All Around the World?

[stoutfellow]

Heroes, so far, is quite an interesting show. Tonight, though, I noticed the opening voice-over talking about paranormals appearing "all around the world".

Of the identified specials, one is from Japan; the rest are from the US. Of the USAns, as far as I can tell, one is from Texas, two are from California, and all the rest are from New York.

All. Around. The World.

Right.

Comments

[mawombat.livejournal.com]

It's better than the World Series which includes the whole world of the US and, oh yeah, Canada.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Well, we invited all the other countries, but they just didn't show up. Something about "not playing that crazy American version of cricket" or something.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Not JUST Manhatten, but also Brooklyn and Queens.

Get some perspective, willya? :)

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

Everything *important* happens in the Big Apple, didn't you know that?

(I saw an actual *researched* article about that a few years ago. The expected distribution of superheroes by nation, by superhero type. Spontaneous mutation being evenly distributed, gadgeteers concentrated in urbanized areas of the developed countries, etc. Yes, I read some odd stuff.)

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Huh. You don't happen to know when and where that appeared, do you? Sounds interesting.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

It was a gaming magazine, possibly Dragon but I'm not sure. At a guess, I'd say it was in the vicinity of ten years ago.

The title of the article was, IIRC, something like "One in a Million".

Sorry I can't give you any more than that to go on.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

Great, another example of "The World (Read The US)" categorization. Some day I'll write a thesis on how American popular culture equals the homeland with the planet as whole.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

In this context, how you feel about the US is closely analogous to the way most USAns feel about New York City. (NYC does, begrudgingly, admit the existence of California, at least, but little else. Those of us in "flyover country" might as well be invisible.)

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I'd say that New York and California are symbolic of "the World" to many American authors. Cosmopolitan, lots of "immigrants", and perhaps morally suspect. Why use real foreigners when you can get a Hispanic, a black guy and a Brit expatriate two stone throws from Central Park - but keep the cop uniforms, politics and language? So New York is both America and The World at the same time, whereas it of course on Real Earth is neither particularly representative of America nor The World. The world is no melting pot so no supposedly cosmopolitan place can represent anything but itself.

Then I guess the fact that US entertainment media seems to be overly stationed in a small part of the country has a great effect.