This was the late sixties and in those days, when you were in another country, you were completely cut off from just about everything in your native land.
Long distance phone calls were prohibitively expensive. Air mail took two weeks to get there. It took time - months - for the latest music to get to the local record store. Forget about watching current TV shows. Those took years.
You were effectively walled off.
After two years we returned and I was a stranger in a strange land.
I was out of the loop, didn't get the jokes, or the references.
Fast forward to 2017. Everyone around the world can watch Game of Thrones at the same time.
Spotify allows me to access the music I heard at a restaurant in Italy, upon my return to New York. Versailles, a French TV series broadcast on Ovation about a young Louis XIV's quest to build his famous palace, was made in English so as to reach the largest global audience. The show's creators asserted that if Louis was alive, he would have agreed to the use of English, because he was always trying to communicate his ideas to the largest population possible.
But this isn't just about the globalization of American entertainment.
It's about all entertainment, from every corner of the world making its way to your screen as well.
Netflix recently released 3%, their first ever Brazilian science fiction TV series - available in English or Portuguese.
I'm watching.
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