More cultural misunderstandings

[CJ FINE <cbmvax!uunet!BRADFORD.AC.UK!C.J.Fine>]

Re Bob Slaughter's tale of Snow White, and Ivan's Bulgarian story:

There are ever so many stories, fictional and real, about people not
understanding what is intended by another culture's fabulation or drama.
Some of my favorite examples:

According to Richard Feynman, when a film was shown for the first time
in a town in Tuva (Central Asia), angry patrons demanded their money
back because of all the close-ups - they'd paid for a whole film, not
parts of people.

Several of Jack Vance's novels play with the idea, particularly the
rather feeble "Space Opera" (trying to perform Fidelio to a troglodytic
non-human race) and the much better "Showboat World" with plenty of
examples.

The version of "Romeo and Juliet" played by the players in "Nicholas
Nickelby": given a happy ending. (The 'different culture' here was the
same culture 250 years later)

The otherwise excellent Halas and Batchelor version of Orwell's "Animal
Farm", given a ghastly happy ending where the forces of
motherhood-n-apple-pie, represented by good, decent animals everywhere,
come and triumph over the evil empire, sorry, farm. (the 'different
culture' is about fifteen years, or maybe twenty.)