I need to start putting these posts up in a more timely manner. I wrote this two days ago, so do the math for the next paragraph.
Two nights ago I watched the finale of Germany's Next Top Model.
Now, let's be clear: this is not the kind of thing that I would do in America, but in the interest of cultural exchange (and knowing that it would be impossible for me to understand anything that was going on anyway) I agreed to go with my CouchSurfing host to watch the show. For the record, groups of German friends also watch bad reality TV shows semi-ironically. That being said, no one I've talked to has heard of Jersey Shore, which is probably a good thing, since I'm pretty sure Germans would take it less as an explicitly over-the-top drama and more as further evidence that America is insane (to be fair, there are plenty of Americans who feel the same way, but still).
In any case, I had seen some foreign reality TV before—Israeli "Survivor" was definitely a fun one—but this was different. It took place in a massive stadium in Cologne, opened with a fireworks show, and featured two musical guests—Maroon 5 and Justin Bieber (completely unrelated sidenote: the contrast between Adam Levine and Bieber pretty much sums up the differences between the 18- and 30-year-old male mind. While Levine spent all of "Moves Like Jagger" determining how many of the show's losers he could convince to come to his trailer at the same time, Bieber was completely zoned in on Heidi Klum—the host, of course—in an effort to realize what was probably one of his first sexual fantasies. This resulted in some painfully bad flirting, which Klum had the decency to repeat in German for extra awkwardness). Basically, it was a completely overblown, don't-miss-television special-event-of-the-year—exactly what you would expect...in America.
And that's why I was so taken aback. The way Germans usually process TV and movies is very different from the United States. While dubbing in the US is essentially reserved for pseudo-Japanese comedies, Germans almost never use subtitles, sometimes with disastrously funny results (this is where I would put in a link of the German Tracy Jordan if I could find one. Definitely in so-bad-it's-good territory). The only other Western country that I can think of that totally embraces the dub-over is France, and it's an established fact that the French hate all things in English ever, so this is hardly surprising. What's interesting is that most of the Germans I've talked to are actually pretty annoyed about the ubiquity of German dubs—they claim that the reason Germans are so much worse at speaking English than, say anyone from Scandinavia, is that people in those countries learn by watching TV and movies with subtitles, a luxury that Germans don't have.
So when Germans watch American TV shows, they often just forget about the dubs completely and just watch in English. After Germany's Next Top Model, we watched the pilot of 30 Rock (only available on pay stations in Germany, but my hosts had seasons one and two on DVD) in English sans subtitles, and they seemed to understand it pretty well. Still, not everything translates culturally. Even though Germans are obsessed with a lot of American TV shows (my first CouchSurfing host could play the Scrubs theme on guitar, and another really wanted to go to Seattle solely because of Grey's Anatomy), no one has heard of Seinfeld here, which takes away about 90 percent of my pop culture references. Ditto with Curb Your Enthusiasm, although I'm pretty sure with some effort I can get a few of them hooked on Archer by the time I leave.
In any case, that was definitely an interesting night. Some more notes from my experience with German entertainment:
- Germany's Next Top Model is apparently a perfect clone of America's Next Top Model, with Heidi Klum playing the part of Tyra Banks's host/center of attention. According to one of the girls I was watching with, Heidi Klum also has a really annoying voice when she speaks German.
- You know that Snickers commercial where men turn into old ladies because they're hungry? They have those in Germany too, just without Betty White and guys playing football.
- Speaking of commercials, Peugeot commercials are as just as bad as any other car company's, which is kind of a let-down since I was hoping the Europeans were hiding something great.
- German movie theaters have assigned seats. And people actually pay attention to where they're supposed to sit.
So not too long a list, but I'll be back soon with more exciting observations.
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