Back in the 80s Berlin was anything but Germany. That's West and each of the different sectors of the East :o)


>>Have you been to Berlin? I haven't in years, but in the mid 80s I was absolutely astounded at what was popular in tv, dress and music... :o)
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>Never been to Germany. Just seemed it would be too much like Cleveland.
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>( When Clemenceau was demanding extremely harsh terms at the Versailles conference after WWI Wilson or somebody asked 'But Msr. Clemenceau - have you ever *been* to Germany?' 'No, Msr, but twice in my lifetime les Boches have been to France' )
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>>>>>>Only occasionally I have watched (and will watch) the Dutch version. The decision making process is not interesting at all, of course. But it can be interesting to watch some of the behaviors. The Dutch host has another style than the American one and the audience is not (or less) 'childish' and 'greedy'.
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>>>>>>In the Netherlands it is almost impossible to gather the type of audience that I saw in that show. It must be an American thing, notwithstanding the probable fact that not all Americans are like that.
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>>>>>>So, my question to you is: Do you continue to criticize me for watching this type of tv, or are you going to reflect on my perception that some or many (you tell me) Americans are childish.
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>>>>>Obviously I was wrong. You really are that stupid.
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>>>>>This is like saying :
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>>>>>"Ah, yes, we have a Dutch version of the Jerry Springer show as well, but when *our* Lesbian midget cannibals fight with the transvestite Nazi satan worshippers the audience conducts itself with *so* much more class than the nasty American audiences who really don't see the nuance and post-modern irony the way we do."
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>>>>>If you really don't get it, then I think we have indeed settled on a definition for 'twit'.
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>>>>Mike Yearwood has asked for a ban because I used the word 'stupid'. Don't worry, I'm not like Mike. I don't even bother much you use the word 'twit'. It's all in the game I guess. And both words pass the checker, obviously.
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>>>>But what bothers me is that you don't get the picture. All I wanted was a chat about the behavior of that audience. I provoked, in order to get some attention. The behavior of that audience was astonishing to me. It is impossible (so far) to have such an audience in my country. What is it in your country that it actually is possible and happening???
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>>>>Pity you don't want to chat about that issue.
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>>>I'm obviously not a defender of Deal or No Deal - or the audience - either in the studio or at home. I do know that some of the worst of our culture seems to be embraced wholeheartedly in Europe. And brace yourself, we have some stuff showing on TV here that makes Deal or no Deal look like Masterpiece Theater.
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>>>I accepted a long time ago that there has always been a huge market for entertainment that requires nothing of audience other than some kind of lizard brain reaction to themes of greed, adrenaline, fear, lust, melancholy or whatever. As I said in another message we all respond to this stuff on some level and have our weaknesses when it comes to low-brow culture. Some people are very good at making money from appealing to that.
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>>>The French like Jerry Lewis and MacDonalds. Europeans who had the good sense to embrace jazz when a lot of Americans didn't get it yet have now taken to hip hop and gangsta culture seems to have caught on everywhere. I would prefer none of that existed - at home or abroad - but I think it says more about the size and diversity of our culture. I know a lot of our worst movies - some that don't even play in theaters her and go straight to DVD are big hits abroad and in fact the producers depend on foreign revenues to pay for them.
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>>>'Game shows' and 'reality shows' have always been very cheap to produce and pretty reliably generate a lot of money. I would personally rather stick needles in my eyes than watch most of it. ( but I have my favorites as well )
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>>>Do we have a lot of low class idiots? Hey, it's a *big* country so there are probably more American idiots than Dutch idiots. ( "We're Number ONE!" )
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>>>You don't think they could get that kind of Dutch audience becuase no one who knows how has bothered to try. But I assure you, if the Dutch market were large enough that anyone cared to do it, it would not be hard to find enough people to fill a studio audience or a contestant list for pretty much anything. I bet it wasn't hard to find grunge or punk or hiphop clubs in Amsterdam over the years.
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>>>Now go pick on the French for a while. I think they invented mimes and should certainly be punished for that <s>
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>>>And the Germans do geriatric scatological porn and think David Hasselhoff is a genius, the Japanese are truly 'childish' in their popular cultural tastes and the Brits gave us Benny Hill and Sid Vicious.
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>>>And I apologize for hip hop.