The Missionary Media

Self-righteousness is one of our more annoying characteristics.  It's also one of the most common of them.  Through it we assure ourselves of our own goodness, and are inclined to berate, or preach to, those lacking enlightenment. 

Among us, missionaries must be most convinced they possess the truth; that they know it, the way and the light.  How else explain their propensity to travel throughout the world, sometimes at great trouble, teaching those who aren't like them that they should--indeed must--think like them, act like them and be like them.  I confess I'm not fond of missionaries.

Missionaries are manipulators in the sense that they strive to convince or control others.  They may be well-intentioned manipulators, but they manipulate nonetheless.  We've long known that the various media excel at manipulation for a variety of purposes, some of them considerably less than benign.

I wonder if there are those who, like me, have noticed a certain tendency of those who manufacture commercials, TV shows, movies and other entertainments for us, to teach us that certain people, certain ways of living, are good or at least should considered and treated as well as, and are as good as other people, other ways of life.  These efforts certainly seem well-intentioned, and I have no quarrel with them or what they convey beyond the fact that they seem heavy-handed and are in some sense presumptuous, and appear to arise from a missionary impulse.  In my imagination I picture a gathering of righteous writers, directors, producers, actors, their leader proclaiming "Let us go among them, the unknowing and ignorant, and teach them the Way, oh my brothers and sisters or whatever you think yourselves to be."  Perhaps my imagination is unfair.

The world as portrayed by the Missionary Media is one in which different races, people disabled and not disabled, blissfully and peacefully interact, marry and have children, in which gay men and women smooch and have sex just like straight people and interact with straight people peacefully, marry and have children, and everyone gets along well and are shown to be just the same deep-down as everyone else, no reason to be upset about other folks different from us and what they do or want to do.  The members of the Missionary Media in my perhaps unfair imagination say:  "See?  We're showing that to you on that screen you're gazing at, the same one you gaze at all the time.  You'll get used to it, you'll learn, because we've put it on the screen."

In the case of this particular missionary impulse the effort to make the desired point can be rather blunt.  Subtlety isn't employed.   For example, in a particular scene one person is white, one is black, one is latino, one is apparently of mixed race; some are men, an equal number are women, but all are cops, or lawyers, or  doctors--all are the same, not different.   Two men may suddenly kiss each other.  We may learn suddenly two characters are lesbian.  The children of a lesbian or gay couple are introduced.  Some character is revealed as blind or deaf although there was no guessing that was the case earlier, as they are ostensibly the same as everyone else up to that point.  It's clear due to the lack of subtlety in development and the resultant feeling of surprise that a point is being made that is the purpose of the scene.  

I feel compelled to say, again, that the world being portrayed by the Missionary Media is one that would be fine with me, one in which I'd be happy to live.  But it clearly doesn't exist at this time, any more than the world of Father Knows Best or My Three Sons or Leave it to Beaver existed at the time those shows were popular.  This may change, however.  More significant and more disturbing to me, though, is the fact that the Missionary Media is being missionary.  I don't think it should be.

Members of the Missionary Media include not only those who provide us with commercials and entertainments, but the ubiquitous pundits that infest our society and, most obviously of course, evangelists.  I wish they would all go away.  It isn't their business to tell us their opinions, to convert us, to use entertainments to teach us what they think we should think and do, even when there is nothing objectionable about that or when thinking or doing or acting consistent with their manipulation is good, even admirable.  Why do I complain of this, then, if it would be appropriate for the world to become like that which the media portrays?

Because manipulation is manipulation, and I think the powerful influence of the media shouldn't be employed in manipulation.

Sound and Fury and Life as a Reality Show

Perhaps little has changed since Shakespeare's time, or even that of Macbeth.  But it's difficult not to recall his words about life in these times, particularly that it is a tale told by an idiot.  Or is it rather a tale told about idiots?

A tale, of course. is something told.  It's generally something that is "made up" as well.  Stories are told.  Stories are typically distinguished from life, however unreal life appears.  Stories are told by someone to someone else.  It's not clear, then, just what Shakespeare (or we) intend when we speak of life as a tale.  Do we ascribe life to God, as a tale he's telling, or do we claim to be telling a tale to him or some other observer?

It may be that we describe life as a tale only when we think of it as a story, either a good one or a bad one.  "My life is like a fairytale."  Or, alternatively, a tragedy, or a comedy, or a farce.  Ideally, I suppose, we might envision ourselves as observing our own lives as a play or story.  That may be the healthiest alternative.  But I suspect we more likely are inclined to think of our lives as if they were being performed for others and for their benefit, one way or another.  As object lessons, or to be admired.  That would be fitting given our self-regard.

No wonder, then, that we are (or so it seems) so inclined to watch what we call with a telling lack of irony "reality shows."  No wonder either that we seem now more and more inclined to behave as if we are participants in one or see each other as participants in one.

It strikes me as characteristic of reality shows that the idea behind them is to put on display as much as possible the more dramatic of our conduct and emotions.  That's to be expected, I would think, as I suspect their producers believe, perhaps rightly, that is what makes them attractive; that is what makes people want to watch them.  Thus situations are contrived to pit people against one another or put them in circumstances where they're most likely to experience stress, which is to say competitive circumstances or dangerous circumstances..   Contrive the scene, insert "normal" people, and see what happens.

In the end, of course, not much does that isn't common, or that is unexpected.  What happens is pretty much what we expect will happen, but is made more pronounced because it is encouraged.  There are the silly little interviews inserted, where each participant gets to vent--I suspect in response to questions which promote venting.  Then, something else happens to disappoint or gladden one or another person on display, giving way to more venting.

Vanitas vanitatum, et Omnia vanitas.  Naturally, this is all to please our sense of self-worth, or to gratify us in one way or another.  The vanity of the participants in the shows is of course unquestionable.  Why else put oneself on display so shamelessly?   But the viewer's vanity is invoked as well, as the viewer is inclined to self-congratulation.  Either the participant viewed is what we think we would be or we're gratified by the fact that they are so pathetic we must be better.

More and more those we observe because they are newsworthy or in the public eye for one reason or another tend to be emotional in one way or another; bombastic, angry, stupidly happy, accusatory, self-righteous, maudlin.  It seems less and less the case that our ideal is a calm, reasonable, impartial person.  Such people are no fun at all, of course.  Nor are they likely to be known or thought of for any purpose.

Instead we see and, it would seem, expect and want to see caricatures, cartoonish versions of ourselves strutting and fretting.  And we do.  And there are more and more of them all the time.

Histrionics and American Entertainment

I'm given to watching English television series which appear, now and then, on PBS and BBC America.  What passes for entertainment on the small screen here in God's favorite country seems to me to be very shabby in comparison, and I wonder why this is the case.

I suppose it's possible that the English are simply better actors, writers and producers than we are, but I suspect there are other reasons.  One of them may be the fact that American actors, if not now then in the past, came to believe that acting involved emoting as much as possible.  I'm not sure whether this is the result of the teaching of what's been called "method acting" or not, but there appears to have been an entire generation of American actors, such as Marlon Brando, who felt that acting at least in part consisted of shrieking, weeping, smirking, laughing, gesturing in a very broad, almost lunatic manner.  This evidently was required in order to impart a sense of reality to the fantasy unfolding on the screen; reality was very much a melodrama, filled with anguish, angst or ecstasy. 

I recall the story of Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman during the filming of Marathon Man.  Hoffman felt that in order for him to portray his character, who was being hunted and tormented, he had to stay awake for days to achieve an appropriately overwrought appearance.  Supposedly, Olivier said to him:  "Oh my dear boy, why don't you try acting?  It's so much easier."  It may be that histrionic generation passed along their hysteria to succeeding generations.

Another reason may be that we consider ourselves, or are considered to be, utterly lacking in subtlety and wit.  We are profoundly stupid or are believed to be by those who seek to amuse us.  So, in order for us to know a particular character is angry, for example, it is necessary for the character to break various things near at hand or beat on someone, preferably a woman or a child.  Or better yet, the character shoots someone or several unlucky extras.

Those who seek to amuse us sometimes seek to enlighten us as well, it would appear, at least as they believe we should be enlightened.  And thinking us to be dullards they do so blatantly.  To teach us to not be racists, they populate the shows or movies we watch with representatives of every race if possible, sometimes even inserting a character of their own creation into a plot where no such character existed.  This is the accepted method of teaching us not to be sexist as well, of course.  Thus Peter Jackson saw to it that a female elf played a prominent part in his three-part version of The Hobbit, though no such character appears in the book.  Unsurprisingly, we're also being taught by the entertainment industry that same-sex couples, and gays and lesbians, are perfectly fine in the same manner.  All are equal in the world of show business if nowhere else.

What Hollywood and the entertainment industry apparently seek to teach us in these respects is admirable; racism, sexism, homophobia, prejudice are all noxious.  Whether it should be teaching us at all, and whether it should be doing so by, e.g., rewriting or falsifying the works of writers, are interesting questions regardless, however.

Violence and sex are of course omnipresent in our television; not so much in that of the English, it seems.  Perhaps, though, this only appears to be the case because we portray violence and sex in the same way we portray everything else--in as exaggerated a manner as possible.  We cannot merely imply violence and sex (that would require subtlety).  They must be apparent, jarringly obvious.  So must everything be.

This lack of, or perhaps more accurately contempt for, the subtle naturally extends to plots.  Nothing is a mystery, really; answers are as obvious as everything else.  And all must be done quickly.  Characters seem to finish each others sentences.  If there are no car chases there are chases on foot, or at the least all are in a hurry for one reason or another.

Perhaps our perception of reality is so manic we feel that any drama which purports to be real must be manic as well.  Or perhaps we are by now so used to the overwrought that we are jaded.  The merely overwrought may do nothing for us.  We require the extreme to be entertained.

This sort of thing seems to more or less inevitably lead to comparisons with ancient Rome though, doesn't it?  That would be tiresome and is something of a cliche.  Cliche of course is itself the rendering of wisdom into the obvious, and so we see cliche a great deal in our television as well.
 
The comparison is not a sound one, I think.  The Romans were remarkable because their excessiveness was original, while ours is not.  Our art imitates their life.