Fuck Your Agenda

 Since joining the 21st century and getting Netflix and all those other WTF channels and stations and shit, we have been watching us some international television, and it's very very interesting stuff. Here's what I mean.  

Take a show made in Mexico, by a Mexican film crew, about Mexican people.  It is not gonna look like an episode of "No Boundaries".  Gritty urban poor?  None to be seen, or seen in context.  And that goes for all the countries.  A show shot in Malaysia by a Malaysian film crew is not going to take place exclusively among the rural poor.  I mean yes, it depends of the subject of course, but say the story is about Malaysian dogs.  Malaysian film crew gives you a show about Malaysian dogs.  American film crew is headed straight for the shittiest part of town to give you a story about dogs.  You will not see one supermarket, one sedan, one modest little house.  Nope, they're going to trek into the back of the backwoods where everyone is using old tin oilcans from WWII to cook with and shoot their dog film.

My travel experience is limited. Canada, Idaho (which counts as a foreign country; Idaho is some trippy shit) Oregon, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Regular Foreign Mexico.  Yes, I like the West Coast.  We got everything here and everyone speaks the same language.  But you watch television, and if it's a travel show made by an American crew, you got your Gritty Urban Poor all over hell.  And this really bugs me.  It truly does.  You leave it up to an American film crew, every non-English-speaking country in the fuckin' world is nothing but people squatting on the dirt wearing a sarong while naked little kids toddle around among the chickens.

There is some kind of fucked-up agenda going on that seems to say "a country where English is not spoken is not foreign enough if everyone is happy and prosperous.'  So let's head to Skid Row and get down to the REAL SHIT. Because the 'real' country is the poorest and most backward part of the country.  Any country."

I have been homeless, I have been poor, I have been reliant on public assistance.  It was a whole goddamn boatload of SUCK ASS.  At no time did I feel like I was having a jolly time, or involved in a wonderful adventure full of color and vibrance and charming rascals and astounding street food. No. There were straight-up cannibals living up underneath those twelve bridges that cross the Willamette, up in the dug-outs and the blackberry bushes.  Cannibals.  Can. I. Bals.  You died up under there with the cars going overhead, you cut your taste wrong, you had no family?  You got ATE. 

You got ate.  

That shit was real and it happened.  It's probably still happening.  

Now send a crew of man-buns and kitty-cat glasses out with some cameras to make a film about Portland, Oregon and see what they come back with.  Sure ain't gonna be about cannibalism under bridges.

It's so 'Petit Trianon'!  It's revolting! And American film crews are by far and away the very worst offenders on this scene.  Greece?  It's all  po' folk in stone taverns full of hairy sweaty old guys who really do not want you to be there.  Vietnam? Show those tiny crowded alleys with the jacked up wiring all hanging from the lamp posts.  India? Head straight for the Ganges and show folks attending to their dead and that one guy with the strange white eyeball who is in every single show about India ever shot by an American film crew.

It has more than a touch of 'Plantation hijinks' about it.  "Oh, Christmas!  Let's get Miranda and Ashley and ride down the cabin row to hear the cheerful n****** sing carols!"  "Oh Malaysia! Nothing happens in Malaysia whatsoever except Thaipusam, right?  So lets exploit their spiritual practices for the amusement of our viewers!"

Nobody speaks up about it!  Tony Bourdain tried.  Damn that man tried. He is my hero for holding out as long as he did and saying what he said about the type of film that was being expected of him.  He said it during his shows. People heard him say it.  Even mentioned it in one of his books, a meditation, trying to get his mind around the fact that no matter what way he looked at it, he'd been forced to sell out, and forced hard and constantly, and couldn't feel right about it.  I'm not an international celebrity (much,) but I'm taking my own stand here next to him.  So one old white lady adds her voice.

  I remember being SHOCKED AS HELL to see that there was actually a regular downtown Tijuana, with office buildings and men in suits and people in nice cars.  Modern houses, even mansions up in the hills.  Where did we visit?  Down in the most dangerous part of town, while our two white lady friends used their schoolgirl Spanish to try and dicker, which if you ever want embarrassing, be with your mother and two really white ladies thinking they're going to outsmart the poor, dumb locals, while the locals are calling them fat whores with smelly cunts, and they do not realize it At All.  I was seventeen when this happened.  I knew me a little 'berry picking' Spanish.  I spent a lot of time looking elsewhere.  

This is a broad and bold streak of sheer aristocratic thinking going on in our media.  Perfectly accepted.  Americans really, really like to be amused at the expense of the poor.  It is so ingrained in our national character that we still think nothing of it. Don't even realize it. I mean, someone challenge me on this, or add your two cents.  To me, it feels like when Aerosmith played the Superbowl, and sang 'Walk This Way' and I was apparently the only American who realized that going out into millions of homes all over the world were the words:

Backstroke lover
Always hidin' 'neath the covers
'Til I talked to your daddy, he say

He said, "You ain't seen nothin'
'Til you're down on a muffin
Then you're sure to be a-changin' your ways"

I met a cheerleader
Was a real young bleeder
Oh, the times I could reminisce

'Cause the best things of lovin'
With her sister and her cousin
Only started with a little kiss
Like this

Seesaw swingin' with the boys in the school
And your feet flyin' up in the air
Singin', "Hey diddle diddle"
With your kitty in the middle
Of the swing like you didn't care

So I took a big chance
At the high school dance
With a missy who was ready to play
Wasn't me she was foolin'
'Cause she knew what she was doin'
And I knew love was here to stay
When she told me to

"Walk this way, talk this way"
"Walk this way, walk this way"
"Walk this way, walk this way"
"Walk this way, talk this way"
Just gimme a kiss
Like this

Schoolgirl sweetie with a classy kinda sassy
Little skirt's climbin' way up the knee
There was three young ladies in the school gym locker
When I noticed they was lookin' at me

I was a high school loser, never made it with a lady
'Til the boys told me somethin' I missed
Then my next door neighbor with a daughter had a favor
So I gave her just a little kiss
Like this

Seesaw swingin' with the boys in the school
And your feet flyin' up in the air
Singin', "Hey diddle diddle"
With your kitty in the middle
Of the swing like you didn't care

So I took a big chance
At the high school dance
With a missy who was ready to play
Wasn't me she was foolin'
'Cause she knew what she was doin'
When she told me how to walk this way
She told me to

"Walk this way, talk this way"
"Walk this way, walk this way"
"Walk this way, walk this way"
"Walk this way, talk this way"
Just gimme a kiss
Like this

OK.  So you start out with a dude masturbating.  Someone's dad tells him to put that thing in a vagina.  Or baked goods. Probably a vagina, though. So he meets a 'real young bleeder' (classy!) with a sister and a cousin and presumably fucks them all - after a kiss.  Because he's classy like that. Then he nails the neighbor girl, and starts watching the girls on the playground swings, doing the upskirt, checking out their snatches. Then a girl at a dance tells him how to walk a certain way.   

I am literally the only person who found it at all odd that nobody in this God fearin' nation of ours felt that Aerosmith singing about cousin fucking during the halftime show was inappropriate at all.

 It's like this weird group denial thing.  "Aw, i'wuz jest Aerosmith!" Equals  "Aw, thems jes po' folks, they don't care if we watch them cremate their grandma!"

So chime in.  Am I onto something or what?