Anthropology through Television

My good friend Nina has flow to northern Germany for a week to visit her family, and she very generously offered to lend me her television during her absence. Thanks to the free (well, included in my rent) cable available in the Studentenheim, I'm taking this as an opportunity to play anthropologist and make note of some cultural differences in TV land. I have never been an avid TV viewer. Throughout my college years in Athens, I never subscribed to a cable or satellite service since I found that most programming generally insulted my intelligence and was a monumental waste of time. Many of my friends here were shocked to learn that I was an American without a TV. Imagine that! Who knew that such people existed? I always found that reading a good book or perhaps watching a well-selected film was more stimulating than the incessant string of verbal and visual incontinence spewed across the North American continent.

I would like to report that European television is radically different and more sophisticated... but on the whole its really not, with a few exceptions. Lets start with the crème de la crème: daytime TV. In the afternoon hours the airwaves are crowded with "Gericht-Shows", which are so tawdry that they make "Judge Judy" look like a serious documentary. They're set up in a similar way - your basic court-TV - with a victim, suspect(s), lawyers, and judges. But, they're obviously scripted and generally play out like a soap opera. I'll spare you the details, but in one episode of "Familien Gericht" that I managed to watch in full, a 50-something year old woman was unknowingly smeared with some sort of potion by the accused before the "trial" started. When she appeared before the court she began acting very drunk and blatantly hit on the judge and even began unbuttoning her top before the judge called a medic. It was very special. High quality viewing, I must say. Hey, at least I'm practicing my German listening comprehension.

Things get a bit more interesting in the late evening. At this point almost all of the advertisements feature mostly naked women and telephone numbers for which you must pay at least €1.25 per minute. There is a channel dedicated to broadcasting nothing but mammaries and the women who own them posing on some sort of sport-themed set; be it a soccer field, boxing ring, or even an RC-car track. I think they must have been running out of ideas by the time they got to the RC cars. I fail to see the erotic value of miniature motorized cars. Very strange.

Last night I couldn't go to bed early, so I was flipping through the channels when I came across something interesting. It was some sort of film featuring a band of live dogs running around a large metropolis in Italy. All of the dogs had names, and it had a narrated plot. I got to watch the dogs run around Napoli and find their food in garbage piles. The main dog, who had some Italian name which I forget, decided to sneak onto a ferry to follow a poodle "of a noble house" to Capri. He managed to get the human family in Capri to adopt him by seducing the children with his cuteness, but he quickly grew bored of life in the Villa, because "a golden cage is still a cage". He managed to escape and catch another ferry back to Napoli, but he had to bathe himself in a dirty river before returning to his gang since they "would never accept him smelling of shampoo". In the end he was happy, having returned to the freedom of being a stray dog in Napoli. I have never before seen such a thing on television. It was odd but entertaining, and the dogs were obviously very well trained.

What conclusions can I draw from my viewing experiences? I'm really not sure... The only thing I feel confident in saying is that my viewing pleasure is a result of unfamiliarity with TV culture here and my ability to pick up a few more words and become even more comfortable with the German language. If I see anything else worthy of reporting in the next week, I'll be sure to provide my loyal readers with a synopsis.