Teenage Mutant Ninja Nostalgia

I've been thinking a lot about how foreign people have different cultural literacy. I don't know if that's the right word, but maybe you know what I mean. There are certain things that, say, Danish people grow up learning or watching or hearing that, say, French people don't.

When I was 12 I remember I was talking to a friend who had recently immigrated to the US from a European country, and I made some silly reference to Paul Revere. And the girl said, "Who??" And I repeated, "Paul Revere." And she just gave me a blank stare, followed by, "Who the hell is Paul Revere?!" I very stupidly replied, "You don't know who Paul Revere is?!?!?!?"

And, of course, she didn't. Why would she? Why would a European grow up learning about some minor character (who may not even be real. Is Paul Revere real?) in AMERICAN history?


It should be interesting once I get to Israel. During Birthright I was watching some Israeli kids TV show and, apparently, it was an old episode. One of the soldiers with us happened to be in my room, so she said, "Oh, I used to watch this show when I was small. That guy [the host] used to scare me so much!" The soldier went on to talk fondly of how that show shaped her childhood in little ways like that.

I don't know. I've been thinking about that a lot as I'm about to leave, because it kind of shows how, even if we forget about the language barrier for a second, there's still so much that I'm not going to understand when I'm in Israel. I didn't grow up watching that show that the soldier (and apparently many other Israelis) grew up watching--to me, it's just some show that I'm too old for and can't understand, it's not a show that I watched religiously when I was little and that I used to be afraid of, or whatever. I don't know if any of this is making sense.

But then, of course, there's a lot of shared cultural literacy. Take these two versions of the Ninja Turtles theme. But even then, the Hebrew version (in my opinion) mutilates the classiest song ever to grace TV.

Classic Awesomeness:


The Hebrew Version