American public misrepresented by

B. American media leads to

C. Violence against A by those who see A's unwillingness to give their attention to anything but B.

The feminist 'porn is the theory, rape the practise' argument would say:

A. American women misrepresented by

B. American porn industry leads to

C. Violation of A by those led to think about A in the manner portrayed in B.

The rapist, in the feminist theory, thinks that women in real life are like women in porn. He can't make the distinction. He is the one duped, his view of reality distorted by media. He is too foolish to keep life and media apart. He comes crashing into real life with the mindset of a porn movie.

The terrorist refuses to keep life and media apart because whatever he does in real life, it's the pictures on TV that he is really after. They are the source of his power. He may know that life is not like that, but what interests him is not life, it's media. People's perceptions, and particularly the areas of 'fear' and 'the mythical'.

So the terrorist crashes into media using life (or, rather, death) as a kind of vaulting pole. He would argue that, unlike the rapist, he is not the one who has been duped. He is speaking to a duped general public in the language of their duping media.

So scratch my point about the 'tragic misunderstanding'. Maybe the terrorist

1. Understands very well the difference between media and life.

2. Doesn't care.

Of course, many rapists may feel exactly the same way. But that's not what the feminists were saying. They were saying that the rapist needed porn to change his behaviour in life. Porn was the root cause of rape. therefore porn must go. For the terrorist, media violence is not the root cause of their violation of life, merely a useful vehicle to the attention they crave.

(I.e., terrorism is an attempt at Spectacle and Drama, thus we should be entirely unsurprised when it mirrors the dominant forms of Spectacle and Drama in international entertainment? Put thusly, I'd say that's entirely on the money.)

So if Momus records were the dominant global media form, we'd get terrorists releasing tapes to Al Jazeera of themselves doing ironic vaudeville dances to the sound of Moogs. Perhaps.

b-but if momus were the dominant blah blah, then the terrorists would have won!!

(also surely there'd be'd no need for war or hate or cars)