Globalization and its Disorients

I spend a lot of time confused lately, and that's because I grew up in one culture, and I am now a visitor in a very different culture, so there's a constant disconnect between reality and my expectations. At least, that's the simple explanation, and it's true, but it's only part of the reason. It's easy to think of cultures as these distinct and monolithic entities that stand in some kind of contrast to one another, but at the same time, cultures also kind of smoosh up against each other and features are constantly leaking form one into another, being imported and filtered, repackaged and repurposed, mixed up and made weird. And a lot of the really jarring moments arise more from the strangeness of those combinations than just from the relative difference between one way of life and another.

Now, I don't get a lot of opportunities to watch Ghanaian TV, but when I get them I take full advantage. In my first ten days in the country, I had a TV in my hotel room in Accra and I got completely drawn in by the African soap operas. My very favorite is a period drama called Pendulum. Oh, how I love Pendulum. The theme song, which plays (in its entirety!) during every break between scenes, informs the audience that the show takes place 'before the intervention of the white man,' when 'our forefathers had the solutions to their problems.' The idea, I guess, is to give Africans a greater sense of pride in their heritage and encourage them to look for the wisdom in their own traditions and values. Which is admirable.

Admirable, but not good television.

Based on what I saw of the show, what I suspect happened is that TV executives realized pretty quickly that nobody wants to watch a soap opera about people who already have the solutions to their problems. So, directly counter to its stated purpose, Pendulum seems instead to focus on sensationalistic plotlines about the backwardness of traditional society. Where Western soaps might feature an evil twin or a faked death, Pendulum will have a girlfriend who can no longer stay with her boyfriend after she is told that his father buried her father alive. Now that's good television.

'What!' shouts the boyfriend. 'I must find out if this is true.'

'Yes. I must find out. If this is true.'

He says this in English, though, which makes practical sense because it's the lingua franca, but it also kind of detracts from the believability of the premise. It doesn't help that the production values are shoddy; looking at low-quality digital video and trying to forget that there's a camera on the set is like looking through a dirty window and trying not to notice the glass. So instead of immersing yourself in some imagined faraway past, you become extra aware that these people are actors wearing silly costumes sitting in mock-traditional huts and speaking a European language. Which is a fantastically odd thing to be able to watch on TV.

Of course, they also broadcast a lot of American movies, and it is from a late night showing of Snakes on a Plane that I pick up another surprising feature of Ghanaian television, which is that it's ok to show topless women but it's not okay to show somebody taking the Lord's name in vain. In the US, I've occasionally seen edited-for-TV movies that will throw a bleep into '*** damn it' but here you apparently can't even say 'Oh my ***.' Presumably you're allowed to type it on the internet, but I'll use the asterisks just to be on the safe side.

That a society could be so uptight about sacrilege but so blase about nudity seemed totally inconsistent to me until I got out to the countryside. I need to start by clarifying that my little corner of Africa does not look very much like a National Geographic special. People live in brick houses, they talk on cellphones, they drive cars, and they wear jeans. For the most part. But occasionally, you will see somebody in traditional dress, and you know, it's a hot climate so you get people in their traditional clothing and odds are you're gonna see a boob or two (in my experience, usually two). Of course, young people tend to be more Westernized, so usually the ones who go around topless are elderly women who, one gathers, have spent all their lives happily un-brassiered.

Now, of course I am a sophisticated and culturally sensitive traveler who is well aware that body taboos are arbitrary and the appropriateness of clothing can only be evaluated within its own context and anyway I'm a guest here so there's no excuse for being judgmental. Having said all that, I will also say this: yucky.

But every once in a while you do see a younger woman dressed in this way, especially those that belong to certain religious groups that have ceremonial clothing standards. While I am meeting with someone at the Municipal Health Directorate to discuss a patient survey I've been working on, one such woman comes into the office. I step aside and the two of them converse for a while in Ewe. Which incidentally is pronounced Eh-vey and has nothing to do with sheep.

Ghana is a former British colony, so conversations in Ewe sound a lot like dialogue in a Bollywood movie, where English words and phrases are thrown in here and there, so usually I can understand just the barest gist of what's going on. In this case, what I hear is 'Zzzz zzzzz zz zzz zzzz family planning zzz zz zzzzz zz Norplant zzzz.' Because this woman, on whom shoes would have looked weird and anachronistic, has been enjoying the fruits of modern contraceptive science for several years and is now coming in to have her implant removed. And it is at about this point that I start to wonder if anything will ever surprise me again after this summer.

On my way out I pass through reception, where a radio is playing country music. A singer with a Western drawl is going on about homesickness.

Thank God for the radio
When I'm on the road
When I'm far away from home
Feelin' blue

Good one, universe. But it's maybe a bit contrived, don't you think?