There are other worlds than these...

I discovered something yesterday which will forever change the way I look at the world. This thing that I discovered is so innocuous as to make me a little ashamed that I didn't know about it before, but it is, nevertheless, an important piece of information that has eluded me until now. I am probably building this up too much, but it is too late now. Best to just forge on and reveal my new piece of information and let the world think of me what it will.

Ready?

French people have different TV shows than we do.

I know. It blew my mind too.

Who knew that there are shows in French both hosted and watched by actual French people? Well, I assume that the actual French people who watch the shows knew this, and to continue on with my impeccable logic, the hosts themselves probably were made aware of this at some point in their careers, but did anyone outside of France know this? Why was I kept in the dark on this?

I guess I should clear something up a bit. It is not like I didn't know that French people had TV. I didn't assume that they all sat around all day eating baguettes and writing poetry while wearing berets under the Eiffel Tower. That would be hell on the digestive system. I was aware, at least on some level, that other countries have their own singers, actors, TV shows, etc, it is just that I had never really seen any of it aside from Monty Python, Dr. Who, the occasional nature documentary on the BBC, and a smattering of other things. Now I have seen actual snips from some actual French shows and I am a new person.

Let me back up a bit.

I am a member of a Tottenham Hotspur message board where people from England and many other countries post information regarding the team, possible player transfers, and basically anything that the members decide to post to take their minds off of the impending loss of key players to other teams. It is a great site and has become invaluable to me in keeping up with a sport and team that gets basically zero coverage here in the states. After learning that one of everyone's favorite players was probably going to be sold this summer, a poster started one such escapist thread and invited people to post pictures of their favorite European pop singers. On this thread someone posted a picture of this French singer, Alizee, and a link to one of her music videos. Like most men I know I have a thing for the French accent, and she was totally cute so I clicked to check it out. Turns out that not only is she cute, she can sing as well. I didn't understand anything she was singing, but I dug the voice and the beat to the song so I watched the whole thing.

I then jumped on Rhapsody to see if her catalog was online. It was, and I found myself enjoying the heck out of music which contained lyrics that I couldn't understand. It turns out that she has been around since she got her first record contract at the age of 16 in the year 2000, has released 3 albums, and was the top selling French female singer for 2001 (thanks, Wikipedia!). Also, just so you all don't think I am some sicko, the picture on the message board was of her 23 year old self, not the 16 year old version. Young is fine, jailbait not so much.

So here was this singer who has apparently been popular in Europe for about the last 8 years and I had never heard of her. That didn't bother me at first because, as I found out, her fan base here in this country is fairly limited. This is primarily due to the fact that roughly 0.61% of the population herein the good ol' USA speak French (thanks, National Virtual Translation Center!), and most of the rest of the population basically can't be bothered to care about anything not American made. However, it did start to bother me a bit. What else was I missing? I didn't want to close myself off to the rest of the pop culture in the world just because I lived in America. Granted, we make some kick ass movies and we do kinda rule when it comes to pop culture, but obviously there is more out there.

Thus did I begin the process of attempting to find more pop culture from different countries. Since I had already found a singer I liked, I thought I'd check out the TV side of things. I figured I'd start with France because I dig the accent and, to be honest, I was hoping to find more videos of Alizee. As it turns out, this is not a difficult thing to do. I quickly found one website that fit the bill perfectly in that it not only had music videos for the singles she had released, but also MANY videos of her being interviewed on French TV. Jackpot.

Often the interviews were in French with no subtitles, but every now and then someone had gone to the trouble of placing either English or Spanish subtitles on the videos. Since I can read Spanish fairly well and I have at least a passing understanding of the English language, this worked well for me. It was, however, most often more fun to watch the videos without subtitles because then I could concentrate on the sets and hosts of the shows rather than reading the words. I must say that I was rarely disappointed.

When I mentioned earlier that France had its own TV shows and how this changed me, I neglected to mention that some of them are, without a doubt, hilarious. In one of the video clips Alizee performs a song and then comes down to the interview section, much like a performer would on the Tonight Show or Letterman. However, it is there where the similarities end. The hosts of the show are a man and a woman, both of whom appear old enough to have been around when music was first invented, and they are sitting on a GIANT red couch that was probably 15 to 20 feet in length. Across the stage sits Alizee, on a similar GIANT red couch about 15 yards from the hosts. In the middle of the stage is this elaborate coffee table with all kinds of crap strewn about on it. The hosts spend much of the time sort of bickering with one another about who gets to ask the next question while the guest sits patiently and answers when they finally get around to acknowledging her. Not exactly a great interview, but how often do we get to see bickering hosts here? I loved every minute of it.

There is a second video which shows a German TV host interviewing Alizee in which he attempts to speak French with her. If the subtitles are to be believed, after complimenting her shoes he ends up accidentally asking her a variety of seemingly provocative questions including whether or not she enjoys "hot water bags". Clearly puzzled, she responds "Hot water bags?" He realizes his mistake and then offers, "Wanderlust?". When this is met with another confused look, he quickly segues into a commercial. Along with this awkward interview, which can be forgiven due to the fact that this is a German program with a host who is attempting to make his guest feel comfortable by speaking a language in which he is not fluent, the actual performance is interesting due to the fact that there is a large, muscular man in a security t-shirt prowling the stage protecting the young singer, flexing and seemingly inviting someone, anyone, to try and get at her. Not something that would fly here on American TV.

Another show was what appeared to be similar to TRL in which artists come on and are interviewed by a young, hip, host who asks them about their lives and music. Its title is "Wassup, Pluggers!", and is clearly one of the most awesome things I have ever seen. The set appears to have been designed and decorated by someone with ADD, a lot of different materials, and a mandate to use every possible color at least once. The host is dressed in clashing colors and patterns that seem to indicate that he's so cool, he's lucky not to have freezer burn. He throws around the "W" hand sign many times during the interview and says "Wassup!" a lot. I wish I had thought to name a show "Wassup, Pluggers!".

There were other clips from different shows, most of them of much higher quality and therefore not nearly as much fun to write about. As it turns out, from my brief foray into it, the TV side of French pop culture is pretty much the same as it is here, the only difference being the people performing it and the language in which it is performed. I assume that the same holds true for pop culture from other countries as well and maybe one day I might take the time to find out, but one of the other things I was reminded of in my search is that there is a reason why we don't have cable. American TV is bad enough most of the time, did I really expect it to get any better just because it is in a foreign language? Music is one thing, and I'll freely admit that part of the attraction to these songs is that they are in French which sounds so much cooler than English, but TV seems to be the same the world over.

Thus did my quest end, or at least take a sabbatical. My eyes have been opened to the fact that I can enjoy music in languages other than English, and I look forward to finding more international artists. Who knows? Perhaps I'll be into some Polish funk band next month.