Game Shows Show the World’s Vast Differences : Television: Anne Cooper-Chen studied 265 shows from 50 countries. She found four ‘cultural continents.’

After eight years of studying game shows, Anne Cooper-Chen occasionally lapses into host-speak.

“What do Japan and Belgium and the United States have in common?” she asks. “I’m not sure what, but they love game shows. The key is who likes what kind where. Game shows in Brazil would probably not make it here.”

That’s the basis for her book “Games in the Global Village,” for which Cooper-Chen, director of the Center for International Journalism at Ohio University, analyzed 265 shows from 50 countries (and insists that she’ll never do it again).

She says that despite worldwide use of electronic media--especially television--there is not a true “global village” as suggested in 1962 by cultural critic Marshall McLuhan in “The Gutenberg Galaxy.” Her book--the title is a play on McLuhan’s later work, “Peace and War in the Global Village”--contends that individual cultures have not dissolved in the sea of electronic information.

Instead, she found, there are four “cultural continents” that have different standards for what they find entertaining--at least in terms of game shows.

Some might question the value of studying the world’s game shows. But when Cooper-Chen introduces her topic of expertise, she sometimes uses the words of the late Commissioner of Baseball (and Yale professor) A. Bartlett Giamatti: “We can learn far more about the conditions and values of a society by contemplating how it chooses to play, to use its free time, to take its leisure, than by examining how it goes about its work.”

To Cooper-Chen, game shows are perfect in this regard, because they are cheap enough to produce so that even the poorest countries have them. “So it seemed like a very democratic way of having a window on a huge field of entertainment television,” she said.

While doing research as a Fulbright scholar in Japan last year, Cooper-Chen saw marked differences between what Americans and Japanese find amusing.

On Japan’s “Trans-America Ultra Quiz,” for example, the game begins with thousands of people in a stadium, who are quickly pared down to a group of 50 through a series of yes-or-no questions. The process of elimination continues in various cities in the United States.

“They make the loser do humiliating, almost death-defying penalties. Like in New Orleans, getting in one of those horse-carts and pulling the winners. . . . Or in Atlanta, walking up 72 flights of stairs,” Cooper-Chen explains. “Would we watch that? No. But (in Japan) you’ve got to be able to take it. And if you don’t win, you’ve still got to be able to take it and not buckle.”

Unlike programs in the Western cultural continent--North America, Western Europe and Australia--most East Asian shows do not feature civilians competing for cash or prizes. The Japanese, who export most of the shows in that region, expect celebrity contestants and quality, prime-time game shows.

The only things that the United States and Japan seem to have in common are the large number of shows they produce (Japan had 30 games shows on six television channels last fall) and the fact that home audiences like to play along.

But neither county would tolerate the shows from the Latin continent, which includes Mexico and most of Central and South America. In Chile, for example, “Sabado Gigante” airs for 10 hours, propelled by the near-cult status of host Don Francisco. The games themselves are more physical than quiz-style.

“That’s more like watching people like you making fools of themselves, trying to go up a greased ladder, or having a hat in which to try to catch eggs. It’s like the old ‘Truth or Consequences.’ A lot of movement,” Cooper-Chen says.

The final cultural continent, which she dubbed Equatorial, includes countries in Africa and the Middle East, Jamaica and India. These nations tend to watch cheaply produced quiz shows like the old “College Bowl,” where academic teams compete. Often the shows are produced by state-run broadcast systems that use TV for social development.

While these quizzes showcase knowledge, Cooper-Chen says, they aren’t particularly educational because answers are never explained.

“The only country that’s using the interactive and competitive qualities of game shows to teach is the U.S. There’s a (PBS) geography game, ‘(Where in the World is) Carmen Sandiego?’ And there’s a show called ‘Square One’ (also on PBS) that’s a math show that about once a week has a game-show segment.”

Western audiences especially may get more educational game shows in the future, she says, as producers take advantage of our familiarity with the format. But with more cable and satellite television access, we also may see more shows like Italy’s “Colpo Grosso,” which features both civilian and professional strippers. A copy-cat production, “Tutti Frutti,” is already on satellite out of Germany and can be seen as far away as Israel.

“Just imagine ‘The Price Is Right’ refrigerator fondlers, except they’re dressed in these little skimpy outfits. And they’ve got fruit tattoos on (one of) their breasts, only nobody knows if it’s left or right,” she says. And when the contestants and the answer must be verified--”they just open up their fronts, which are Velcro or something.”