Culture Shock

By Mark Worden

John Sloan
Speaker: Mark Worden (Standard British accent)

Fans of the Italian TV show Zelig will have seen John Sloan in
action. In a series of brief monologues this British comedian has
presented his thoughts on the differences between Italian and British
culture. Such was the positive reaction that Sloan has taken this
theme and written a bilingual comedy, Culture Shock, which opens
in Milan this month.
Culture Shock follows two young Englishmen who head to Milan
while, as a parallel, it chronicles the adventures of two young Italians
in London. When John Sloan met with Speak Up we asked him what
he liked most about life in Italy:
John Sloan (Standard British accent):
A friend of mine in the first few weeks that I was in Italy, my mentor,
because he had been in Italy for a while, said to me that “Italy is like
a luna park, like a fairground, because you can have a lot of fun
here, if you know where the rides are.” I didn’t know what he meant
at first, but I do now, you know. They know life’s short and they live
it. I think that we could learn from them definitely here because in
England it’s... everything is very punctual and on time and... but I
don’t know, we’re missing something. They’ve understood
something we haven’t, definitely.
DRINK PROBLEM
And, as the late John Haycraft observed in his book Italian Labyrinth,
the Italians, unlike the British, don’t need alcohol in order to relax:

John Sloan:
Italians, when they drink alcohol become, for the most part, very
funny, and very... very good company, you know. Unfortunately, in
England a lot of people drink and become extremely negative. I
don’t miss that, that’s the number one thing I don’t miss about
England because I can go out here, Italians can have a beer... drink
wine, whatever, and I’m never worried about getting into a
fight or... whereas back in Birmingham, in my city, you’re never
really relaxed when you go out because, at a certain time, people
drink so much that they get aggressive, even members of my own
family, but I don’t miss that about England at all. What I do miss is
that if somebody steals my car, that the policemen will find it! I miss
that!

SEXIST SOCIETY
Indeed Italy does have some negative aspects:

John Sloan:
The worst thing for me is the sexism in the media. Women are
generally portrayed as dumb, I don’t know, the only intelligent
people seem to be the men and the women are quite clearly just
beautiful objects to be looked at, but not to be listened to... I don’t
know, I find the attitudes to women very primitive, you know, the
attitudes to women can be primitive and very sexist. And it’s a
shame. I have a daughter here in Italy and this is why it kind of
worries me a little.
I hope that the women in Italy take a big step forward, like the
women in England did.
Some TV shows here, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, you couldn’t
show on British TV at 11 at night, and even then, they would blow
up the TV stations in England, if you had a half-naked woman
coming out on roller skates with the football scores, like I saw a
couple of weeks ago. They would blow up the TV station and rightly
so!