You're Not Hard Core Unless You Live Hard Core

I’ve seen every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  If that isn’t very impressive, I saw all of them many years before the advent of DVD.  That means that I watched nearly all of them when they first aired on network TV, and all the rest I had to catch during the rerun season.  (I saw every episode before the series was playing in syndication for six hours a day on Spike, G4, etc.)

Still, these days it doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment to have watched every episode of a show.  Because of DVD and the internet, even casual fans of a show can see it all.  If a 10 year old kid in the early 90s was hard-core by faithfully tuning in every week, the digital age has completely changed what it means to be hard-core.

This phenomenon is even more apparent as Laura and I have been working our way through Battlestar Galactica.  (Yes, I like Sci-fi and I guess that makes me a nerd.  I compensate by trying extra hard to be cool and by subsequently developing a complex.)  At this point, it’s basically a given that a fan will have seen every episode.  Real fans, I’m discovering by watching the BSG special features, go online and participate in online communities.  They go to conventions and have action figures.  Some of them even start marriages based on their love of the TV show. 

While science fiction TV probably has an unusually devoted fan base, the bar seems to have risen for what it means to be a fan of anything.  Other TV shows like The Office or American Idol have their own cadre of devoted fans, as do performers like Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Brothers.  In each case being a fan of these phenomena doesn’t mean simply putting up a poster or talking about the characters with your friends.  Instead, it means reading about them online, knowing back-stories (that were never a part of the show/public persona/etc), and finally immersing yourself in the culture of the show or performer.  Basically, fans today are more hard-core than ever before because they’re living within the culture of their obsession. 

The result of all this hyper-fandom is that people know a lot about the things they love and, more importantly, build their communities around those things.  One hundred years ago for example, if you loved the theater, you might go every once in a while but you’d still have to go home to friends, family, and neighbors who wouldn’t necessarily share your particular interests.  Today on the other hand you can go to a cultural event and then return to people who are connected to you because of that event.  In other words your friends, family, and neighbors are determined more by your interests today than ever before.  Battlestar Galactica or American Idol aren’t just shows, they're lifestyles.

Ultimately, the communities created by fans are places where people think long and hard about what culture means to them.  I wrote before about how TV and movies might be more important than reading, but I think that the real issue here is simply that the conveyances of culture are currently visual and digital, as opposed to literary or theatrical.  With that shift our society may have lost some things (a literacy in the art forms of the past, for example), but I also believe that we’ve gained a great deal as well.  I may have a harder time being a hard-core fan (it really requires so much more work), but I think it’s good that someone is picking apart the meaning of just about everything.   

Travel/Vacation

Why travel?

 

As I see it, people usually do one of two things: “take vacations” or “travel.”  While these two expressions are often used interchangeably, they actually imply very different kinds of activity.  First, the word “vacation” comes from the late Middle English/Old French word “vacare” which means to be unoccupied (so “vacation” shares roots with words like “vacate” and “vacancy”).  Of course, while we’re not speaking Middle English any more, “vacation” still preserves some of its original meaning; it implies an emptying out, not a filling up.

 

This meaning of the word is problematic for me in a couple of ways.  First, it focuses on the place of origin as opposed to the destination.  In that light, cultural immersion becomes difficult because activities are engaged in simply because they aren't at home.  Second, however, “vacationing” is essentially a negative phrase.  It emphasizes absence, and constantly reminds the vacationer that she or he exists in relationship to a lack of something.  Thus, even if the word connotes positively for most people, it still signifies emptiness.  Yet another problem with the phrase “taking a vacation” is that it reveals an underlying selfishness; you don’t “give” a vacation, or “learn” a vacation.  Instead, “taking” suggests personal gain without any particular responsibility.  

 

If “vacation” isn’t quite a satisfactory way to describe the trips we take, “travel” might be a better fit.  Surprisingly perhaps, “travel” actually comes to us through Middle English from the word “travail.”  Of course this root then implies hardship, toil, and work.  While most people would want to avoid these adjectives when describing their trips, they also facilitate a greater payoff.  If, for example, I “take” something, I get that thing.  On the other hand if I “toil” or “travail” for something, I've gain both the thing as well as the valuable experience I had while getting it.  In other words, travailing is harder than “taking” or “vacating,” but also provides more fulfilling experiences. 

 

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that all trips be grueling exercises in voluntourism.  That kind of trip has its place and probably accomplishes a lot of good, but even leisure trips have opportunities for rewarding travail.  Sometimes it'll be intellectual travail (visiting an art museum), linguistic travail (struggling through a foreign language), emotional travail (visiting a concentration camp or war memorial), etc.  The point is however, that on every trip a traveler can either challenge her/himself, or give up and take an easier path (like going on a cruise or sticking entirely with guided tours, etc.).  What’s more, in most cases trying to travail through new experience is going to provide insights into the culture that can’t be acquired any other way.  

 

Ultimately, “traveling” seems to convey a sense of toiling toward cultural immersion and personal enlightenment.  “Vacationing,” on the other hand, just means getting out of the house and snapping a few pictures to post on Facebook.  Though it’s unlikely that anyone will ever fall completely in one camp or the other, if the goal of a trip is anything more than momentary stimulation, I suggest we start talking about traveling more often than vacating. 

Foreign Movies/A Petting Zoo

A month or so ago at a party the movie Chocolat came up.  While some people at the party loved the movie, I was reminded during the conversation of the strange and damaging cinematic subgenre that Chocolat epitomizes, which subgenre is made up of films set in foreign places but produced entirely in English.

 

While Chocolat is a decent, if flawed, film when evaluated by things like acting, cinematography, or plot, it seems to ignore the basic fact that it’s set in France.   Sure, there are bits and pieces of French culture scattered about the film, yet the means though which culture is conveyed (i.e. language) is disregarded.  The movie seems to be arguing that “culture” is simply a veneer of clothing, food, etc. that can be detached from language.  This attitude is especially bizarre considering the film’s star, Juliette Binoche, is actually French and its leading man, Johnny Depp, lives in France. 

 

Another example of an English-speaking foreign film is Memoirs of a Geisha.  This film is particularly annoying because the characters all speak with accents.  Anyone who has become fluent in a second language should be able to attest that native speakers of a language don’t have foreign accents in their own language.  In other words, Japanese speakers don’t have a Japanese accent when they’re speaking Japanese; the accent is only evident when they are speaking another language.  In turn, there is no reason that English-language films should portray foreign speakers with accents.  After all, we (the audience) are supposed to be suspending our disbelief.  We’re supposed to accept the fact that though the characters are speaking English, they are actually speaking Japanese.  Yet, if that is the case, why does everyone have an accent?  In the end the filmmakers should have either cast A) native speakers and have them speaking Japanese or B) Japanese-Americans who could speak to an American audience without an accent.  As it is, the film takes a kind of “petting-zoo” approach to different cultures which gawks at the strangeness of others more than trying to understand them.  (Memoirs of a Geisha is particularly annoying because eventually the characters are suddenly able to communicate with English-speaking Americans, despite the fact that they were never shown learning English.  It’s a move reminiscent of the absurdity in Disney’s Pocahontas.)

 

A petting-zoo approach to different cultures is hardly an appropriate one.  It emphasizes difference and division, while ignoring the complexities and humanity of different people.  There may have been a time in American film when this was the only thing audiences were willing to accept .  However today, with the widespread availability of legitimate foreign films, as well as the globalizing influence of the internet, anyone could easily find a movie that is both about a foreign culture and made by that culture.   

 

Of course, it’s likely that these petting-zoo movies exist because they are more marketable than straightforward foreign language films.  Yet, while I accept the fact that filmmaking is a business, it also seems dangerous for filmmakers to pander to lazy audience members by glossing over language.  Anyone who has become multilingual should be able to attest to the fact that some things just can’t be translated.  If subtitles are an imperfect compromise, they at least represent an acknowledgement that language is important and that it’s impossible to really understand people without speaking to them in their own tongue.  If we aren’t willing to acknowledge that, let alone do it, maybe we shouldn’t be watching movies about other people anyway.