"You mean you don't drink Fizzy Melon Soda? Everyone in the U.S. drinks Fizzy Melon Soda," my students would tell me. After I reassured them that Fizzy Melon Soda did not exist in the U.S and I had never tasted the stuff, even in Japan, they still wouldn't believe me. The ads for Fizzy Melon Soda that tied the product to the U.S. were far more powerful than my word, that of a genuine American.
"Where are your guns?" would be something else my Japanese students would ask me.
"What do you mean?" I would reply. "I don't have any guns. Besides, you can't have guns in Japan."
"But you must have guns," they would say. "Everyone from the U.S. has guns; we've seen it on television." I would attempt to reassure them, tell them I had never owned a gun in my life, but somehow I always had the feeling they were visually inspecting me, trying to gauge if the pockets of my jacket had some bulky item protruding from them that would confirm their suspicions of me as a typical American, gun-toting, junior John Wayne.
Yes, it was a problem of confused cultural geography. The difficulties with cultural geography seem to be everywhere. Just check out the ad for Nathan's of Kyrgyzstan I got my hands on.
You can see each borough of New York, its spelling in the Cyrillic alphabet and the signature snack with which the borough is associated. According to this ad, Manhattan loves the "Manhattan hot dog" which is a frankfurter in a bun with bacon shreds and pickles. I hadn't remembered ever seeing a hot dog like that in any of my visits to Manhattan so I Googled "Manhattan hot dog" and found no traces of this culinary delight ever existing in New York's glitziest borough. In fact, the only specific entry I found on Google for "Manhattan hot dog" is a company called "Manhattan Hotdogs." And that company is a fast food chain based in France and their notions of what a Manhattan hot dog is happen to be quite different than what it is in Manhattan or at the Bishkek Nathan's.
As you can gather from this culinary map of New York, the other boroughs are also victims of confused cultural geography. I didn't even need to use Google to know that the folks in Queens aren't spending their Friday nights preparing tasty batches of Queens french fries with cheese sauce and mushrooms. Only my father's borough of birth, Staten Island, comes away relatively unscathed as I could actually imagine him and his fellow Staten Islanders eating a hot dog with mustard in their home borough. However, I don't think a plain hot dog with mustard is a distinctive specialty of Staten Island or anywhere else for that matter.
No doubt future generations of American English teachers in Kyrgyzstan will be wondering why their students are asking them if they enjoy Manhattan hot dogs, that wonderful treat of a frankfurter smothered in dry bacon and pickles. And generations of young Kyrgyz students will be wondering why their American English teachers are so dimwitted and ignorant of American cuisine. Even worse, very few people realize that much of what they perceive about the rest of the world and its cultural geography comes from marketers and the mass media and is as accurate as saying the moon is made of green cheese (which some people a hundred years ago speculated might be the case). More troubling is my personal observation that the people I have met who are most certain of their knowledge of cultural geography and make the strongest judgments based on their knowledge are often those who are the most confused. It's all relatively harmless when we are talking about foodways and other such things. Unfortunately, much of our other cultural geography, on far more important issues like religion or sexuality, that we consume from the media--and worst of all from politicians and other nefarious sorts who are trying to persuade us--is equally as suspect and radically inaccurate as Bishkek Nathan's take on New York snacks. Most unfortunate of all is that we vote, and make decisions, and judge individuals and entire groups of people based on the ignorance that springs from the confused cultural geography we assume is truth. How much of the bigotry, racism, and hatred on this planet is fueled by confused--and often malevolently constructed--cultural geography?
If I ever I decide to eat at Nathan's in Bishkek I will order a Manhattan hot dog and some Queens french fries and I will marvel at the fact that the human race is somehow still intact despite the troubles that arise from its infinite confusion with cultural geography.
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