What's exotic now?

Watching Dr. Doolittle (the old one, of course) in the middle of the night and thoroughly enjoying how much mileage the film gets from the mere suggestion of otherworldliness. When the world was a big place (i.e. before 1963) we longed to be spellbound by the exotic realms that were out there somewhere. For children there were pushmi-pullyews to ponder and for the caddish Hefner set the imagination was ignited by the possibility of Swedish Farm Hands and "Oriental" Pearl Divers swimming in the seven seas. And for mom there was Mr. Clean. Looks like the exotic and the erotic have always been kissing cousins.

But what's exotic now in the era of super-economies and no-stone-left-unturned globalization? Does the term have any relevance any more? Have the vivid cartoony contents of our repressed imaginations breached the levees of consciousness and manifest destiny?

("Timeless #9: Eternal Sunshine of the Song Dynasty" by Guan Zeju)