Asian InTelevasion

Let’s talk about television. One certainly can’t learn all there is to know about a culture just through watching their TV, of course. What would people think about Americans if that were true??? However, at the very least one can learn about what entertains this culture and about what degree of moral authority the government has (based on what’s not shown.) Even less than that, one can entertain oneself for countless hours based solely on the comedy of stark differences.

Where to begin? How about with the filler in between programs, the all important commercial. Commercials are a huge part of American pop culture. Be it “Got Milk?,” “Aflac,” “I have good news…I just saved a ton…,” or “I’m Lovin’ It,” advertising campaigns are drilled into our heads until they bleed into our comedy and everyday conversation. The same can be said for other cultures. The commercials are a segment of the jokes that young people make or the phrases they use. They’re also short and satisfying. Watching a barrage of commercials serves both to keep me interested in television that I don’t really understand and to give me a rapid fire glimpse of culture.

Unlike America, you might see one or two car commercials in an entire day. While there are plenty of cars on the road, I’m in an immediate family of six including significant others, and there is one car between all of them. They don’t even live in the same house! However many cars seen on the road has to be divided into the factor that this is a city of 10 million (Atlanta doesn’t even top 70 thousand). Understandably, this is not the market for car commercials. So what does this population do with the money they’re not spending on cars and gas? Electronics, one would assume. Now, in America there are also tons of electronics commercials. Digital cameras, flat screen TV’s, Dell laptops, PDA’s, and Mp3 players inundate our subconscious. In this the world’s #3 electronics producer, what electronics commercials supplant the plethora of car ads? The cell phone. There are virtually no other electronics commercials at all. It’s all cell phones. There are some of the hottest cell phones in the world here, cell phones with ball joint swivel screens that receive television broadcasts, cell phones the size of toothpick boxes, cell phones stuffed full of music, pictures, videos, and all controlled by remote.

The other variety of commercials prevalent are food commercials. Now, there are no TV dinners, and there are far too many restaurants for any one to advertise. There aren’t really any McDonald’s commercials on. What kind of food commercials are there? Mostly it’s ingredient brands. Brands of different sauces and bases, broths and spices. I will say that there are also snack food and beverage commercials. One of my most jarring moments was watching a Cheeto’s ad. At some point through the commercial the Cheeto’s Cheetah speaks…and it’s (what do ya know) in Korean! and the voice is totally wrong!! I was shaken out of half sleep and just stared in disbelief.

In the same vein as the food commercials there are the cooking shows. Now, in America the purpose of cooking shows is for Emeril or Rachel Ray to show us kitchen-retarded Americans how to prepare some fun new dish in thirty minutes or less, or to teach us technique, or to introduce a nifty blend of ingredients and cultural styles that produces some trendy culture clash dish (Mexican Pizza and East-meets-West kind of stuff). In Korea, however, every woman knows every recipe in Korean history. All of them know all of them. There is only a set repertoire. Nobody is blending anything or creating new dishes. So what use would a culture who knows how to cook have with a cooking show?

Well, let me give you a typical Korean cooking show rundown: An announcer gives you a quick 30 second run-down of the foods history, the origin of it’s ingredients, and the entire cooking process. The next five minutes is a compilation of showing the food on a spinning plate, interviewing people about the taste, and showing people eat the food. If you’ve already figured it out, good for you. For the rest of you: the sole purpose of Korean cooking shows is to watch people eat delicious and tantalizing food. To further solidify this analysis, allow me to present you with this next piece of evidence, classified as Exhibit A. There is a panel of host, usually somewhere between 5-8. This panel does not actually every eat food, but while the food is being paraded n front of the camera their faces appear in little bubbles in the corners of the screen. They then proceed to make faces indicating hunger, or “ooh, that looks good.” In addition, there is something in the way of a laugh track, but it’s an ooh-aah track. They don’t even attempt to disguise it as a studio audience. It’s almost completely on repeat. Every time a new ingredient is added or the food is eaten, the ooh’s and aah’s happen again.

I watched a cooking chow the other day, and they were conducting an in-depth report on one particular Japanese restaurant. This restaurant makes spaghetti, then it takes a large bowl full of said spaghetti to the top of a graded incline. Going down the middle of this incline are two small, bamboo waterslides about six inches in diameter. These waterslides are side by side, and on either side of these twin water slides are stools. This continues all the way down the incline, which is outdoors and covered but a pavilion of sorts. The stools are filled with children. The woman at the top of the incline with the spaghetti takes small, bite-sized, chopsticks-full of spaghetti and drops them into the water slide. Then the kids try to catch and eat the sliding spaghetti (with chop sticks, mind you) as it whooshes past in the current.

I’ve never seen so many music videos with stick fights in them. Hell, I’ve never seen so many stick fights. Not samurai swords, not nunchucks (sp?), but baseball bat sized sticks are apparently the weapon of Asian choice. They aren’t exactly featured in hardcore music videos either. It’s always the crying girly-boy pop, the Michael Boltonesque songs that have dozens of Asians beating each other with branches. Whose making these stick fighting sticks? Is there a store for them?

The news refuses to do advertising for anyone. All building logos, food brands, cell phones, brand labeled t-shirts, and car makes are blurred out. It also seems that they’re policy on identity is secret unless they give you permission. And most people don’t give permission. Consequently, since so many things on the news are blurred out, they have found several ways to keep it interesting. Sometimes it’s a blur, sometimes it’s pixilated, sometimes they throw a jacket over someone’s head. sometimes they just show you their feet, sometimes they Alvin and the Chipmunks the voices, and any combination of the five is possible. In addition, no one is given the option of closed caption for news programs. All news programs have a guy in a bubble in the bottom right hand corner signing everything in real time.

These are just some of the things that amuse me about Korean television. Anyone with Skype or who posts a comment may get free untold stories! If you hadn’t noticed yet, I’m desperate for two-way communication, so make it happen!!!