TOP 07: PIECES OF MEDIA THAT ARE A POPULAR PHENOMENON EVERYWHERE... MINUS THE U.S
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So lets be real: the U.S is acostumed to be the most influencial media exporter since the end of World War II. Its just expected that we, people from the outside, know mainly U.S American Pop Culture.
But there have always been the rule breakers, the pieces of Pop Culture from outside the U.S that for several factors, ended up becoming a phenomenon, aclaimed by public and critics, homaged in fan works, with important influential legacies in several countries... except, ironically in the U.S, that while exporting its culture to other parts of the world, rarely does the inverse of importing, favouring the consume of its own media.
So in no particular order, here are seven pieces of media that, while phenomenons in other parts of the Globe, never got popular in the land of Uncle Sam.
01. The Asterix the Gaul Franchise
Originating in France as comic books created by Renee Gosciny and Albert Uderzo, expanding into animated and live-action movies, the success of this adventure comedy series about irredutible celtic warriors who protect their village against the Roman invasions thanks to a druid's magic potion, flavoured with lots of anacronism based humour, had its success expanded to other European Countries, Canada and Latin America. In Gringoland tough? It may be sold, but under cheap price to Francobelgian Comic Geeks, precisely because isn't as popular as the Marvel and DC Superheroes.
02. Mafalda
Created by argentinian comic artist Joaquin Salvador Llavado (Quino), the Mafalda comic strips ran from 1964 to 1973, being adapted into several animated TV shorts and an animated movie. Mafalda was a very curious child who constantly asked dificult questions about the world, the society and its politics, for the despair of her parents who didn't knew how to answer her questions and didn't want to admit it. Acompaning Mafalda in her questionings and games were her baby brother Guile, her pet turtle Burocracia (Burocracy), and her friends in the neighbourhod: the dreamer Felipe, the innocent Miguelito, the little futile socialite Susanita, the idealistic Libertad and the greedy materialist Manolito. An icon of rebeliousness from Argentina who even has a statue in Buenos Aires, Mafalda's got extended to Latin America and Europe. In the U.S tough? Its pretty rare that anyone ever heard of her.
03. Chespirito
The mexican writer and comedian Roberto Gomez Bolanos, nicknamed Chespirito (spanish for Little Shakespeare) created several characters for TV shows and movies, the most famous being the orphan boy El Chavo del Ocho, the superheroe El Chapulin Colorado and the bumbling medic Doctor Chapatin. Fusing humour with pathos and social commentary about the reality of Latin America, having his shows to fellow Latam countries (minus Cuba), Europe and Asia, when Chespirito died, millions of people from Latam camed to Mexico to be present at his funeral, paying the last homage to show much he meant to them! His shows, that also got expanded into comics and cartoons, made us laugh with joy and cry with emotion. But in the U.S, he is seem as a simple exotic curiosity, as that "campy show where adults dressed as kids".
04. Pedro Almodovar Movies
With a career that goes back to the 1980s, the spanish filmaker Pedro Almodovar presented to audiences movies that, ocasionally bluring the line between fiction and reality, but rarely in a way that gets too complicated for viewers to undersant, mixed drama and comedy to tell the complicated lifes and relationships of cistraight women and lgbtq people, exploring with naturalness themes that society deems as tabu. They released some names that are now well known to Hollywood, like Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, but still they are rarely seem and talked about by U.S American audiences.
05. Saint Seiya
A manga and anime franchise created in 1986 by Masami Kurumada, Shingo Araki, Michi Himeno and the team of Toei Animation, the long-runing franchise about warriors who dress armour inspired by constellations to defend the Goddess Athena was a huge hit in Asia, Western Europe and Latin America, helping to spread the otaku comunity in those places. Sadly a marketing mistake that sold a heavily edited and censored version of the series made an atempt to sell the anime to U.S American audiences fail miserably in 2003. Recently, with the Netflix agreement that resulted in the production of a 3-D animated remake and a new dnglish dub to the original 1986 version of the series, some american viewers are discovering Saint Seiya as a kind of cult classic, in contrast to the mainstream toy selling hit it is in the rest of the world.
06. Japanese Tokusatsu Shows
During the 70s, the 80s and the 90s, Japan exported to other Asian countries, Europe and Latam, alongside the manga and anime series, the live action special effects shows known as tokusatsu. Shows like National Kid, Spectre-Man, Fuun Lion Maru, Sekai Ninja Sen Jirayia, and Giban to this day are fondly remembered by those audiences, even receiving homages like a hip-hop song named Lion Man, composed by brazilian rapper Criolo. From the 90s and forward, some of those audiences replaced the original japanese series with the americanized version of Super Sentai called the Power Rangers, but still keep hearing about and being shown the original tokusatsus by their parents. Meanwhile, in the land of Uncle Sam, besides the sci fi fans watching the Godzilla movies, audiences mostly watch the americanized versions of Super Sentai and two seasons of the equally long Kamen Rider franchise, without much curiosity for the original japanese versions.
07. Telenovelas
An heir of the serialized novels where the chapters were published daily on the newspaper, than going to radio and finally getting with all force into television, telenovelas are TV shows meant to air daily (monday to saturday), with duration on the air varying usually between six or eight months. Their plots are mostly drama and romance driven, but comedy and elements of social comentary appear in the subplots to balance things out for such a long time of exibition. Telenovelas are produced in parts of Africa, Europe and Asia, but is in Latin America that they are pratically the main cultural product and a patrimony, with Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina being the main producers of telenovelas. In the exportation field, our telenovelas are frequently exchanged between ourselves, along with sellings to África, Europe and Asia. In the U.S, while their are spanish speaking channels that exibit latam telenovelas for the hispanic comunity of California and Florida, most of the country consumes the american made soap operas, writen to air without an ending in mind, with several seasons, no different from the series. Besides some memes and react videos that select out of context scenes to portray telenovelas, again, as campy exotic curiosities, telenovela productions don't get mainstream releases with english dubs or subs for U.S audiences to know their variety of styles, themes and tones, even tough there is a telenovela category in the Emmy Awards.
