“Dallas” for the Nobel Peace Prize

Before going any further, allow me to state the obvious in that I have been woefully lacking in my blog posts over the last month.  For this I apologize, as it came about from a combination of traveling, training, partying, and general laziness.  To make up for this dereliction of duty, I am going to try to make daily posts for the next several days to update everyone on what has transpired and what will be transpiring during these days of South African vacation.

For today, though, I would like to address something that I noticed when I first went traveled to Germany this time last year, and has continually popped up during my time here in South Africa.  This realization is that during the 80s when it was on TV, the entire world, whether it be White, Black, Texan, German, or South African, pretty much everyone watched the soap opera “Dallas”.  I,unfortunately, am too young to have been party to this cultural phenomenon, though I do have vague recollections of my parents sending me out of the room when the show came on because they felt I was too young for that kind of material.  Whatever the case, I knew that the show had been popular, but I had no idea of its worldwide appeal until I began going outside American borders.

Last year as I spent New Year’s in Munich with a German friend who had been a foreign exchange student in my high school, I remember sitting at her dinner table talking with her mom about how much the mom had loved “Dallas”.  The mom related her memories of how she faithfully tuned in and still clearly remembers the episode “Who shot J.R.”, which as far as I know, is still one of the most watched TV episodes of all time.  That experience made me recall one of the textbooks I had in German class during high school.  The books were quite old, so naturally the content was of the late ‘80s variety and I distinctly remember one of the pictures of a billboard.  If I’m not incorrect, the advertisement said “Kaffee ohne Milch ist wie Dienstags ohne ‘Dallas’” which translates to “Coffee without milk is like Tuesdays without ‘Dallas’”.  My German friend’s mom simply confirmed that J.R. captured the imagination of the Teutonic people as much as he did that of his American counterparts.

That was a year ago, and I didn’t give it too much thought until I got here to South Africa and was spending an enjoyable Sunday with some Afrikaners in my town.  After showing me their farm, the Afrikaners suggested we go to the “local”, which happened to be the bar called “The Texas Lodge” I have mentioned in previous posts.  Being a Texan, drinking a beer in the Texas Lodge, the conversation naturally turned towards things Texan, and the Afrikaner couple mentioned how much they loved “Dallas” when it was on.  They, too, talked of the “Who Shot J.R.” episode, and how they tuned in every week to see what new intrigues there would be in the Lone Star State.  Another lady who was with us who grew up in Cape Town, said that when she was in that city, restaurants simply closed down on Tuesdays at 7:30, since there would be no business because they knew everyone would be at home watching “Dallas”.

Not more than two weeks later, somehow I also got to talking with the Black lady who I am currently living with about “Dallas”.  She informed me that her mom was the most dedicated viewer of the show, and that if you tried to disturb her when Larry Hagman was on, she would curtly tell you to come back after “Dallas” was over.  I simply cannot help but laughing at the comedy of that picture.  Despite the fact that apartheid was still in force, with Blacks being forcibly confined to the townships and the Whites enjoying their privilege in the town, both parties sat down at the same time every week to figure out what the oil barons from Texas were up to.

This makes me all the more sad that I do not have the cultural knowledge to fully appreciate this.  I, myself, have never seen the show, and only know bits and pieces of the plot.  I mean, what was it that made a soap opera about a Texan oil family, equally appealing to Germans, Afrikaners, and Black South Africans?  Is the myth of Texas really that strong and interesting to the rest of the world?  In the absence of Netflix, such education will have to wait until I return to the US.

Even with the paucity of such understanding, I think it serves to highlight the cliché of how much we all have in common.  It makes me wish that there was some technology from NASA, where the astronauts could have taken a picture from space that showed all the places where “Dallas” was being watched.  I can just imagine Germans sitting down to dinner with their Sauerkraut, Afrikaners with their Boerwors, and Black South Africans with their Pap, all watching the beloved Texas show.  If there is a better picture of world unity and peace, I can’t think of one. 

It is for that reason that I am hereby nominating “Dallas” for the Nobel Peace Prize since I’m pretty sure that if Nelson Mandela had had access to TV while he was imprisoned on Robben Island, he too would have tuned in.