Watched: Stephen Fry in America
There’s a total sense of otherness I get from watching a show like this. On the one hand, the USA is as strange to me as it ever has been - there’s the sense that different cultures have been crudely forced together like mismatched jigsaw pieces, and the natural landscape sometimes seems plucked right out of fantasy; at one point, Stephen Fry drives through Monument Valley, and it’s the sort of desolate wasteland that feels utterly alien to someone from the UK.
All that said, Fry has always embodied a certain Britishness that I never quite identified with - Cambridge-educated, full of sparkling wit and upper class sensibilities - far more interested in a nice cup of tea and a wry remark than anything else. He still captures the wonder of the places he visits, but the way he captures them sometimes comes across as just a little too judgemental, a little too fetishistic. There’s this recurrent theme of “American-ness”, and it’s one that I don’t really see anymore - there’s a spectrum of opinion and attitudes in this behemoth of a country, and to homogenize it often feels awkward.
Still - it’s a nice primer on the country, and often delves into areas that documentary series presented by Americans might well avoid.