Pop Culture

Everyone who knows me knows that I’m not exactly up on pop culture knowledge.  I don’t know who many celebrities are, and I certainly can’t recognize them in pictures/movies.  I usually don’t know which actors are in which movies, and most of the time I haven’t even seen the movie or heard of the show.  I get Carrie Underwood and Katy Perry (and a lot of other female singers) mixed up.  My mom knew what twirking was before I did.  When I was in Africa no one else knew anything about pop culture either, so that was fine.  And back in the US I had the excuse “I lived in Africa for the past few years,” which usually got me off the hook, or at least changed the topic.  But here in Argentina everyone knows all about everything, and I have absolutely no excuse.

The other day I was playing Trivial Pursuit with 4 Argentinians.  It was an Argentina version, so there were all sorts of questions about Argentinian authors, presidents, and singers, and I didn’t know any of those answers.  At one point I managed to land on a few science and sports questions, and I got a few in a row right.  Then I landed on entertainment.  “Oh, you’re so lucky, you got a good one for this,” the person reading the questions told me. “In The Simpons where does Marge Simpson (or maybe Bart-I can’t even remember now!) work?”  I had absolutely no idea.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen an entire episode of that show, maybe just a few short clips at random times.  All 4 of the people I was playing with knew the answer, and watched The Simpsons regularly, and were appalled by the fact that I had never seen it.  They later mentioned jokingly that half their knowledge of the US comes from that show, so I really wish I’d seen a few episodes to know what they think of us.

Here where I’m living we get a few American movie channels on TV.  A week or two ago I walked in to the living room and Ramon was watching a movie.  I paused and watched for a few seconds, and then asked him what movie it was. 

“The third one.”

“The third one of what?” 

He turned and stared at me with a weird look.  “Jurassic Park.”

(To be fair, there were no dinosaurs in the part I had been watching.) “Oh.  I’ve never seen any of the Jurassic Park movies.”

“Not Jurassic Park 1?”

“No.”

“Jurassic Park 2?”

“No.

“Not Jurassic Park 3 either?”

“Nope.”

“Sit down.  You have to see this.”

So I sat and watched the rest of it.  At least now when I come back maybe I’ll have a slightly expanded knowledge of American pop culture, and for anything I still don’t know I can always use the excuse, “I was traveling throughout South America.”