At home in the States, I often watch TV channels such as BBC America that help to give me different perspective on news and culture outside my own country. So when I get the opportunity to be abroad, I really enjoying watching television in the countries that I'm visiting to help give me insights into the cultures I'm visiting.
Granted, hotels offer a limited selection, but the diversity I have here at the hotel in England is significant. For example, within the past 24 hours, I have seen the following on the handful of channels offered:
- Global news channels such as BBC, CNN and Sky News. The latter channel often features a person using sign language for the hearing-impaired.
- Arabic, German, Japanese and Spanish language channels
- Proactiv and other infomercials -- in German (not dubbed). The Proactiv infomercials particularly interested me. They are so ubiquitous in the USA that I couldn't help myself and I sat through a whole 30 minutes watching the "program" unfold auf deutsch just to compare/contrast it to the American versions.
I'm not a fan of reality TV and I don't watch the vast majority of reality shows produced in the USA. The one exception I can remember was a PBS series trying to recreate early colonial life.
But tonight I discovered a gem on BBC2 called Tribal Wives. The series, produced by Diverse Productions, spends each one of six episodes with a different British woman who gives up her everyday live and spends a month living with one of the world's remotest tribes.
This evening I watched Yvonne, a 37-year-old mother of three from Blackpool, spend a month with Namibia's semi-nomadic polygamous Himba tribe. I was transfixed.
The production web site explained the concept of the series:
"To get a real sense of her new life, all the women will be expected to spend a month living with their new families and immersing themselves fully into their new culture. They will need to work, eat and sleep exactly as the other tribal women in order to experience what it is really like to live in the community.
In turn, the series will reflect on the tribe's perception of Western culture and garner their views on their visitors: members of the tribe will be interviewed each week to assess how the British women are doing, how well each woman is integrating into the community, how useful she is and the strength of the individual relationships she forges."
Caitlin Moran of The Times wrote in her review of the series:
For starters, the "wives" aren't ludicrous, privileged, shallow, Western cliche's.
Tribal Wives deftly avoids that trap, which made me reflect how an American production would have ruined the whole concept and taken it to a whole new (low) level by filming something like "The Housewives of Orange County Go To Borneo". We had none of that tonight. I was impressed by the way Yvonne really worked to understand and enter into the culture in which she was placed, in spite of all the expected and resultant culture shock.
Moran went on to write,
But where Tribal Wives really shows off its non-stupid chops is with the tribes themselves. As with [previous series] Tribe before it, Tribal Wives doesn't present the natives as a collective mass of spiritually superior primitives, with funny food, scary toilets and tiny loin-cloths. The film-makers feel as at ease and familiar with the tribes as they are with the Western women. The Waorani of Ecuador and the Kuna of Panama are presented as the joking, teasing, stroppy, tearful, analytical equals of the [British women].
Anthropologists and others will certainly find things to criticize in the series. However, I found it generally respectful and illuminating -- and very human. It's certainly a series I would recommend to anyone interested in international educational exchange and intercultural communication -- especially young women.
I hope we'll see it soon on BBC America. We could use more series like this.
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What a great find! It sounds so interesting. I really do hope it comes to BBC America, as I would love to see this. Although I don\'t watch a lot of US reality tv, my husband and I were mesmerized by Ladette to Lady on BBC America, however it was rather trashy and a typical reality tv show, but addictive nonetheless.
Cant you guys use BBC iPlayer? Lots more good shows, for free! What do Americans think about the liscence fee? Would you pay it? Its a lot of money, but I would hate to ever lose the Beeb.
The BBC player is not, at this time, an option for users based outside the UK.
The BBC has a FAQ available on using BBC Player at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/help/player/
which says:
\"...we don\'t have the infrastructure to allow individual licence fee payers to access these services while abroad\"
The BBC also explains:
\"For many programmes, there are broadcast rights restrictions, which don\'t allow us to show BBC Two programmes and content to people outside the UK. In addition, broadband content is expensive for the BBC to stream, so we have to give priority to people within the UK, who ultimately bear the cost of us doing this through their licence fee....Some BBC programmes are available via our international services (see bbc.co.uk/info/channels) or through agreements with commercial broadcasters overseas. \"
In the USA, some cable TV systems carry BBC America (usually for an additional fee), which has a number of BBC programs available, although they are sometimes show months after they\'ve been on the BBC in the UK and it isn\'t the full range of BBC shows. At this point, I\'d rather get BBC America on cable (which I already pay for) than pay a high fee to get the BBC programming on the Internet, if it were available to users outside of the UK.
Hi,
Im Yvonne. Episode 4 Tribal Wives Namibia. I just wanted to say, it was an amazing experience.
My emotional intelligence has increased, and I feel that I have grown so much as a person.
After been brought up in a strict roman catholic family in Ireland, I had lost my spirituality.
However, I have now gained the art of letting go of everything that caused negativity and worry. For the first time ever, I have been able to develop a relationship with myself.
As you know, we all went to live with different tribes throughout the world. I have spoken to 3 of the other women, and it appear that we all have changed from an emotional level.
It was unfortunate that the programme was only one hour, as whilst I was out there, there was an exorcism, and at one time, I was so dehydrated, my veins kept collapsing.
I feel very lucky to have been chosen and I am so glad you enjoyed the programme.
Best wishes,
Yvonne
I actually remember a while back when they would have a family live like that for a while, and its so funny how they would all start crying cause it was so tough.
thankyou so much for leaving your comments Yvonne, i was very interested in knowing how the experience affected you. it would be great to see a \'tribal wives\' blog in which all six women speak about their experiences!
Wonderful website you have here but I was wondering if you knew of any message boards that cover the same topics discussed in this article? I\'d really like to be a part of online community where I can get advice from other experienced people that share the same interest. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Also would you care if I show your blog with my zynga group? There\'s a lot of people that I think would really enjoy your content. Please let me know. I\'ll go ahead and bookmark your site to come back later on Thanks a lot.
I\'m glad you\'re enjoying the content and you are welcome to share it. I\'m sure there are message boards and forums that cover similar topics, but I suggest using Google searches to find them.