There are, I've been told, no movie theatres in Madagascar. Peoples' exposure to movies comes from home-run theatres; in my town, there's a family that runs movies off a generator on a small TV. Unfortunately too late for me, but I get to see their advertisements for shows, which generally run along the lines of: "Fists of Steel Action 100%!!" There is one TV station here--MTV. I'm rarely exposed to it, but I did once spend an enjoyable half hour watching a French cartoon.
American pop music is known somewhat here (“(Your Love is) Wicked” and “If I Were a Boy” are big now), but less than I thought it would be. And NO ONE knows who the Beatles are. The truly loved American imports are reggae (OK, not so American I guess!) and country (“She's Gone Country” and “Kiss This” often play on the radio, and I've heard a number of Shania Twain ringtones). But the number one Western music import is Michael Jackson. I think I may have mentioned this already, but in case you didn't know, the world is obsessed with MJ. When I first got here, Malagasy radio news was reporting that Michael Jackson wasn't, in fact, dead, and I was asked for a month afterward to confirm this miraculous news.
The visual media culture in Madagascar is centered around Malagasy music videos. Restaurants, houses, even some of the nicer taxi brousses show music videos on a running loop. And as there are only one or two dozen really popular songs, they get familiar pretty quickly. If you want to look up some Gasy tunes, Wawa, Lola, and Viavy Chile are all pretty popular.
One of the most popular songs isn't Gasy at all—Shakira's “Waka Waka” World Cup song is sung daily here and, I suspect, all over Africa. Incomprehensible but way catchy.
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