I will withhold from the printculture public a rant about the Rove affair and some pointless reflections on a Japanese television show in which the host tries to guess where exactly his guest’s nipples are (he makes marks on photos of them while the co-hostess pokes around on the guest).

Instead I’ll just share a few unfinished thoughts on S L Kim’s blog “Shhh!” from a few weeks back. The piece offers some reflections on manners and civility in public spaces, taking as its point of departure some noisy upper-middle class white folks in a museum. I would have been similarly annoyed, but I couldn’t help but think that if those being loud were, for example, a group of African-American teenagers, that instead of thinking “Man is that annoying . . . but maybe I shouldn’t be uptight” my reaction might have been “Maybe I shouldn’t be uptight . . . but that is annoying.” The difference suggests that maybe I should be more tolerant of loud white people, but it also suggests a kind of racism. So, while I fully share S L Kim’s annoyance about people being loud in museums, I also had a more complicated reaction, because in Japan I often feel I’m being loud even when I’m silent.

The excesses of Japanese manners –it is a bad description, of course, but it is difficult not to experience them as excesses— are well-known, but its quite a different matter to be bodily involved. When do you bow and when will that be inappropriate? How close to stand? When is it rude to look someone in the eyes and when is it rude not to? All this business about different customs is charming folklore, until you find yourself in a situation where at any moment, because of something you might not even know you're doing, you are making a scene, annoying the people around you.

Before my departure a good friend teased me about the possibility that I would forget English or acquire Japanese mannerisms, expressing a great deal of skepticism toward those who, after having spent a year abroad, say, describe themselves as disoriented after returning to their own culture despite a lifetime of acculturation. No doubt there are plenty of people who affect a British accent after three days in London, but I think the difficulties of re-adjustment are legitimate. If one found oneself in a culture where it was rude start walking with the right foot instead of the left, surely after a certain number of incidents it would become habit to start with the left –and it would take some concentration to break that habit after returning home. This is less a matter of affectation than infection (in a non-pejorative sense). I’m tempted to say something like “Culture is not what you know but who you are,” but this sounds too identitarian. What one is is not a permanent thing, of course, and the changes can hurt, like learning to hold a bow, shaping your mouth into new positions, or sitting on a hard floor with your feet under you, if you’re not used to it. This is Anthropology 101, I suppose, but I still find that most discussions of culture approach it in terms of knowledge and representation, whereas I’m suggesting that it’s more like a kind of physical conditioning, making things instinctual and even involuntary. Like language, there’s just too much to know, so you have somehow to learn and indeed become more than you can know.

In a round-about way this led me to thoughts of Malcom in the Middle. In the episode “Poker,” Malcom’s father Hal is invited to a poker party at the house of his neighbor and best friend, Abe. Hal has long desired to be invited into this inner circle, to have his friendship confirmed. Hal is as white as they come. Abe is African-American, and when Hal arrives at the party he discovers that all the other players are as well. Old-poker buddies, they are boisterous and familiar with one another, using idioms and ritual gestures Hal can’t understand, laughing when he doesn’t, and seemingly having a little fun at his expense. Hal’s comfort level shrinks even faster than his pile of chips. But in the end the joke is on the viewer. As Hal’s frustration mounts he confronts the group: “You’re all ganging up on me because you’re all, you’re all . . .” Abe shouts: “Say it!” Hal: “You’re all upper management and I’m not!”

The episode deliberately tricks us into thinking Hal is uncomfortable because of race, but really it’s about class. Hal’s friend is as outraged at this accusation as he would have been if the scene had gone as we were led to suspect. Words fly and they decide to play a head-to-head game for the pot, at which Hal boasts “I will own you!” A horrible silence hangs in the air, but before he can correct himself Hal is told: “Just deal!” Well, maybe race does enter into the picture a little.

Beyond its simply being very funny to me, what I found so endearing about this scene was the way it locates Hal’s vulnerability in a place that is well-prepared by the character’s background (he’s a man whose life has not met his expectations), but that is surprising in context, but not just in context. So much of comedy comes from poking around in areas we are uncomfortable with, but class is rarely approached directly. What I found so effective about the scene, then, was that it tapped various kinds of visceral discomfort in surprising and, although the word is terribly overused, even subversive ways. Such visceral discomfort at those things that we don’t know but can’t help but feel and usually experience as objective physical facts (You are standing too close! You are too loud! You smell funny!) is a complex indicator of our own physical conditioning, our own cultural belonging --of things we've learned but maybe don't know yet.