Everybody Really Does Love Raymond
12/2/2004 5:19AM (4:19PM Addis Ababa)
I am somewhere over eastern Ethiopia or the Red Sea, on my way to Dubai. While this might seem somewhat unexpected it is just part of the "vacation". My aunt lives in the UAE and I have not seen her for three years. Being this close means that I have to visit, and in fact in the throes of my tummy trouble yesterday I took time to book myself a flight to the UAE for today. So here I am, on a plane, in a cramped seat which is made somewhat more comfortable by the fact that it is in the exit row. I can't take any credit for the exit row seat though, the PA did did the legwork. This lead me to further look at my previous post regarding being in the lap of luxury. The fact of the matter is that there are some perks to being my father's son, though they are not all measured in dollars and cents (or Birr for that matter). The exit seat is not what I meant, so much as the brief trip from the house to the airport. We drove past the usual parking lots, and off to a separate lot right by the entrance to the terminal where the car was saluted. We bypassed the lines at the counter, at the service desk, and at the outgoing passport control desk. I practically didn't have to talk to anyone as I made my way to the gate. It's an eerie thing, watching the protocol machine at work, knowing that our money doesn't power it, so much as the position my father has worked very hard to get to in his career. Sitting here in my cramped (yet spacious) seat, watching the Simpsons on the small screen in the middle of the aisle, I realize that things are pretty good for the Lo Fat Clan.
That brings up a second point: on the way here through London, and now on the way to Dubai, the in flight programming is all American. It's faintly concerning that I can watch Everybody Loves Raymond in the company of a planeful of Ethiopians, Kenyans and other Africans. Not that anything is wrong with Raymond, just that one would hope that there would be something better to watch out there. Unfortunately I am quickly reaching the conclusion that good television (yes, I know it's an oxymoron of sorts) is hard to come by. Most evenings, when I am not gadding about town with my old man, or visiting folks with my mother, we settle down to a bit of television before heading upstairs for some pre-bed reading.
Like all the expatriates in town, my folks watch satellite television. They tune in to ArabSat 2 or 3, I can't remember, so they get the satellite channels of the Arab world, from the polished international channels of Al Jazeera and MBC to the rough around the edges local broadcasts of Mauritania, Sudan and others. Watching these channels you get several impressions. Firstly there is the news, which has a different slant than the news you see in the states. The second impression, which stretches from the news to the talk shows to the commercials, is the Americanization of television programming all over the world. The anchors are young-ish women, some blonde, some not, usually of flanked by an older gentleman of the heavily coiffed variety. The talk shows discuss the unhappiness of rural types, with an overly-solicitous host gleaning embarrassing details of their travails, and troubles. Does any of this sound familiar yet? This shouldn't sound so surprising, since the format and details of television programming in the US are not happenstance or coincidence, but much studied (usually via focus group) for maximum consumer stimulation. The third, and also unsurprising thing, is that the quality of the programming is fairly poor - that is to say that the copies are not good copies. When you don't do the studies yourself, you don't know why they use the bright colors, or why the images have to move so fast, just that they do.
Those are the "modern" channels, which, as I said, appear to be just like American channels but in Arabic. The other channels are not quite like that. I will roll up the Sudan, Mauritania, Libya and others for the purposes of this discussion. It is actually unfair to even bring Libya into this, since they have some pretty well-made shows. Watching the news on the Sudanese satellite channel, or Mauritanian national television, is a painful thing. The real stories come from Al Jazeera, or CNN or BBC World. The local stories are poorly produced propaganda pieces. Now bear in mind that all news has some propaganda aspect, especially local news (those of you in Arizona can look to Fox 10 or ABC 15 for evidence), but there is a big difference in the subtlety of it all. Propaganda poorly done, shows a profound lack of respect for the viewer. We are all lied to, all the time, but when no care is taken to craft the lie properly it's just insulting.
The news is hardly the only bad bit of programming on Sudanese television. We watched a movie the other night, that had perhaps the worst acting I have ever seen in my life. Dead lifeless eyes, dialogue with no inflection at all, and overwrought scripting made for an absolutely ghastly experience, but like a train wreck there was no looking away. Instead I watched the whole thing with my parents, mystified that this was the best the Sudan had to offer. Would you choose this as the representation of your nation's artistic output? After all, there's always, Everybody Loves Raymond.