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Refuge for the rational.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Get Down With the Sickness
I hear a lot of talk about the left or right wing bias in the media. Now, I’m not going to argue that it is or isn’t there. All I will say is that when humans are involved it is only natural that their political fluids leak onto the paper once in awhile - sometimes, in mass quantities.
But, this isn’t the type of media that I want to talk about. I want to talk about the entertainment industry. And when we look at this massive sprawling mess of egos, it seems pretty clear to me that the boundaries between left and right have been lost among the foliage of fake plastic trees. Left and Right? They don’t support either! They are a sovereign entity, completely impartial unless outside interaction requires protestation of a specific cause, such as censorship. How can an institution that is emphatically corporate support the supposed Liberal camp, protest the spread of massive corporate influence to the third world and write anti-establishment screenplays and movies? Here’s how: Anarchy. In an industry as cutthroat as this, you have to support who and whatever will help you and sell you. Vegan at breakfast, veal for lunch.
This is only the result of an even larger sickness though – the one that has people waiting in long queues wearing tight clothing, grateful for the chance to be humiliated in front of a panel of “celebrity” (a.k.a I want a career do-over) judges. Or, in the case of people with actual ability, the chance to be completely whored around and have no say in the process of their creation. And yet, the positive response to this is overwhelming. People will do anything to be on this show. Having known someone who did PA work for one, I do believe that this is actually true: people will do anything.
While waiting in line, everyone gets a chance to tell their sob story, how they sacrificed their future at university to be here by skipping exams, how they pawned their wedding ring to purchase the plane ticket, how they quit their job and are going to be evicted unless they get a record contract. To the common man, this is the American Dream: incredible effort and sacrifice yield success and recognition. The person who has the most tearful story must, undoubtedly, succeed. Unfortunately, that’s just more than a little twisted. But wait, the stories get creepier! You see, there are stories that don’t get aired, and this was part of my friend’s job - to walk around and decide who got to cry into the camera and who didn’t. One story she told me in particular concerned a skinny, tearful girl with a big entreating grin on her face. She told my friend that she had given birth to a premature infant just a month or so earlier, “a beautiful baby girl”, and that she was so small the doctors were unsure if she would survive. So, instead of staying by her child’s side, she thought that leaping towards some semblance of fifteen minutes of fame would be a better choice. Naturally, the story made both my friend and I feel ill. When I thought about the reasons though, it wasn’t the fact that this mother had abandoned her infant in order to garner some kind of success of her own. In fact, I don’t believe that she saw it that way at all – if she did, she wouldn’t have tried to proclaim the story on air – the vile nature of it lay in the fact that this mother believed that she was doing this for her baby – the way one would light a candle and say a prayer for the health of a loved one – that, if only she signed a record contract and made millions of dollars, the gods of media would grant her child the gift of life. Even sicker than that is the fact that some of you are reading this right now and telling the computer screen I’m just being cynical, that the story is terribly romantic and Oprah should have a go at it.
What the fuck is wrong with us?
At what point did we run so far from reality that life itself became the goat that sheds its blood in the name of Sony? In what kind of warped dimension does no one question this?
It’s a trust issue, I think. People manage to trust the television set and people on it far more than they would a stranger on the street. Some of you will, for instance, say that the people on the talent shows humiliate themselves. It isn’t the show that does that. They show up to audition of their own free will and the rest is what follows. This is sort of how it works, but there is one piece of information missing in that calculation. When auditioning for said show, there are two auditions. The first, weeds out all of the mediocre people. People such as my friend are told that they are to put through only the best and worst singers and that if they laugh or give any kind of indication of their feelings towards the contestants, they will immediately be asked to leave. The contestants who are put through are told that they are to wear exactly the same outfit to the next audition. Obviously, this achieves the desired effect, and the embarrassment isn’t placed on the heads of the production, but on the morons with unconscious dreams.
Despite all this, people still want desperately to be on the show, even if they don’t make it anywhere. Appearance on television grants people some kind of strange power; they become immediately revered, people say hello to them on the street, people do them favours for no reason whatsoever. Take, for instance, our local weatherman, whom, it seems every time I pass the news building downtown is outside doing his weatherman things – and being accosted by each and every person who walks by. Some give him a simple smile and “hello”, some are more obnoxious and act as though they’ve run into their long-lost best friend from high school. It seems like even the most insignificant celebrity, when in the midst of ‘normal’ people becomes something special, and people gawk and stare and I can only imagine it becomes very tiresome. What would you allow a celebrity to do? If Brad Pitt came up to you and asked you if you wanted to sleep with him, would you jump at the chance? I tend to think a lot of people would. I have no idea how to deconstruct this system of knowledge, though when I searched for ‘celebrity fascination reasons’, this article popped up. Everything else was a celebrity fan site.
This article recognizes the prevalence of this trend, but it doesn’t give many reasons for it to be such a widespread social phenomenon. A few obsessive people are always going to exist – who hasn’t had the experience of someone liking them just a little too much – but this particular affliction seems to be widespread. It probably has something to do with the familiarity of seeing them constantly and hearing about the trivial details of their lives. This doesn’t, however, explain the treatment that people who aren’t all over tabloids are getting: take the ‘normal’ people on reality shows for instance: bankers from Florida, salon owners from Des Moines, strippers from Chicago. Normal, or as normal as it gets, I guess. However, the moment they hit the television screen, something incredible happens. People in their hometowns become addicted to the shows, the individuals acquire stupid nicknames and if the nicknames make them enough of an issue of controversy they may even reach celebrity status and be seen with someone even more controversial. I might understand this hero-worship if only the people in question had any obvious attributes. That means talent. But, sadly, most of the time, they don’t.
Let’s face it people, Brittany Spears cannot sing. And, not only that, she is probably the most average-looking sex icon I’ve ever seen – yes, even if she were standing next to Ron Jeremy - so who cares? She isn’t the only one though; the talentless masses abound in Hollywood. But, this is an old argument, and I think we’re all familiar with the complaints about real vs. false art. Just because it’s old, it doesn’t become any less real – but still, I will try to keep it short.
I believe that art is important and yet I constantly see it being demeaned by a profusion of model ‘actresses’ and people who woke up one morning and decided they wanted ‘music’ careers. How trite. The thing that amazes me the most is the number of people who fall for it – it being the television shows they watch and the music they accept just by listening to the radio. We accept these things without questioning whether or not they’re even worth a listen. Most of the time, they aren’t. Look at the award shows. Honestly, Green Day has been writing the same songs for ten years, they weren’t good then and they aren’t good now. Do they really deserve an award for throwing a few simple power chords together and dressing like dysfunctional teenagers? I should think not. Some of the people with good taste are o.k. with this: keep it underground; keep the masses away from it; I’m special because the music I listen to is obnoxiously obscure – well, that’s ridiculous, and the reason for that is that those artists are struggling because of their obscurity. I want to be able to turn on the radio and hear my favourite song, or at the very least something interesting. And in those rare instances when I need to vegetate in front of the television, it would be nice if my brain didn’t have to do so as well.
The point of all of this is that we accept things that the television throws at us, and we accept it with a trust that goes unchallenged in our everyday lives. Are our lives so uninteresting? Are the people close to us so unimportant? My theory as to why this would be is simple. There is both a definition and a lack of one at work here. Celebrities are undefined creatures whom we catch brief glimpses of in movies and in tabloid newspapers. Most of the time they appear happy. Most of the time they are with other people. Most of the time they are well dressed in expensive clothing. In movies, they take on the human characteristics that the newspapers don’t capture. Out of these brief experiences a definition arises. Catching one glimpse of something one finds desirable or familiar may be enough to make the less conscious connection “hey, that could be me” or even “I could have a relationship with them”. The mystery remaining leaves enough of a blank slate for donated characteristics, assumptions about the person and their lifestyle that make them even more desirable than they likely are. Because of all this, the television or the silver screen become places where a person can enter into that realm. All of your good characteristics are displayed behind a heavy layer of concealer. People only see you when you’re happy, trendy and rich; seeing you act sad or sing about heartbreak is ok because it isn’t real. This is what has blurred the lines between reality and fantasy. Nothing is real anymore. We walk around with our incognizant American Dreams and reality only comes into our eyes when we leave the audition room and realise that our wedding rings are gone and our babies are dead.
But, this isn’t the type of media that I want to talk about. I want to talk about the entertainment industry. And when we look at this massive sprawling mess of egos, it seems pretty clear to me that the boundaries between left and right have been lost among the foliage of fake plastic trees. Left and Right? They don’t support either! They are a sovereign entity, completely impartial unless outside interaction requires protestation of a specific cause, such as censorship. How can an institution that is emphatically corporate support the supposed Liberal camp, protest the spread of massive corporate influence to the third world and write anti-establishment screenplays and movies? Here’s how: Anarchy. In an industry as cutthroat as this, you have to support who and whatever will help you and sell you. Vegan at breakfast, veal for lunch.
This is only the result of an even larger sickness though – the one that has people waiting in long queues wearing tight clothing, grateful for the chance to be humiliated in front of a panel of “celebrity” (a.k.a I want a career do-over) judges. Or, in the case of people with actual ability, the chance to be completely whored around and have no say in the process of their creation. And yet, the positive response to this is overwhelming. People will do anything to be on this show. Having known someone who did PA work for one, I do believe that this is actually true: people will do anything.
While waiting in line, everyone gets a chance to tell their sob story, how they sacrificed their future at university to be here by skipping exams, how they pawned their wedding ring to purchase the plane ticket, how they quit their job and are going to be evicted unless they get a record contract. To the common man, this is the American Dream: incredible effort and sacrifice yield success and recognition. The person who has the most tearful story must, undoubtedly, succeed. Unfortunately, that’s just more than a little twisted. But wait, the stories get creepier! You see, there are stories that don’t get aired, and this was part of my friend’s job - to walk around and decide who got to cry into the camera and who didn’t. One story she told me in particular concerned a skinny, tearful girl with a big entreating grin on her face. She told my friend that she had given birth to a premature infant just a month or so earlier, “a beautiful baby girl”, and that she was so small the doctors were unsure if she would survive. So, instead of staying by her child’s side, she thought that leaping towards some semblance of fifteen minutes of fame would be a better choice. Naturally, the story made both my friend and I feel ill. When I thought about the reasons though, it wasn’t the fact that this mother had abandoned her infant in order to garner some kind of success of her own. In fact, I don’t believe that she saw it that way at all – if she did, she wouldn’t have tried to proclaim the story on air – the vile nature of it lay in the fact that this mother believed that she was doing this for her baby – the way one would light a candle and say a prayer for the health of a loved one – that, if only she signed a record contract and made millions of dollars, the gods of media would grant her child the gift of life. Even sicker than that is the fact that some of you are reading this right now and telling the computer screen I’m just being cynical, that the story is terribly romantic and Oprah should have a go at it.
What the fuck is wrong with us?
At what point did we run so far from reality that life itself became the goat that sheds its blood in the name of Sony? In what kind of warped dimension does no one question this?
It’s a trust issue, I think. People manage to trust the television set and people on it far more than they would a stranger on the street. Some of you will, for instance, say that the people on the talent shows humiliate themselves. It isn’t the show that does that. They show up to audition of their own free will and the rest is what follows. This is sort of how it works, but there is one piece of information missing in that calculation. When auditioning for said show, there are two auditions. The first, weeds out all of the mediocre people. People such as my friend are told that they are to put through only the best and worst singers and that if they laugh or give any kind of indication of their feelings towards the contestants, they will immediately be asked to leave. The contestants who are put through are told that they are to wear exactly the same outfit to the next audition. Obviously, this achieves the desired effect, and the embarrassment isn’t placed on the heads of the production, but on the morons with unconscious dreams.
Despite all this, people still want desperately to be on the show, even if they don’t make it anywhere. Appearance on television grants people some kind of strange power; they become immediately revered, people say hello to them on the street, people do them favours for no reason whatsoever. Take, for instance, our local weatherman, whom, it seems every time I pass the news building downtown is outside doing his weatherman things – and being accosted by each and every person who walks by. Some give him a simple smile and “hello”, some are more obnoxious and act as though they’ve run into their long-lost best friend from high school. It seems like even the most insignificant celebrity, when in the midst of ‘normal’ people becomes something special, and people gawk and stare and I can only imagine it becomes very tiresome. What would you allow a celebrity to do? If Brad Pitt came up to you and asked you if you wanted to sleep with him, would you jump at the chance? I tend to think a lot of people would. I have no idea how to deconstruct this system of knowledge, though when I searched for ‘celebrity fascination reasons’, this article popped up. Everything else was a celebrity fan site.
This article recognizes the prevalence of this trend, but it doesn’t give many reasons for it to be such a widespread social phenomenon. A few obsessive people are always going to exist – who hasn’t had the experience of someone liking them just a little too much – but this particular affliction seems to be widespread. It probably has something to do with the familiarity of seeing them constantly and hearing about the trivial details of their lives. This doesn’t, however, explain the treatment that people who aren’t all over tabloids are getting: take the ‘normal’ people on reality shows for instance: bankers from Florida, salon owners from Des Moines, strippers from Chicago. Normal, or as normal as it gets, I guess. However, the moment they hit the television screen, something incredible happens. People in their hometowns become addicted to the shows, the individuals acquire stupid nicknames and if the nicknames make them enough of an issue of controversy they may even reach celebrity status and be seen with someone even more controversial. I might understand this hero-worship if only the people in question had any obvious attributes. That means talent. But, sadly, most of the time, they don’t.
Let’s face it people, Brittany Spears cannot sing. And, not only that, she is probably the most average-looking sex icon I’ve ever seen – yes, even if she were standing next to Ron Jeremy - so who cares? She isn’t the only one though; the talentless masses abound in Hollywood. But, this is an old argument, and I think we’re all familiar with the complaints about real vs. false art. Just because it’s old, it doesn’t become any less real – but still, I will try to keep it short.
I believe that art is important and yet I constantly see it being demeaned by a profusion of model ‘actresses’ and people who woke up one morning and decided they wanted ‘music’ careers. How trite. The thing that amazes me the most is the number of people who fall for it – it being the television shows they watch and the music they accept just by listening to the radio. We accept these things without questioning whether or not they’re even worth a listen. Most of the time, they aren’t. Look at the award shows. Honestly, Green Day has been writing the same songs for ten years, they weren’t good then and they aren’t good now. Do they really deserve an award for throwing a few simple power chords together and dressing like dysfunctional teenagers? I should think not. Some of the people with good taste are o.k. with this: keep it underground; keep the masses away from it; I’m special because the music I listen to is obnoxiously obscure – well, that’s ridiculous, and the reason for that is that those artists are struggling because of their obscurity. I want to be able to turn on the radio and hear my favourite song, or at the very least something interesting. And in those rare instances when I need to vegetate in front of the television, it would be nice if my brain didn’t have to do so as well.
The point of all of this is that we accept things that the television throws at us, and we accept it with a trust that goes unchallenged in our everyday lives. Are our lives so uninteresting? Are the people close to us so unimportant? My theory as to why this would be is simple. There is both a definition and a lack of one at work here. Celebrities are undefined creatures whom we catch brief glimpses of in movies and in tabloid newspapers. Most of the time they appear happy. Most of the time they are with other people. Most of the time they are well dressed in expensive clothing. In movies, they take on the human characteristics that the newspapers don’t capture. Out of these brief experiences a definition arises. Catching one glimpse of something one finds desirable or familiar may be enough to make the less conscious connection “hey, that could be me” or even “I could have a relationship with them”. The mystery remaining leaves enough of a blank slate for donated characteristics, assumptions about the person and their lifestyle that make them even more desirable than they likely are. Because of all this, the television or the silver screen become places where a person can enter into that realm. All of your good characteristics are displayed behind a heavy layer of concealer. People only see you when you’re happy, trendy and rich; seeing you act sad or sing about heartbreak is ok because it isn’t real. This is what has blurred the lines between reality and fantasy. Nothing is real anymore. We walk around with our incognizant American Dreams and reality only comes into our eyes when we leave the audition room and realise that our wedding rings are gone and our babies are dead.
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