I used to think America was the pinnacle of entertainment. I mean, after all, America is the land that invented all of Hollywood, most of rock n’ roll and some of video games…Yeah, I used to think we Americans reigned supreme in giving the world useless ways to spend a person’s time.

Then I discovered global television and I have to take the crown away from us. Specifically, I have to hand it over to Japan.

Recently, an old college friend of mine (who was on spring break) took the time to show me some of a video series called “Japanarama”. Apparently, this series is a collection of actual Japanese television programs and commercials packed onto a tape as if someone sat down and started recording a day’s worth of TV on say “Channel 4”. Very little was subtitled, none of it was dubbed and ten minutes in to the viewing I was both fascinated and enthralled; I only thought I was prepared for what I saw…

My experiences with foreign TV until “Japanarama” were limited primarily to that banner station of Mexican TV – the “Telemundo” network. For those who’ve never seen it, Mexican (not Spanish) television seems to be the middle ground between India and Japan in terms of confusing television. It’s colorful and confusing (like the Indian movies/TV) and it has a touch of the sadism that Japan seems to love (we’ll get to that in a moment). I tuned in one afternoon and all I saw was: A midget dressed as a cartoon prisoner, in a small cage, and two people in tuxedos talking about baseball. Then, for no discernable reason, two men came out and began wrestling.

A couple months later I happened to catch one of Telemundo’s premier shows: “Sabado Gigante” (“Giant Saturday”). “Sabado Gigante” is a cross between a game show, a talk show, and “Circus of the stars”. In the episode I watched: Two women who had had severe tragedies happen in their lives came on and were interviewed by the show’s host about their stories. One woman, whose son had been killed in a car crash, carried a framed picture of her son in her arms. It was a tad heart wrenching to watch – almost mirroring the type of shows Montel Williams and Oprah Winfrey have become known for sharing and which Maury Povich stopped doing. But just when it looked like I knew what was going on, “Sabado Gigante” throws a curveball at the viewer that’s the size of a grapefruit.

Before I could process what was happening, the two women were in fitted jumpsuits standing on opposite sides of a greased platform, with laundry baskets on their heads. On the command of the host, they climbed up the platform and began trying to collect in their baskets (I’m not making this up) sausages and steaks that were dangling from strings. At the sound of a buzzer, the women’s totals were matched up and the winner won something like a piece of furniture.

Needless to say, I was stunned. But before I could get some form of resolution about what I’d just witnessed, a buxom woman walked on stage, in between the two tortured women and delivered a speech about a new brand of floor cleanser.

I though that “Telemundo” (and “Sabado Gigante”) had prepared me for “Japanarama”, but I was wrong. So very wrong…The Japanese idea of good television follows a theory I concocted while watching a group of [PETA] protesters standing outside of a local rodeo a few years ago: “If you’re dumb enough to put a tight rope around a bull’s groin and then jump on him, you deserve whatever comes to you – even a completely broken rib cage”.

“Volume 1” begins with what looks like to be a Japanese version of America’s “Jackass”: A close-up point-of-view shot of a man screaming. We pull out and it’s revealed to be a man (attached to bungee cords) being launched off a cliff with a pair of rockets on his feet.

Then, we find out it’s actually a game show – a game show where young people are strapped into a catapult and their grandmothers are asked a question about current Japanese pop culture. If the grandmother answers wrong, their kinfolk are catapulted. To put it into an American context, the questions the grandmothers are asked might be something like this:

ANNOUNCER/HOST: What actor did Kanye West team up with to record the hit song “Golddigger”?
GRANDMOTHER: I…I don’t know…Tom Cruise?
CONTESTANT: No! Grandma! It’s Jamieeeeeeeeeee [contestant is catapulted off cliff]

It wouldn’t be so bad if not for the fact that we’re shown the contestant pleading for his safety and his grandmother bowing to him for forgiveness…

Later, we’re treated to Japan’s version of “America’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes”. The British have their own series of video tapes on this subject and if you’re lucky to receive “BBC America” on your cable system, you can catch similar shows to the ones you see advertised as the video sets. The thing about the British is, their jokes are all innocent. For example – a woman asks a policeman for directions, only to find out that the police man has no back to his pants.

Japan’s idea for a practical joke raises the bar a little. Scratch that, it raises the bar a lot: A person is sleeping in their apartment. A camera crew enters quietly with the intent to wake the person up. Dressed in military fatigues and once in position, they open fire with UZI sub-machine guns firing blanks. The sleeping person nearly dies on camera of a heart attack.

Moving from pranks to pain, much later we are treated to sport. Not ESPN style, where we show highlights of games though. For the Japanese, the sport is the game. In other words – Game shows mixed with sporting events.

Americans have always done that too. I mean, take one look at “professional wrestling” and you’ll see it easily. And recently there came about a show that pits “average people” against pro stars the likes of Bill Romanowski. But the Japanese somehow took our idea and perfected it.

In “Volume 1”, American pro-wrestling legend “Hawk” (of “The Legion of Doom” and others) teams up with [one of the] “Animal’s” and together, they go up against skinny, “average” Japanese men in a wrestling ring. Sounds pretty tame…until we see that the ring is surrounded on one side by a heated piece of metal, a large mat of what appears to be fly-paper glue on another and a fenced-in plate of sparking movie squibs and firecrackers. The object: Withstand the wrestler’s assault in the ring or be burned, glued or shocked. As you can guess, no one survives; even when a team of four people charges the wrestlers at once.

The Japanese appear to be sadists and perhaps nothing shows this more than the [feature segment] of the tape – the game show “Super Jockey”. Think of “Sabado Gigante” on steroids and that is “Super Jockey”.

Since I don’t speak Japanese and it drags on quite a while, it’s tough for me to figure out exactly what’s going on in the show. But I can tell you this: The highlight of the program is when a guest is invited on stage to shill a product of theirs. The catch: They first have to sit in a tub of scalding water. For every second they sit in the tub, they earn one second to promote the product as a prize.

It’s not easy to do and the show is strict about their rule – if you only earn two seconds, that’s all you get. After your time is up, a door comes down and cuts you off from the camera…

There’s much more to witness and discuss, but I want to move on to my closing remarks.

It may seem I’m being ethno-centric and ragging on foreign TV, but I’m not. In fact, I like to think I’m doing the opposite. I’m praising foreign TV. American TV is goofy in its own right and I’m sure that any foreigner would be baffled by the amount of crime drama shows on CBS each night or the whole programming schedule of Spike TV. But the point is: Americans can learn from our neighbors to the East and South. Especially regarding advertising.

Just today the president of the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Barbara Cochran, said she was alarmed at the amount of product placement in/on news shows. It’s no secret that with the rise in anti-commercial television sentiment over the last two years, the level of product placement has risen in tandem. Yet most of it has been subtle. Why not just make it open, I ask? Why not take a lesson from “Telemundo” and make even a soap opera into the “Price is Right”? Picture a scene from a show like “Guiding light”:

MARSHA: Rick, I’m leaving you. I’m taking our son and we’re moving in with my mother.
RICK: Marsha, I forbid it!

This scene now becomes:

MARSHA: Rick, I’m leaving you. I’m taking our son and my bottle of Prellan shampoo to my mother’s house for good!
RICK: Not the Prellan! That’s the only shampoo that gives my hair the luster and sheen it needs to shine!
MARSHA: Not anymore it won’t!

Ok, on second thought, that’s a bad idea. After a month, or just sweeps week, American’s would rebel against it. Instead, why not just lighten up tragedy like “Telemundo” does? There’s too much seriousness in America today. We need to step back and laugh at pain, challenge it by making fun of it. There is a legend that states that if a person turns their back on pain, it will be destroyed and I think it’s high time we take that road in our entertainment. More so than we already do.

Also, I just really want to see people trying to sell me something after being boiled in hot water like a lobster. I know that companies already pay for my money by flashing an ad at me, but I want them to pay physically. Somehow I think I’d feel better about giving my money to some company for their shampoo if I knew they’d truly fought for it.

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