Culture

I just finished eating my breakfast the other day when I noticed a sign outside the restaurant. It pointed to Golden Friendship Park. I remarked to my companion that I didn’t know that the park was called that even though I had already lived almost four years in the city. He said he’d show me why the park carried such a name.

He took me for a walk and pointed at the park benches. Nearly each bench was occupied by a homeless individual. “The park is just like a friend’s home,” he began. “You can’t sleep on someone else’s furniture if it didn’t belong to your best friend.”

He then directed my attention to a makeshift donut shop at the center of the park where street kids, who seemed like they could each down a calf, milled around for yesterday’s donuts to be handed out. “Who but a friend would allow such sponsored treats in the morning?”

“In the evening,” he continued. “Prostitutes and intoxicated students barely out of their teen years take their turn at other park amusements. No one but a tolerant friend would allow such liberal abuse of his property.”

I couldn’t help but agree that the park had been aptly named.

In the Western world, depression is a serious, life threatening psychological condition that must be treated seriously with a range of medications, counseling techniques and alternative remedies. Suggesting that it is a condition that is all in the mind may promptly earn you a public flogging.

I have been educated for four years in Western psychology and I have lived half of my life with frequent bouts of depression. I therefore should not contradict what the West has to say about depression. A friend however has recently pointed out that depression is an illness of sophisticated people which is probably why I’ve survived this long. I am not a sophisticated daughter of the privileged West.

In the third world, financial poverty is a natural cure for depression. People are simply just too busy trying to find a way to divert the gastric juices from eating up the stomach walls.

NBC’s “Victoria Beckham: Coming to America” finally aired last Sunday in the U.S. and it seems it has only served to heighten some people’s impression of Victoria as– well– posh. The documentary featuring Mrs. Beckham’s glamorous travails over the details of her family’s transfer to the U.S. did capture the third most watched slot on prime time T.V. That doesn’t say much though about the mindless bashing the former Spice Girl got from unappreciative critics. Posh in a negative kind of way may have been the mildest adjective used for Victoria. Other critics have gone on to call her snobbish, vain and vapid.

Naturally, Victoria’s seemingly shallow rants over designer accessories, manicurists and stylists have pissed off critics who worry over the millions of destitute, poverty stricken humans in third world countries. Well, a negative impression may be all you will ever get if you weren’t quick enough to catch the dry, slightly sarcastic trademark British humor beneath the seemingly unintelligent, self-indulgent banter. If you’d like, maybe Victoria would be more than willing to run the jokes by you again.

Oh, and by the way, there is no modern British imperialism. There will be no instant flood of British imports or insiduous plans to retake the continent for Queen and country through commercial hypnosis.