I want a TV

Tomorrow morning, I am going to the Marchés aux Puces, the biggest flea market in Paris. Purportedly, I am doing this in order to 1. Practice my french 2. Find a radio 3. Find a coffeemaker. While those appliances are all well and good (especially the second-- caffeine, I miss you so much), there is one that I secretly crave and will buy if I can find a used one startlingly cheap: television.

I don't think I am a huge TV watcher. Over the summer, I made a habit of it, sure, but I rarely watch it at school. Still, I caught a glimpse of French television my first morning here, and I have to admit, I'm pretty intrigued. I think it is likely as dumb as American television, but here's the thing-- when the banality of TV is translated to a just-learned language and unfamiliar culture, it becomes really interesting. Some things that were strikingly similar, like, Le Destin du Lisa, their version of-- well, I think you can see:

Though this picture really does look like the American Betty, the cast is completely different, and the show is set in France.

A good deal of what's on would not fit in at all with American programming. The first time I was in France, my mother and I saw a documentary about a nudist colony on one of the main channels. While I wasn't lucky enough (!) to catch a re-run, I did watch a program about a bunch of wealthy teenagers. It comes on around ten on a weekend morning, right after cartoons. By 10:15 two couples had gone from being fully clad to this:

then this

Of course, there were a few scenes I would've felt uncomfortable photographing in between. Which is normal, you know, in the evening, but right after morning cartoons?

And of course, the commercials. I didn't manage to catch this classic:


But there were some along the same vein, which I think are really preferable to the American car commercials where seat stowing is all about letting the kid out to pee, or stowing shopping bags under, or going on a picturesque family vacation with a picturesque family. I mean, c'mon.

So how much of this actually reflects on the culture, and how much just seems strange because of a different visual style, language, etc.? I found myself thinking about this in the weeks before leaving the US-- when I watched something ( knowing that a lot of our especially heinous programming is exported around the world), I tried to think about what type of values it indicated were important.

Which is really interesting, of course (really), but since I'm tired, I'll admit that I'm partly saying all this to convince myself there's some legitimacy in finding a cheap TV just to watch the French Ugly Betty. I mean, look at her dad!

Who is he? Who cuts his hair? Is he really that big, or is his coat stuffed with pillows? Why does he look completely different from his family, and for that matter, any other human being on Earth?

These are questions I must have answered, and I can't do it without a TV.