Why Me Laugh?

I was cleaning up my files - as with all professors, I'll do anything in place of grading - and came across this bizarre picture from right outside Red Square in Moscow. Why it has popped up into my consciousness two years late is beyond me. Maybe it's enough that it is a funny photo - I especially love how the Easter Bunny is using Spongebob Squarepants as a crutch. Or maybe it has to do with a lot of thinking I've been doing lately about the McDonaldization of the world. The very fact that Homer Simpson, the Easter Bunny and Spongebob Squarepants are flouncing around Red Square speaks to the continuing domination of American pop culture. I spent the entire semester torturing my poor students with variations of the same question: who are you? That is, what does it mean to be an Emirati? In your mad, headlong rush into modernity and western culture what do you have left? In an effort to spark a debate/argument I dismiss them as a nation of mall walkers and suggest that they're already the 51st state (which holding open the option that the US is actually the 8th emirate). If the true US religion is consumerism, which I always tell them, have they already converted? The girls do a pretty spirited job defending themselves, which, of course, makes me very happy because that was the point in the first place. I will say this for the Emiratis - they have done a better job at drawing a line than we Americans have. Life here is an amazing balancing act between the deeply traditional and the ultra-modern, and for all of their fascination with the glossy and new, they are also very protective of their culture (even if they struggle to define it clearly) and especially their faith - while we Americans sold everything out a long time ago.