commodifying ethnicity: fly song

today i traveled from NY to Ft. Lauderdale on song airlines. it was an interesting experience from every angle, but specifically from a media and cultural perspective. i was excited for the dish network television piped directly to my seat, an impressive direction for airline entertainment (thank you jetblue). the linux-based in flight network also allows you to purchase movies, games and music on your credit card, but it also offers a trivia game that you can play against your fellow passengers. very hip.

also, when i got on the plane, the ambient music was anything but ambient. pop music playing at standard listening volume accompanied by luggage storage. i couldn’t decide whether or not i was ok with this decision because as i sat in my seat trying to read a back issue of the economist, i kept listening to gwen stefani singing about if she was a rich girl... [ugh]. a subject for another blog i assure you. i couldn't relax in my seat before the flight took off, all i was thinking was "gwen stefani; cultural thief."

finally it was time to prepare for departure. the music was turned off, and the PA system switched to the introduction to flight procedures. the audio came in with some very cheesy, cliche flamenco music, accompanied by a woman with a thick spanish accent telling us how to buckle our seatbelts and don life jackets in the most marketable spanglish i've heard since the last McDonald's commercial. just as i began to feel like i was eating in a mediocre tex-mex chain restaurant with a woman telling me the specials in an "authentic flamenco dress" made in china, she stopped. it was time for "de castanets." i turned to my neighbor and we both died laughing. i couldn't decide whether to be offended or pity the fool who approved this decision.

the answer came to me when the awful spanglish instructions were over and the spanish translation came over the PA system. the woman recounting the flight procedures in spanish spoke with less of an accent than the english-speaking flamenco actress! and there was no music, there was no castanets, and there sure wasn't the exact opposite cultural statement, i.e. some southerner speaking awful spanish with banjos playing behind him.

so song, you get a B for effort and a D for execution. believe it or not, there is a wrong way to commodify globalization and multiculturalism.