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ivyficI have been watching the British Top Gear--eight seasons of which are very helpfully on Netflix. I should point out that I have no actual interest in cars. I don't own one and haven't in a few years, both cars I owned were purchased from or by family, and I rather intensely dislike driving. In addition, I know only as much about them as I could glean from Car Talk, and it's a British show, so one out of four of their pop culture references go straight over my head. And, I've started at the beginning of what Netflix has, which is 2003.
So I am watching a show about eight-year-old foreign cars that I don't care about.
However, the presenters are terribly entertaining, and sometimes I just need to watch something that I have no emotional stake in and don't really need to pay attention to, and this has been fitting the bill, especially as a break from the horrid, horrid freelance gig I was working on this weekend.
As I've been watching, I've been paying attention to the differences between British and American television, though.
- Top Gear has loads of jokes about Americans. The only time I can think of an American show making a joke about the UK is when covering British news. British jokes aren't go to jokes for Americans the way American jokes seem to be for Brits. This rather reminds me of the "rivalry" UPenn has with Princeton--the one Penn is really invested in and Princeton ignores. But then I realized--American TV makes equivalent jokes. But they aren't jokes about Americans generally. They are jokes about Texans/South Carolinians/North Dakotans. Watch The Daily Show or the Colbert Report--they are very similar in frequency and substance to the jokes on Top Gear, they just substitute "Texan" for "Yank." Which made me start to ponder that Northeasterners tend to view the middle and south of this country the way the rest of the world views Americans generally. Anyway, it's an interesting sociological observation.
- Top Gear is very much in dialogue with Europe. That is, as much as they make fun of Americans, they make fun of other Europeans more. And the cars they talk about are almost always European makes. There's also a fundamental difference between what is available in Britain and what's available in the US. They keep referring to brands I've never heard of--Vauxhall, Lotus--as well as to ones I've only heard of from European friends--Pugeot, Renault. It seems like in the US Asian-made cars are far more common than they are in Britain, which makes a certain amount of sense.
- There's also the difference in vocabulary that threw me--not just boot for trunk, but estate car for station wagon and saloon for sedan. I suppose our terms are just as arbitrary, but why saloon? And of course every time they get into or out of a car, I think they're getting in on the passenger side.
- It's also quite hilarious to hear them denigrate rules against mobile phone use while driving (totally unnecessary!), against speeding cameras, which I understand have now rather taken over, and against the impracticality of electric cars. Another difference is how often they talk about diesel cars, which just aren't a thing here. (Wiki says 40% of passenger cars in Europe are diesel.) My mom floats the theory that we don't use diesel here because we're lazy and don't want to wait for them to warm up enough to start on winter mornings. But that's not just laziness--Britain doesn't have winter mornings like we do in most of the country, so that's not a drawback you'd have to worry about there.
- The type of car is also fundamentally different than in the US. Obviously, this is a car show, so they spend most of their time on sexy race cars. But when they do cars of the people, they're always tiny little things. Not an SUV to be seen. Which leads me to...
- The type of driving in Britain seems to be fundamentally different than in the US. Yes, they've also got highways and things, but they've also got tiny little medieval village lanes and winding country roads. For an American, your car is going to spend most of its time either on grid-like town and city streets or on enormous highways. You expect your car to be able to do eight or twelve-hour roadtrips. I mean, I've driven the thousand miles from Florida to New Jersey three times. There just isn't that much road in Britain. So tiny, little cars make much more sense. One of the most hilarious things on the show so far is watching them try to drive a Hummer through a village.
I think I'm picking up some knowledge about cars by osmosis listening to this, but since most of it is very specific to Britain, it's not very useful. I think the best comment I've heard so far on the show is when Patrick Stewart was on and Jeremy Clarkson asked him if the driving was at all enjoyable in America. Stewart said, well, if you like to practice defensive driving all the time.
Apparently, if I want to learn to enjoy driving, I need to move to the UK.
So I am watching a show about eight-year-old foreign cars that I don't care about.
However, the presenters are terribly entertaining, and sometimes I just need to watch something that I have no emotional stake in and don't really need to pay attention to, and this has been fitting the bill, especially as a break from the horrid, horrid freelance gig I was working on this weekend.
As I've been watching, I've been paying attention to the differences between British and American television, though.
- Top Gear has loads of jokes about Americans. The only time I can think of an American show making a joke about the UK is when covering British news. British jokes aren't go to jokes for Americans the way American jokes seem to be for Brits. This rather reminds me of the "rivalry" UPenn has with Princeton--the one Penn is really invested in and Princeton ignores. But then I realized--American TV makes equivalent jokes. But they aren't jokes about Americans generally. They are jokes about Texans/South Carolinians/North Dakotans. Watch The Daily Show or the Colbert Report--they are very similar in frequency and substance to the jokes on Top Gear, they just substitute "Texan" for "Yank." Which made me start to ponder that Northeasterners tend to view the middle and south of this country the way the rest of the world views Americans generally. Anyway, it's an interesting sociological observation.
- Top Gear is very much in dialogue with Europe. That is, as much as they make fun of Americans, they make fun of other Europeans more. And the cars they talk about are almost always European makes. There's also a fundamental difference between what is available in Britain and what's available in the US. They keep referring to brands I've never heard of--Vauxhall, Lotus--as well as to ones I've only heard of from European friends--Pugeot, Renault. It seems like in the US Asian-made cars are far more common than they are in Britain, which makes a certain amount of sense.
- There's also the difference in vocabulary that threw me--not just boot for trunk, but estate car for station wagon and saloon for sedan. I suppose our terms are just as arbitrary, but why saloon? And of course every time they get into or out of a car, I think they're getting in on the passenger side.
- It's also quite hilarious to hear them denigrate rules against mobile phone use while driving (totally unnecessary!), against speeding cameras, which I understand have now rather taken over, and against the impracticality of electric cars. Another difference is how often they talk about diesel cars, which just aren't a thing here. (Wiki says 40% of passenger cars in Europe are diesel.) My mom floats the theory that we don't use diesel here because we're lazy and don't want to wait for them to warm up enough to start on winter mornings. But that's not just laziness--Britain doesn't have winter mornings like we do in most of the country, so that's not a drawback you'd have to worry about there.
- The type of car is also fundamentally different than in the US. Obviously, this is a car show, so they spend most of their time on sexy race cars. But when they do cars of the people, they're always tiny little things. Not an SUV to be seen. Which leads me to...
- The type of driving in Britain seems to be fundamentally different than in the US. Yes, they've also got highways and things, but they've also got tiny little medieval village lanes and winding country roads. For an American, your car is going to spend most of its time either on grid-like town and city streets or on enormous highways. You expect your car to be able to do eight or twelve-hour roadtrips. I mean, I've driven the thousand miles from Florida to New Jersey three times. There just isn't that much road in Britain. So tiny, little cars make much more sense. One of the most hilarious things on the show so far is watching them try to drive a Hummer through a village.
I think I'm picking up some knowledge about cars by osmosis listening to this, but since most of it is very specific to Britain, it's not very useful. I think the best comment I've heard so far on the show is when Patrick Stewart was on and Jeremy Clarkson asked him if the driving was at all enjoyable in America. Stewart said, well, if you like to practice defensive driving all the time.
Apparently, if I want to learn to enjoy driving, I need to move to the UK.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 06:14 pm (UTC)It's a pity, because the diesel engine is a marvel of fine engineering and also hideously efficient. I would murder someone for a Skoda Yeti. I kid you not.
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Date: 2011-09-16 09:51 pm (UTC)Jeremy Clarkson is hilarious, but for some cultural context, he's kind of the British equivalent of a right-wing nutjob—extremely anti-government regulation (speed limits, congestion taxes), pro-military (notice all the challenges that involve soldiers and guns? He loves them), nationalistic, very dismissive of environmental concerns and of political correctness. He's actually a pretty controversial figure in Britain. My ex-Scotland-Yard-detective stepdad hates him because he says his example encourages people to drive aggressively.
Also, hi! I don't think I've actually commented here before. Hopefully you can figure out who I am :)
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Date: 2011-09-17 10:20 pm (UTC)Yes, I had begun to notice that Jeremy Clarkson is an enormous douchebag. Any time he opens his mouth about politics, I want to hit him. There's a whiff of the Bill O'Reilly about him. Thank goodness most of the time he talks about cars. Also, there's an entire wiki page on Top Gear controversies, mostly about offensive remarks. Which I have to say, coming from a non-British perspective and possibly missing cultural context...are pretty offensive. I believe this is what's referred to as "hipster racism."
That being said, I still watch it. :) I'm actually amused by the number of anti-German jokes. Cause...that's not really a thing here, so much. But apparently they've caused quite a stir. And yeah, I could see how constantly referring to German cars and Nazis in the same breath would tick people off.
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Date: 2011-09-17 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-20 05:19 am (UTC)