Whatever floats your boat...
Umatic Japanaphobe
I recently read Surfcottage's blog which mentioned Richard Chamberlain
We had little media in Saudi Arabia. Movie Theaters were illegal. Television was broadcast from Bahrain for three hours a night. The last ten minutes of the "News" showed the King of Saudi being kissed by visiting dignitaries to Sousa marches. I was watching cartoons like "Felix the Cat" in the 1980s.
Most people there watched black market video tapes. Those were the days of VHS and Beta. My parents have never believed in purchasing new technology, especially if they had to drag it 8,000 miles in a suitcase only to have some Saudi customs offical decide that he wanted it for himself. Dad found a "deal" on a Umatic, which was an already ancient video player about the size of a piano bench. The tapes were gigantic and did not hold much information. I'm guessing 45 minutes?
This Umatic came with the previous owners tapes, which was fortunate because I don't believe we located anymore of them. We had 20 or so tapes, which means about 5 movies, which I watched over and over for ten years. They were:
Shogun
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
The Inlaws
Meatballs
And the entire TV series of Alex Haley's Roots. -the majority of our tapes
Roots was particularly intriguing to me. I would ask my mother questions about whipping, rape, amputation, drinking spit, slavery and rascism. Perhaps it was the obvious inequalities in Saudi that caused me to believe from our discussions that the US had not only abolished and atoned for slavery, but that back home rascism did not exist either.
Shogun, another favorite (but they all had to be favorites, right?), caused an irrational fear inside of me. This fear came from the scene where Richard Chamberlain is shamed into disrobing in public, then coerced? forced? to take a bath in a barrel. He screams bloody murder as the water scalds him.
Oddly enough, I found it funny when he was urinated upon.
My parents tooks us to a different Asian or African country every Spring. They went to attend a teachers conference. ( I thought they chose the country themselves, but hey - at that time I also thought my dad was Ronald Reagan.)
My fear was that my parents would take us to Japan where, upon arrival, I would be forced to disrobe in front of assorted Japanese people then be publicly shamed into stepping into a barrel of scalding water. Then I would die.
Every time Mom told us to pack our bags, or would make us swallow malaria pills, or give us a shot, I would say to myself "Not Japan, Not Japan, Not Japan".
We had little media in Saudi Arabia. Movie Theaters were illegal. Television was broadcast from Bahrain for three hours a night. The last ten minutes of the "News" showed the King of Saudi being kissed by visiting dignitaries to Sousa marches. I was watching cartoons like "Felix the Cat" in the 1980s.
Most people there watched black market video tapes. Those were the days of VHS and Beta. My parents have never believed in purchasing new technology, especially if they had to drag it 8,000 miles in a suitcase only to have some Saudi customs offical decide that he wanted it for himself. Dad found a "deal" on a Umatic, which was an already ancient video player about the size of a piano bench. The tapes were gigantic and did not hold much information. I'm guessing 45 minutes?
This Umatic came with the previous owners tapes, which was fortunate because I don't believe we located anymore of them. We had 20 or so tapes, which means about 5 movies, which I watched over and over for ten years. They were:
Shogun
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
The Inlaws
Meatballs
And the entire TV series of Alex Haley's Roots. -the majority of our tapes
Roots was particularly intriguing to me. I would ask my mother questions about whipping, rape, amputation, drinking spit, slavery and rascism. Perhaps it was the obvious inequalities in Saudi that caused me to believe from our discussions that the US had not only abolished and atoned for slavery, but that back home rascism did not exist either.
Shogun, another favorite (but they all had to be favorites, right?), caused an irrational fear inside of me. This fear came from the scene where Richard Chamberlain is shamed into disrobing in public, then coerced? forced? to take a bath in a barrel. He screams bloody murder as the water scalds him.
Oddly enough, I found it funny when he was urinated upon.
My parents tooks us to a different Asian or African country every Spring. They went to attend a teachers conference. ( I thought they chose the country themselves, but hey - at that time I also thought my dad was Ronald Reagan.)
My fear was that my parents would take us to Japan where, upon arrival, I would be forced to disrobe in front of assorted Japanese people then be publicly shamed into stepping into a barrel of scalding water. Then I would die.
Every time Mom told us to pack our bags, or would make us swallow malaria pills, or give us a shot, I would say to myself "Not Japan, Not Japan, Not Japan".
Views: 17
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Comment by ferdz ines on November 14, 2008 at 10:02am
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whahaha!
same movies watched over and over for ten freakin' years!
oh life in the middle east..
oh yes maybe Arabs knows best!
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