Asia, the graveyard of western popular culture

1. A few days ago a friend who was holidaying in Bali sent me this message:

2. “The scene: quiet bar in Ubud, Bali. The soundtrack: “How Do You Talk to an Angel?”. It’s the song that won’t die!”

3. Indeed. I’ve been to Indonesia twice now, and while I have only spent a cumulative total of 32 days there there has been some eye-opening music experiences — and I don’t mean the ethnic local music kind. Ever wondered what Maroon 5 sounded like in Engrish? I didn’t, but I found out several times. Did you know that The Spin Doctors is still together? And touring? And speaking of touring, Foreigner, Whitesnake, and by God Michael Jackson have all toured Japan in the last 12 months. Marty Friedman from Megadeth lives in Tokyo. While you’re at it Billy Blanks’ new fitness video, Billy’s Boot Camp, is so fucking popular that in the space of one week I had some 20 people volunteer that they have used the video. Someone, please, shoot me.

4. (And, as my friend notes, Jakarta sports its own fair share of anachronisms: [Timezone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timezone(videoarcades), Sizzler, Fido Dido (when was Fido bloody Dido popular anyway?), and a tenacious fondness for Frente.)

5. And it’s not just music and fitness videos, cartoon characters are all the rage as well. While the rest of the world may be fixated on Japanimation, the Japanese is fixated on Disney. Oh yes, Mickey might be an arthritic geriatric mouse, but boy does he sell. So does Winnie the Pooh (a.k.a Pooh-san), Stitch (as in Lilo and Stitch), Tweety, Miffy and Gaspard et Lisa, to name a few.

6. (And that’s not including the home-grown characters — Hello Kitty, Little Twin Stars, Charmy Kitty and the rest of the Sanrio stable are still hard at work earning Mr Sanrio his dinner.)

7. But perhaps there’s a shift happening; Asian movies are finding its way into Western cinemas, Asian music is starting to find traction overseas, Asian actors are finding their way onto Western screens and into Western minds. East and West are merging, interwined in a web of images and sounds and thoughts and ideas, creating a new mosaic of identity: one defined not by the geography of past centuries, but one where we can be anything, limited only by what we are willing to accept.

8. And what will we do with our cherished notion of nationality? Will it be thrown out, or incorporated into a wider notion of “humanality”? Or am I just making words up? We are certainly living in interersting times.

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