Like you, I grew up overseas—mostly in Asia—and it was always interesting to read about America from afar. What were some of the sources you remember getting your news from?
This was all pre-internet in the ’90s so we got Time and Newsweek, and our TV news would be from Channel News Asia. We didn’t have cable so we didn’t get CNN International or anything like that. Compared to Singapore or Malaysia, American politics seemed much more dramatic and the stakes felt a bit higher, even though it was lower for me personally. There was a showmanship around it and around American news that was always very engaging.
And then that showmanship led me to American TV and movies like The West Wing and Die Hard. Die Hard really seemed like American politics in a way. The Americans in that movie don’t know how to relate to these smooth European criminals, so they act in a way that’s analogous to how Americans would act in any kind of political situation. If you liked Die Hard, you’d naturally be drawn to a country where people behaved that way.
I guess what I’m saying is that American pop culture would naturally push to be interested in American politics! [Laughs]
One of the bits in your Netflix special that I really enjoyed was where you ranked Asian countries by fun factor with South Korea currently on top. I lived in Hong Kong in the early ’90s and it felt like the center of the pop culture universe then.
Yeah, you were in peak Hong Kong! The idea of ranking Asian countries isn’t new, but ranking them according to how fun they are probably is.
Do you expect Singapore to ever get cool in the same way?
Probably not Singapore, no. I don’t know how it happens, but it’s one of those intangible cultural things where there’s not really a math-like equation. You can only feel it in the moment in terms of who’s making the coolest stuff. Right now, South Korea undoubtedly is kind of dominating, and Japan has its moments. Hong Kong was at the top once, and then they kind of fell off a little bit. I don’t know if it comes in cycles, but I do know it’s something that every country is trying to do, but few actually can. It’s hard to artificially manufacture coolness and culture and all that.
