Insularity

Tell me, do you only read American poetry? No French, British, Australian, German … ? Oh, really? Here’s a true story about the unconscious insularity that is rife in the USA among the college-educated. Australian film director Gillian Armstrong said, in 2012:

    [I] was previewing my World War II film Charlotte Gray (2001) in the US (in Pasadena) to a supposedly college-educated test audience. [In this film, a young Scottish woman joins the French Resistance during World War II to rescue her (British) Royal Air Force boyfriend who is lost in France.] Afterwards the Warner Bros head of marketing came forward extremely shamefaced, clutching a pile of audience test cards.
    
    He confessed most of the audience had a problem comprehending the film because there was a terrible gap. They didn’t know that Britain was involved in World War II. At all.
    
    Yes, they thought that someone like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan had led US troops in France and killed off all the Germans. This may be an example of a poor education program but it is also about the colonisation of culture and history.

From: Sydney Morning Herald Entertainment Guide on 30 September 2012 at http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/tv-fails-the-screen-te...