Batgung

I went to see ‘The Simpsons Movie’ last month. It was fun: it’s not great, but it’s very good, upholding the general excellence of The Simpsons TV series – which I believe has earned a permanent booking at the base camp of the pinnacle of western civilization. The Simpsons has for years been my touchstone for the culture of my homeland; it’s the tether that connects me to my people.

Or is it?

When I came out the movie, I started thinking. When was the last time I’d actually watched a Simpsons episode on TV, i.e. a current one? I used to keep up with them quite religiously, but then Daughter Tall was born, and TV seemed unimportant, and then whenever the TV was on the screen seemed to be dominated by animated fish, and now – well, it’s been five years since I watched a fresh episode of my favorite TV show ever!

This realization left me feeling mildly disturbed, and got me thinking: just how many pop cultural events from my homeland have passed me by over my years in Hong Kong? Most of the big-name movies I’ve seen, in one form or another, but once I got past that, my connections started looking tenuous at best. That whole Survivor/American Idol/reality TV thing? I’ve never watched a single episode of any of these shows. The Sopranos, or 24? Foreign territory. Could I name a single current top-10 pop music star? Maybe . . . how about that boy band guy who dumped Britney Spears? Justine Timberland or something like that . . . . I went over to Billboard.com and had a look at this week’s top 10 list and found someone named ‘Timbaland’, but he didn’t seem to be the right chap. And the rest of the list meant not a thing to me. (Although I did find #10 amusing; it’s by a group/artist/life form called ‘Plies Featuring T-Pain’, which in my decrepitude I read as ‘Piles’, and then understandably wondered why the Piles weren’t ‘Featuring A-Pain’ – but I digress.)

Some of my lack of USA pop cultural knowledge is surely due my advancing age, but there’s more to it. Being an expat means there’s a limit to the amount of pop culture I can absorb via the day-to-day osmosis we all depend on for picking up so many of our facts and beliefs. No one at the water cooler is talking about Mr Plies, or Mr Piles, or whoever he may be.

Yet things are far better on this front now than they must have been in the past, when trips home were via ocean liner, and surface mail was the main communication channel. I got a peek at this life recently when I was reading Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh. This 1932 novel follows the exploits of an upper-class twit who bullies and blunders his way into the de facto prime ministership of an imaginary African country. Much of the book’s action takes place within that sorry land’s pathetic little expat community, where the biggest thing that ever happens is the arrival of a pouch of letters and packets from the Merry Olde Merry Olde, don’t you know. Each mailbag contains a new record, of whatever song is hottest back in Blighty. These records become the ultimate cultural tethers; the expats listen to each one over and over and and over, until the next one finally arrives . . . .

These days it’s of course much easier for us Hong Kong expats to maintain cultural ties, what with air travel, globalization, telecommunications/Internet, etc., etc. But there are still some lags and gaps in pop culture resources:

• Hollywood movies used to take six months or more to arrive in Hong Kong after their initial released. Simultaneous global premieres of many big-name films has improved the situation a great deal, as has the availability of DVD copies (i.e. those of dubious provenence) of current films. But lots of smaller films still never make to Hong Kong screens, and it can be hard to find even legitimate copies of non-Hollywood and alternative films.

• As for TV, there are always several popular US and/or UK series running at any given point on HK's terrestrial channels, and more if you pay for Now TV or cable, of course, but they're usually not up to date. The typical lag is a full season, i.e. generally about a year. Again, DVD copies can help, but you're never going to be right on the cutting edge. For example, I did get blown away by, and totally hooked on, the remade series 'Battlestar Galactica' (really, I can't recommend it highly enough). But part of the fun of following geeky shows such as BSG these days is being able to fully nurture and express that geekiness on online discussion boards, mailing lists, episode guides, and so on. But if you're cut off from current episodes, these extra resources are worse than useless; you must avoid them, because at any given point all the participants will be talking about episodes that you the expat have no access to, and they'll be flinging spoilers about right and left.

• Sports are another tough area. I love baseball and basketball, and would like to be able to follow them more closely than I do. There are two big problems here. First, television access is poor. Even ESPN, which is carried by Now TV, is a pathetic diluted 'Asian' version of the real thing, and carries just a paltry spattering of big US games. It's also proportionately quite expensive, i.e. at around HK80/month, it's one of Now TV's single most costly channels, whereas in the states it's usually a throw-in feature of even the most basic cable package. Second, evening games in the US occur here in HK first thing in the morning, because of the time difference. Afternoon games start in the middle of the night here. That makes it tough even if you can find a channel that carries a game you want to see. The upside is that it's might fine having an ESPN scoreboard running in a browser window to get you through those first few dull hours of the working day! Not that I would ever give in to this temptation personally, of course.

• Music is likely the easiest pop culture tether to hang on to when you're an expat. Far from the single records of Waugh's day, it's now easy enough to get your hands on music, whether through local shops, Amazon, or other online sales. The one big exception is that you can't download songs from Apple's iTunes store in Hong Kong. They say the ability to do this is coming here, but then they've been saying it for years . . . . As for the concert scene, well, I'm no authority, but it has always seemed pretty grim to me. Witness the hordes of pathetically eager expats when even dinosaur acts such as Eric Clapton actually appear in the wrinkled flesh here in Hong Kong.

So, after more than 17 years away from my homeland, in pop culture terms I'm now left clutching a Homer Simpson coffee mug, occasionally contemplating certain Cylon babes, and checking some sports scoreboards/watching online highlights. It's a pretty thin soup, but I guess it keeps me from wasting too much time.

I'm curious about the rest of you: what 'cultural tethers' keep you in touch with your homelands? Which ones do you wish you could maintain, but find you can't get your hands on?