Spidey Senses

Recently I was blind sided by my best Cambodian friend over lunch. He was sat in the corner restaurant where we go for lunch in the border town watching the TV. J had gone to shop in the market whilst we waited for lunch. I was creating a viciously hot dipping sauce from fish sauce, fresh red chillies, dried chillies & soy sauce when R innocently asked me "Is spider man real?"

Used to translation errors I asked him what he meant. He pointed to the TV & asked me again if spider man was a real person. "He comes from your country doesn't he?"

I looked over my shoulder & saw a dubbed version of Spiderman the film on the TV.

"Its fiction - this is just a film" I answered slightly bemused.

"Yes I know that," R persisted. "But is the film based on a real story? Where does he come from?"

"From a comic book, a made up story"

"NO - I mean where did the writer of the comic hear about the story? When exactly did the real Spiderman exist?"

"He didn't hear a story about him, he made it up from his imagination."

The penny dropped as I realised that I had already had a similar conversation with my khmer teacher about the king of the monkeys tying clods of earth to his leg hair, flying & making mountains and whether this was a true story or not. I told R the same story & asked him if he remembered this grade 4 exercise. Yes he nodded, of course that story is completely true, he told me. 

I was just explaining what a fictional story was in shocked & yet increasingly animated way when J returned from the market. 

R thinks Spider man is a real person from history - I announced to her.

I was initially quite shocked to discover what I hadn't previously known about R but as time progressed I realised that it did actually explain a lot about both him & Cambodia. 

A long conversation about fiction, fact & belief systems followed. Ghosts exist, Muslims can cause illnesses, people from earth live on other planets, fortune tellers are always correct, Titanic the film was a true story with no artistic license, he doesn't watch the news or read books.

It soon became apparent that everything on TV was considered to be fact or based on fact or ancient history. A long time ago a boy was bitten by a radioactive spider & had special spidey senses as a result. Clearly this was a true & I am just a horrible cynic.

And yet here when I attempt to convey a rational, reasonable, evidenced based, logical argument or piece of advice, well then I am the only non-skeptic in the room.

Education through bad TV dramas seems to be the only way forward here.