What a Weekend :/

Between hours of yard and house work, I had time to catch two anti-Semitic comments and consider what happens when a non-voting country borrows television shows from voting countries.

Oni has an old synagogue that still attracts tourists, though the congregation apparently left during the war years. Their houses stand empty along one road on the edge of town. Currently, there are 6 Jews in Oni, a family, and the synagogue has no rabbi. Generally, people speak respectfully of Jews as being exceptionally intelligent people. As a curly-haired bibliophile with a Hebrew name, I’ve found that older women here sometimes ask if I’m Jewish. They always seem disappointed when I reply that I’m not. With all of these things considered, I had decided that most people here looked on Jews kindly. So I was shocked yesterday when a neighbor (it’s worth noting that she is one of the town crazies) came over and said: “If only it will rain this coming weekend! How glad I’ll be. The Jews have their holiday then; if it’s bad weather for their holiday then it will be sunny for Easter for us.” I was the only one in the room who even raised an eyebrow. Having decided long ago that it’s best this neighbor doesn’t realize that I understand or speak any Georgian, I waited to speak until she had left. Then I commented to my host-mother that I really didn’t like that remark. She shrugged, and I crossed my fingers for a sunny Passover.

Even then, I interpreted the shrug as agreement until this morning. There was an argument in my house. While I don’t need to go into the details, trust me when I say that people were unusually angry. In the US, insults are usually aimed at the victim personally: idiot, fool, jerk, bitch, etc. Here, insults usually refer to the victim’s family: your grandmother, your “patron” (owner), your mother. Sometimes they may refer to a person’s background (you’re from a village, your house has no doors, you were born in a donkey pen, etc.), but they rarely attack someone’s personality. I mean…they do, but those aren’t the common insults. Point being, during this morning’s fight my host-mom whirled and spat at her mother, “You Jew!” That was the end of the fight. I kept my head bent over my work as I felt my cheeks flush. Sure, my family here has said lots of nice things about Jews (and generally of people of different ethnicities/faiths). But in a moment of anger…

On a different topic, many popular TV shows here are copies of Western shows. We have Georgian versions of “American Idol” and “Britain’s Got Talent.” There’s a Georgian “Dancing with the Stars” and a Georgian “Top Model.” Interestingly, the translation of “Top Model” is actually “Top Girl”…because this is the ideal for all girls?? Anyway…Everyone watches these shows, and often it gives us an easy warm-up exercise for English classes: talking about what we saw that we did or didn’t like and why. “Dancing Stars” is the first show I’m actually following, and I’m noticing a few interesting things. Two, really. First, the judges always seem to score dancers neutrally between 5 and 7. 6 is the most common score from any one judge. Second, everyone talks about watching the show, but no one has mentioned actually texting in a vote. During the finale of the “American Idol” spin-off, I remember three people saying that they had voted. This is interesting. These shows were designed for audiences in voting countries. There are different contenders, official ‘experts’ who comment on their opinions of the worthiness of the contenders, and then there is a vote. Audience members watch the contenders perform, listen (somewhat) to the opinions of the experts, and then voice their (informed or un-informed) opinions. The contender who most appeals to the crowd wins. These shows were designed for people whose school grades were based off test scores, whose politicians are usually elected through popular vote, and whose culture produces slogans like “See something, say something” and “Your vote counts!” In essence, these shows assume an audience who wants to participate and be heard.

The “experts” know that they only have half of the attention of the audience. They also know that their role is two-fold: to express their opinions but also to educate the audience. The “expert” scores are educational in that they provide perspective for audience members like myself who may not actually know what a perfectly-executed waltz or tango looks like. Because of this, the “experts” use the whole range of scores available to them, for example using exceptionally low scores to communicate to the audience that a dance—however ‘pretty’ or not it may have looked—was not what it should have been.

Then we take these reality shows and try them here. The judges may or may not be more of experts than anyone else in the audience, depending on the show. Regardless, they give safe, neutral, median scores. Perhaps this is because they don’t want to be responsible for an opinion that could be considered unpopular or extreme. Perhaps this is because they want to shift responsibility for deciding the competition solely onto the audience members. Perhaps this is because they think (accurately or not) that their scores don’t communicate anything important to the audience (who may or may not be listening). And maybe it’s true that the audiences isn’t listening to the jury. But if they don’t vote it doesn’t matter. Maybe people in the cities vote. Someone must, for the shows to stay on TV. But why don’t people here? Is it because text-messages are expensive? No. They’re text-message addicted. Is it because they don’t like the shows? No. They have heated discussions about them classrooms and shops. So either they are afraid to be responsible for officially expressed opinions or they think their votes don’t matter. And…sometimes I wonder exactly how much my vote matters in American bureaucracy, but at the bottom of the bottom I want to vote. Maybe it doesn’t count in the big electoral college system, but if there’s a 2% chance that it matters than I want to cast it, and if I don’t vote then I sincerely feel I forfeit my right to comment on how things turn out. (If I have the chance to try to change things and I don’t bother then really how can I justify whining later if things don’t change?) But it’s different here. Many of my students feel like their individual thoughts and opinions don’t matter to anyone outside (or sometimes within) their close circles of friends and family. And when they see people losing their jobs for petition-signing or being interrogated for expressing agreement with an opposition candidate, they might very practically conclude that it’s safer to keep their opinions to themselves anyway. I don’t blame them, but I’m curious to see how our school-version of “Georgia’s Got Talent” differs from the televised version. In a familiar and secure community, I wonder if the judges will actually give honest scores and more importantly if the audience members will actually stand up and have their votes counted.