Saved by Pop

Posted Monday, June 23, 2008, 7:43 PM by Lonely Planet

Western pop culture has an insidious way of travelling. Pop icons you're familiar with from home often appear up in the most far-flung of places, winning the hearts and minds of locals. And while this might seem like another shameful example of homogenous, ubiquitous western cultural colonialism, it's great for conversation starters.

I realised this in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, while visiting a local primary school for a day of English conversation classes. The school is situated in the Old Town of Tashkent, not a great distance, but conceptually very far from the gleaming concrete and glass buildings of the city's relatively affluent centre. The Old Town has constrasts of its own; while houses are crumbling and household waste is burned in neat piles in concrete pits for lack of any other disposal method, footpaths are immaculately swept and flowerbeds are arranged in geometrically perfect formations and tended by house-proud residents.

This school is a particularly large one, attracting students from several hours away with its daily lunch, a meal that might otherwise not be possible. During the lunch break in the staff tea room, we met Mohammed, a 21-year old physical education teacher. Each struggling with our broken Russian, we found ourselves comfortably on common ground discussing one topic in particular: Britney Spears.

After covering all the usuals, favourite songs, film clips, dance moves, I became intensely curious about his personal take on the pop-princess's latest troubles: the head shaving, the rehab, the custody battles. The ensuing silence spoke volumes.

Britney's hits have made it around the world several times over, and while every Uzbek worth their salt knows the lyrics to her songs almost perfectly ("Oops I did it, oh yeah"), not all were completely abreast with her recent spate of personal problems. How was I to know news travelled so slowly in the Former Soviet Union?

But after the silence, during which Mohammed processed the meaning of what I had just told him about his favourite and most revered musical influence, he responded with a maturity and wisdom far beyond his years, experience and situation.

"I guess that's what happens when you have too much money."

Jenni Kauppi

Labels: Making friends, Pop culture

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