Entertainment value

The economic problems in the United States have been dire, and we all got to know about this because of the great source of information we call 'The Media.'  They have been willing to explain, in detail, every last horrible event that has happened to us, is happening to us, or has the slightest chance of possibly happening to us sometime in the future.  And most of the time they can do it with that great air or superiority.  "This is Richard Williams here with Channel eight news.  Today I'm interviewing people who lost all their money to a sadistic pyramid scheme.  Right now I'm here with Samantha Regents, she is one of those who has become poor and homeless after her savings were stolen.  Sure the scam was pretty easy to spot but these people just weren't smart enough to double check their sources.  They invested all their money without fully checking first where it was going and now they're poor.  Did I mention ugly?  Yeah ugly they're too...  Sam, anything to add, or do you need me to speak slower?"  Although I think the Media may exacerbate some of our problems.


So as I was saying before The Media cut me off; I think that the United States has a great potential to make money that we are not using.  This source of revenue is our entertainment industry.  In Spain I expected to see about half of everything on the T.V to be of American origin and then a healthy dose of Spanish originals.  This is not the case.  Almost everything I have seen or heard here has come from the shores on the other side of the Atlantic.  In addition they have also adopted our ability to make almost every commercial sexist.  If there is an ad featuring a sad woman, you can bet that a cleaning product will come around to make her happy, or at least a new innovation in cooking or child rearing.  If a male is present in a commercial, there is only one guarantee, after using the advertised products he will be much more appealing, sexually, to women.  Or it is a car commercial, the only up side is that they have yet to adopt our legal advertisements, I really don't need to hear again that I can sue the pants off a stranger because he rear ended me.  Now, on the actual show front, it's true that there are some original creations of the cinema and T.V programming here, but they are few and usually of poor quality.  For example there is a nationally revered film festival in my city, the San Sebastian film festival (points for creativity), where many movies of Spanish origin are aired.  Some local theaters adopted these films for the length of the film festival, and I was excited when my host brother and a couple friends invited me out to the movies one night.  I thought I was going to experience a Spanish work of art when we arrived at the theater and every movie it was showing was taken straight from the festival.  My host brother did not have the same sentiments.  I came to learn, from people checking the movies that were playing, that very few locals actually like the films brought in through their festival.  Our little group decided that rather than watch one of these low budget, preachy, handycam films we would go all the way across the city to watch "The American."

The situation is virtually the same when it comes to T.V series.  The Simpsons, Scrubs, American Dad, Spongebob, and other shows from America are the standard.  Besides news channels the only popular T.V program I have seen over here is a drama about Spain in the 1500's.  The name translates to "Red Eagle" and my host familiy here tapes every episode.  I will admit, the show has its moments, times when the characters are well depicted and the situation is either emotionally moving, or hilarious, but it would not stand next to American dramas.  But don't feel bad for Spain, they don't put nearly as much money into their entertainment industry: special effects pale, actors stumble, and plot lines have more budget friendly conflicts.  So this is why I say we should start a sort of reverse tariff, tax other countries if they want to use our entertainment, all the way down to websites.  I'm involved in a U.S based fantasy Basketball league here and the entire site is in English.  Sure I've never played a fake draft before or really watched games, but the NBA is more popular than the Spanish league even amongst the Spanish, the league isn't so much for me to learn the culture, but rather earn some man points.  Other ways to earn man points include getting females' phone number with all 7 digits and not using directions, ever.  These are not to be confused with d-bag points which are primarily earned through fist pumping.

So I say that since we've invested so much money in our entertainment industry we should charge the rest of the world to use it.  Every country is good at something and we have to embrace our skills, Germany has cars, Australia has surfboards, Japan has gameshows interspersed with truly demented and emotionally scarring horror movies, and we have the rest of entertainment.  If my plan is adopted by congress, as I assume it will be, I just ask that you wait about eight months to implement it, losing Scrubs would be a severe blow for my Spanish education (I know almost every episode and therefore the direct translation for all the lines).  When countries don't buy our shows we can always implement trade embargoes on other supplies, or if we're really REALLY serious, we could threaten a send over our lawyers and newscasters.  The country would be on its knees in a matter of days.