Educational ‘trash’
I’m sure anyone who lives in the UK have come across the magazine ‘Zoo‘. It’s a weekly magazine, sold in almost all newsagents for the price 1.30 pounds. It’s a men’s magazine, clearly evidenced by the fact that every edition has a picture of a semi-naked girls on the cover. It’s not a magazine purely about such matters though, for if you flip the pages, you’ll find pages on other ‘masculine’ stuff such as cars, gadgets, sports, movies, tv, videogames etc. Of course, it also dedicates quite a bit of it’s content on the aforementioned semi-naked girls.
Clearly, it’s not the most intellectual of magazines being sold in newsstands all over the UK. Yet, it’s not brainless either. Quite a bit of the pages are also dedicated to ‘interesting’ matters dominating the news that week, like bird flu or Iran-America tensions.
More surprisingly, on the bottom of each page of the magazine, running along a red strip are ‘Zoo Facts‘. These are snippets of facts that relate (sometimes tenuously) to anything that is said on each respective page. For example in the 114 issue of the magazine, page 8 contained shots of popular British page 3 girl Keeley Hazell sunbathing in Tenerife, Spain. The Zoo Fact on the bottom reads; "In March 1977, two Boeing 747s collided at Los Rodeos Airport, Tenerife, killing 583". Or, on page 34, where there is a picture of London mayor Ken Livingstone in front of the new Wembley Stadium, the Zoo Fact reads "Ken Livingstone is a big fan of solar power, and has solar panels fitted to the roof of his London home".
As I’ve stated before, Zoo is not The Economist. It doesn’t try to be. It appeals to a different demographic than those who read such ’serious’ magazines. Yet, even though its pages of full of things like women, tv and sports, it can still be, in a way, educational.
I’ve always been amazed at how well-read British people are. The average people that I’ve managed to talk to throughout my time here are not dumb, for example, whenever I tell them that I’m from Malaysia, they don’t ever have this distant, confused look on their face and ask me "Uhh… where’s that?". Another example is that I never have to explain what ‘halal’ means. Thus, I believe the average Brit is quite well-informed. Although I’ve never been to America before, and have never spoken to an American, it seems to me, based on what I’ve been exposed to via the media, the average American, let’s just say isn’t as ‘clever’ as the average Brit.
And Zoo Facts clearly shows how well-informed the British are. Even an ‘everyman’ publication such as Zoo can be educational. Knowledge, it would seem, is everywhere in the United Kingdom. These people read a lot, regardless of whether it’s an academic textbook, a novel or even a magazine such as Zoo. They are always exposed to knowledge, and that I suppose that is why they are so well-informed. It’s because they are well-read.
Casting my mind back to Malaysia, I wonder if a popular publication back home, say URTV can take the ‘Zoo route‘. Perhaps, in ‘informing’ the people of the latest goings on in the world of Malaysian entertainment, it could also make its readers learn a few things or two. Sure, it may be hard to cultivate a ‘reading culture’ back home, at least in trying to make the public read ‘conventional’ stuff. But, if the public are more inclined to read stuff such as URTV or Media Hiburan, why not use those media as a source of education, even if that source of education is a short line of information at the bottom of every page. At least doing so readers of URTV who perhaps loathe to read more ‘informative’ stuff could still enrich their knowledge by reading the magazine.
