>>I'm not sure I met any of them, but that may only mean they're so confused they don't let themselves be heard. Those who know everything there is to know and are so adamantly sure of it (as you mention below) are loud enough to create the illusion that this confused group exists.
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>>>but then there are a lot of folks who could care less about foreign film and only care about foreign news if it affects them here at home.
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>>And no it is not just film and news, it is... the rest of the world have their own literature, poetry, theatre, operas, novels, cheap TV, good TV, jokes, comic books (actually, Belgians are the world masters of comics, but does anyone here know that?), all kinds of music, festivals about any of these, they have local radio, they have public radio which doesn't spend four weeks a year panhandling, there are even things unimaginable here - seeing a whole rock concert on TV, seeing a whole theatrical premiere live (no ads!), whole series of interviews with interesting ordinary people, seeing movies in other languages on public TV... and if anyone expects these things to happen anywhere because there'd be a demand for them - how can anyone have a demand for things nobody ever saw? Except that one percent or less?
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>>Example: Pippi Longstocking. How many here remember which country was it from? How many have seen any other version of it but the American (feature or cartoon)? How many other versions were there?
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>>Or, put these guys into their arts: Raymond Macherot, Andrzej Wajda, Zbigniew Cibulsky, Holger Czukay, Magnus & Bunker, György Lukács, Danilo Kiš, Agnieszka Holland, Lucio Battisti, Mikis Theodorakis.
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>If you actually watched tv once in a while you would know that we do indeed have entire concerts without commercials,
Not counting Andre Rieu?
> plays from start to finish without interruption (except for intermissions), and yes, we know Holger Czukay (mostly because of the Eurythmics), lAndrzej Wajda got an oscar a few years ago,
And of course everyone knew about him for decades before. I wasn't saying this off the top of my head. I have read the whole repertoire of the local movies, in Charlottesville first, then here, several times a year, first just to see what's showing, then out of curiosity, and did that for a few years. If foreign films are run, they hide them really well and take the effort to know in advance when I'll be looking. There was generally one or two foreign movies (not counting UK) a year. There was even a movie festival, where they'd show interesting movies in club atmosphere, but that's one-off, not a movie which runs for days and gets advertised in advance.
> and let's be fair about Raymond Macherot, only collectors care about his stuff,
OK, just a name I remembered from childhood. How many here can say they grew on the Belgian/French school of comics?
>Lucio Battisti -- really he is famous.
Good. Because I don't remember hearing his name mentioned at all.
>Dragan, your post is really insulting to say the least.
Get used to it. I've heard worse things about my country based on even smaller sample...
>Where are you getting your opinions from when you don't watch tv, you don't own cable,
Nobody owns cable but the cable company :). But we do subscribe, basic. Had even digital for a while, and then realized I'm actually renting the box and paying some subscription for the right to see the same pre-paid (by advertising) channels in the three-digit range, and the ads for channels I could watch if I paid yet once more. The ads didn't look attractive at all - they ran too fast to show anything, and consisted mostly of sports, which are fine as a human activity but I see no point in watching others do it.
Watching cable to get one's opinions would sound no better than going to the local HQ of The Party to get one's opinion, but I assume you meant what do I base my opinions on, on what sample. Well, it may be a good time to resample.
> you don't own satellite,
Sorry, the orbits were sold out :).
do you even visit the local library?
Actually visited it a lot, and then got the silly idea that I should buy books again - and still haven't finished reading the last batch.
> If you hole yourself up inside your house with nothing but the internet, you're not seeing America.
True, I am not. It's impossible anyway. Whenever there's a question like "how do you ... in the US", the answer is "it depends on where in the US" and then there's usually a list of states where it's taxable, where it's unregulated, and where it's illegal. Take car inspection - annual here, never in FL or WA, and in California they even measure the exhaust.
So I'm getting my sampling only, just as I was getting one at home or in Hungary, not meeting too many people other than those on the job and immediate neighbors. Here, true, I don't see much of my neighbors as they are, mostly having relatives in the neighborhood and keep visiting each other.
Though, based on the people we got to know through our kids - their friends and boyfriends - there are knowledgeable and intellectually curious people, but then our daughters have their own criteria and I'm not at all sure this is representative.
> Try getting to know some educated Americans maybe and find out what they enjoy.
The best thing I've found so far is the following xkcd has. I only wish I could wait until the nerds fight back and win.
>You're seeing this country through your tunnel vision of it. It's time to get out there in the world and see what the heck is going on in this country outside of your house and what is within a bike ride! :o) Do you know any Americans with a degree or a college education?
Yep... while I worked in that failed dot-com. I'm sure some of the guys must have had diplomas. The four guys on the top surely did, but only one of them had the width (and had the appropriately quick sense of humor). Of the other three, I had more contact with one who was my immediate boss, and he just sidestepped anything that was above sitcom level - and he's an engineer.
>Or anyone at all who doesn't represent your vision of a stereotype? I'm really surprised sometimes at your vision of this country because I have travelled almost the entire country and lived many places here and some of your statements are more stereotyping than what Walter posts!
Stereotyping is a free public service :).
Actually I had a wrong stereotype in my mind before coming here, based on the thousand movies and TV pieces we saw over the decades (we watched a lot of it, from "Naked city", "Peyton place", "Untouchables", "Lost in space", "Long hot summer" etc), and I had this illusion of this being the same country which had its 1968, rock'n'roll etc, and that the generation who did that would be in power, that I'd be replacing the somewhat rigid attitude (at times quite rigid, but not as bad as in the former bloc countries) with a far more relaxed, less formal, at least equally egalitarian and tolerant as the one at home (well, it was egalitarian and tolerant in socialism, no more so). I just had to junk that stereotype and build an image from scratch, based on my encounters with reality here. "It ain't like movies at all" (Branimir Džoni Štulic).
>I just remembered that you once stated you only watched PBS (didn't you? or am I remembering wrong?)
During the summer, yes, because the CBS and NBC are re-running their cops series from the last season, which I still remember so there's no point of watching again. If they'd only re-run something that was on 4-5 years ago, then maybe. And, ah, BTW, we gave them about three years of attempts to watch local news at 23:00, but these have about 15% of content, the rest is advertising, sports, self-advertising, overblowing anything about crime, fires and traffic accidents, and also anything that relates to dogs and cats, but pretty much zero news about ecological concerns (the bay is dying, the air is purple when you look at it from above - with all the jets taking off the airports), and for all the time we actually never got any details about what's the light rail project supposed to be, where would the line go, when local businesses close because they are pushed out by the chains etc. Also, flipping the channels between the two showed that they're one big happy family, meeting at the same places and same events... I just can't believe there's nothing else newsworthy happening in such a big area that three stations (there's also a local ABC crew) just have nothing else and must show the same news, only slightly differing in the order. So we just gave up and only watch it when it's ad-free, i.e. during tornado or hurricane alerts.
>and yet you didn't know PBS has news programs?
If you mean Lehrer, "this news show offers analysis of current events with a news summary, live studio interviews, discussions, and both foreign and domestic onsite reports." - it's advertised as a show, a comment, i.e. a talkie, not news as such. Besides, if it were news, it would go live, at 18:00 on one, then at 19:00 at the other PBS. BBC is a nice sample of how news can be broadcast, but they aren't representative of the rest of the world.
>Blockbuster is probably the most popular movie rental place (other than netflix), and look here:
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http://www.blockbuster.com/browse/movieGenres/foreign/polishActually, Blockbuster and Hollywood video were my first disappointments. The shelf with the rest of the world was full of old, worn out tapes (this was when we had a DVD too early, before they switched, so we saw all they had on discs in a couple of months), so yes, the people were watching it... for as much as there was. The shelf was about 2-3' wide, five rows, two sided, and it wasn't really full, so I'd guess there was maybe 150 titles. And you know how big those stores can be. Just the horror shelf was about two to three times larger.
>Look at the lower right hand side for more options. It's available and people do indeed watch foreign films...
Glad to be wrong. So, who's making the big money running these movies through the distribution network? Or, you being the master of web searches, can you find the percentage of domestic vs foreign contents in the movies and/or TV across countries? Just to see whose market is the most open.
