Introduction
From my teenage years until my early adulthood, I felt that I was a bit different from my friends. Though from my early teens I listened to the same music as they did, participated in the same sports, and read the same magazines, I secretly preferred watching Scooby Do to G.I. Joe, and later films like There Is Something About Mary to Rambo. I favored playing racing games like Gran Turismo to slash-‘em-up’ games like Resident Evil. To my confusion at the time, violence and gore didn’t thrill me like it did my male friends, and I often wished it did.
I eventually made peace with the question by concluding that my preferences were nestled in my nature. Last year however, I got to live for two months in the Czech Republic, the country in which I was born and lived in for five years in my early childhood. During my stay I revisited many films and cartoons from my youth, and interacted with other people my age. To my surprise I found many commonalities between them and myself despite that I lived in Canada most of my life.
Embracing both my backgrounds rewarded me with cultural bifocalism that in the end helped me understand many things about myself. Consequently I began to consider the possibility that my preferences stem from the cultural differences instilled in me in my early childhood. I hope to utilize this view in my analysis throughout the following paragraphs. I don’t seek to start a nature versus nurture debate. Rather, through my media autobiography I would like to investigate how the media texts I consumed in my childhood helped shape the person I am as an adult and the cultural texts I produce today.
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