Amie’s Adventures Abroad

I’ve recently taken to going over to my friend Lola’s house a couple of times a week to watch her TV. I was never a big TV person at home, but I’ve always loved movies. The prefered form of entertainment here is music videos, the flashier the video and the stronger the beat the better. Shakira and Brittney Spears are very popular. When we get sick of watching the same 10 or 15 music videos over and over we will occasionally watch a movie. Typically some really horrid American action flick that has been dubbed into French (I think the fact that I can’t understand what is being said most of the time actually makes the experience slightly less painful)

A couple of weeks ago I had the delightful experience of watching the Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes version of Romeo and Juliet with my friends. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, even though it was in French, but I don’t think they liked it at all.

First off they didn’t understand it. It took me a while to figure out that they couldn’t understand what was happening in the movie. When I did I was struck by how much a part of our collective cultural consciousness the story of Romeo and Juliet is, most western school children know who Shakespeare is and could probably give a general outline of the story, but no one here has ever heard of him.

So there I was trying to explain who Shakespeare was and the story of Romeo and Juliet, the entire process was made more complicated because I lack the Malagasy vocabulary for play-write, famous and a really long time in the past. Once I had finally gotten across the point that this was a very old story, they got even more confused as the movie is very modern. So then I was stuck trying to explain things like costume parties; fireworks and the fact that the United States isn’t anything like the movie portrays it. I think in the end my friends were much more confused then when I started trying to explain what was happening and then the electricity cut out right before Juliet woke up and discovered Romeo dead.

All in all it was a fascinating experience for me as it made me think about the large body of cultural knowledge that we take for granted and how I can no longer take things like that for granted, but instead have to learn an entire new body of cultural knowledge. Until then I will continue to stick my foot in my mouth and accidentally insult my new friends. Luckily for me they are a very kind and forgiving group of people.