Screen Burned

After more than a decade of writing “Screen Burn,” his generally searing review of British television programming, Charlie Brooker announced recently that he was giving up the column, which appeared Saturdays in the Guardian. While I am a devotee of Charlie’s eccentric Monday columns in that same newspaper, I have seldom read any of the “Screen Burn” articles—firstly, because for most of the decade I didn’t know they existed and secondly, because when I found out about them, I really didn’t see any profit in reading about shows that I probably would never see or want to see.

Alas, in reading Charlie’s farewell “Screen Burn,” (available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/oct/16/charlie-brooker-leaving-screen-burn) I discovered what I had missed. For example, these descriptions of celebrities (hilarious, whether you’ve heard of them before or not):

“Not that I'm saying [Jeremy] Kyle himself is an agent of Satan, you understand. I'm just saying you could easily cast him as one. Especially if you wanted to save money on special effects”;

Nigel Lythgoe was "Eric Idle watching a dog drown";

Alan Sugar reminded Charlie of "a water buffalo straining to shit in a lake";

Ann Widdecombe had "a face like a haunted cave in Poland";

Cilla Black was "starting to resemble the result of an unholy union between Ronald McDonald and a blow-dried guinea pig";

Anthony Maxell was "a man so profoundly thick you could sell him a pair of his own socks for £500, even if he was already wearing them," while his girlfriend Saskia “had a face that could advertise war.”

While not all the persons savaged above by Charlie are content-free celebrities--as discussed in my previous blog entry, “Do You Know Me?”--(Sugar, for instance, made a name for himself as a successful businessman, and Widdecombe is a Conservative Member of Parliament), all of them fall into the category of “television star”—that is, famous (or most famous in some cases) for being on television.

***

As it turned out, after several years of writing such harsh judgments, Charlie began to run into some of his targets, with an unexpected result:

Once or twice I found myself in conversation with someone I'd been awful about in print, and discovered to my horror that the ruder I'd been, the warmer and more pleasant they appeared to be in the flesh.

Indeed, Charlie found that the above-mentioned Saskia was “lovely.”

Charlie’s discovery about the contrast between the public mask and the private face of the celebrities he met is revelatory, in that it is the opposite of what a satirist deals with (that is, a good mask covering the true evil or foolish face). Apparently, our modern celebrities, in order to promote themselves, feel the need to put on public displays of crassness, insipidity, dimwittedness, and so forth, while underneath it all, they’re nice (at least some of them). Which, perhaps, renders the modern celebrity unsatirizable, because the is is better than the seems.

Or maybe not. Aren’t those privately sweet and nice people deserving of Brookerian invective for lusting so much after fame that they will corrupt their public personae?

And what does that tell us about our modern world, which offers stardom and celebrityship to those who willingly degrade themselves in order to offer us vapidity, crudity, and nastiness?

Do You Know Me?

The New York Mets are almost a half-century old (would you believe it?). In their early years, one of the major sponsors of their broadcasts was Rheingold Beer. Aside from their inane jingle (“My beer is Rheingold the dry beer/Think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer,” it began), the staple of the beer’s advertising campaign was the Miss Rheingold contest. Beer guzzlers (and anyone else) were encouraged to vote for their favorite contestant (out of six) at bars and liquor stores. The face of the winner of the contest (which at one point had the second-largest vote count in the country) would adorn Rheingold’s advertising for the rest of the year.

It was during the first or second year of the Mets’ existence that the contestants visited the broadcast booth during games to do a little electioneering and to do things worthy of a Miss Rheingold—whistling themes from Wagner, for example—err, scratch that . . . to answer the usual powder puff questions, like what is your goal in life? I remember being stunned when one of the beauties didn’t answer, “I want to save mankind from the scourge of war,” but averred that she wanted to be “a television star.” “Wait a minute,” I almost shouted out loud (almost, because I’m quite mannerly even by myself), “you become a star on television by singing well, dancing elegantly, or acting superbly.”

Of course, I was wrong. The world had changed. “Television star” was now its own category, and one achieved television stardom by being on television. Welcome to the modern world of celebrityship*, where one is famous for being famous**. Consider Vanna White, whose talent was what? Knowing which panels to display on Wheel of Fortune? Not even that—the panels lighted up to guide her. Yet, at one point ABC’s advertising for the show teased viewers to tune in to see what Vanna would be wearing. Not to see Vanna singing, dancing, or acting.

***

Today, in the world of the remote control, at the merest hint of a television commercial I turn the sound off (which means, of course, that I don’t have a modern jingle equivalent of Rhiengold’s assaulting my waking hours). It also means that, with only a half glance at the tube to see when the programming is resuming, I have only the slightest idea of what is going on during the commercials. Recently during one of my half glances I recognized on a jeans commercial a guy I had seen before. “That’s that same actor with the baseball cap from last year’s Ford commercials,” I again didn’t shout out loud. But then suddenly at the lower left corner of the screen there appeared the name of the becapped one. “Wait a minute,” I didn’t shout out loud, “if they’re showing us his name, they want us to be impressed that he isn’t just an anonymous actor in a commercial, but a Somebody.” But if he is a Somebody, I thought, why do they have to tell us who he is? He’s in these commercials because he and/or his baseball cap are famous (in the celebrity sense***) or he wouldn’t be there. But if I don’t know who he is, then what the hell good does it do to tell me who he is? That’s not going to make me run to my local Ford dealer or jeans supplier and open my wallet.

Which raises the question: If I refuse to recognize modern-day content-free celebrityship, can I, in my solipsistic insistence, deny the fame of the famous-for-being-famous?

To me, the truly famous should be like the Lone Ranger; he cleaned up the town, left behind only a silver bullet, and didn’t do talk shows.

***

*There have been several recent books on celebrity, tracing its roots back in time. But while the content-free celebrity did exist in the past (e.g., Beau Brummell being famous for what exactly?—wearing certain clothes?), most other great celebrities, such as Lord Byron (“mad, bad, and dangerous to know”) did something, like write great poetry.

**Modern content-free celebrityship was anticipated a decade before our Miss Rheingold contestant in the movie It Should Happen to You. Out-of-work model Gladys Glover (Judy Holliday) spends the last of her money to rent a billboard at Columbus Circle. Soon she is mobbed at a department store by people who recognize her as the face on the billboard.

***I Googled the name of the becapped one and found that he could be called a “television star,” assuming anyone bothers to watch the Discovery Channel. For the rest of us, he isn’t famous for being famous.

Be Quiet

In my post of August 19, 2010 entitled “True Believers” I wrote about serial changers of belief who with each change insist loudly that their newly-born-again self has found the one real truth. And, of course, they are proclaiming this to us because they want us to recognize their sincerity and, most of all, to join them in their new belief.

A recent article at Miller-Mccune (http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/shouts-banish-doubts-24157/) reports on findings by researchers David Gal and Derek Rucker. While they didn’t set out to study those I call “serial believers,” their conclusions are perhaps even more relevant to those multiple “born-againers.” In a paper entitled “When in Doubt, Shout!” they conclude that “advocacy on behalf of one’s beliefs helps banish any uncomfortable lack of certainty’”; those participants in the study who were most in doubt “expressed a greater likelihood to attempt to persuade other people of their beliefs.” As the Miller-Mccune article puts it:

“Although it is natural to assume that a persistent and enthusiastic advocate of a belief is brimming with confidence,” [Gal and Rucker] write in the journal Psychological Science, “the advocacy might in fact signal that the individual is boiling over with doubt.”

The Miller-Mccune article notes that “In a logic-driven world, [one would think] the shattering of long-held assumptions . . . would lead to a thoughtful period of reflection and re-evaluation.” However, just the opposite happens: “In our world, it leads one to actively advocate one’s pre-existing beliefs all the more passionately.”

While it might seem that the serial “True Believers” might be the exceptions that prove the rule, in fact, by their strong advocacy of their latest belief they demonstrate that their desire to have others join them is a need for confirmation of the validity of their new (and shaky) faith.

How unlike Hamlet and Nora Helmer (discussed in another of my blog posts, “The Act of Living,” September 14, 2010), who, having had their “long-held assumptions” shattered, face the new existential void in their lives without either blanking out the reality in front of them and retreating deeper into their shaky previous beliefs or turning to a new pre-packaged belief system and, proclaiming their sincerity in their new doubtful faith, attempt to induce others to join them.

***

I recall an article I read many years ago in the New York Times Magazine, which told of a paper left behind by an African diplomat after having given a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. At one place in the margin of this paper was written: “Weak Point. Raise Voice.”

As I concluded in the “True Believers” post, I ask those shouters of their beliefs:

"Why should I believe what you believe today, which you didn't believe yesterday--and will not believe tomorrow?"

Crystal Balls

I am not a channel surfer. I’m what I might call a “program destinationer.” That is, when I turn on the television I head directly to a particular channel to see a particular show. If the show is not on by some chance (think of pre-emption by a PBS begathon), I don’t go looking for something else to watch. Thus, my knowledge of the world of television programming is distinctly limited. It is only when I am unfortunately cornered in a waiting room, say, or the Laundromat that—like a passenger being subjected to a wayward journey by a clueless cabbie—I get to view things that exist outside my everyday world.

It so happened the other day that I was facing a television set tuned to the History Channel. The program was one of those future-disaster shows—much beloved by the Weather Channel—that informed its audience, through interviews with scientists and engineers, that because of deteriorating infrastructure (the roads, the dams, the bridges, the electrical grid) our country faces calamitous events and a return to Nineteenth-century living conditions. Among other possible disasters, Nashville might end up under twenty feet of water, Southern California might have its fresh water supply cut off, and we might all be subjected—if not to blackouts—to regular electrical brownouts. The scary case the program made for the need for immediate funding for repairs to our deteriorating infrastructure would, it seemed to me, make even the stingiest “small government” politician demand that Uncle Sam get out his checkbook immediately.

When the program ended, I took a deep breath and kept my wallet in my pocket through a long line of commercials, while I awaited the next presentation. Which turned out to be a program on Nostradamus and other alleged prognosticators of future events. We were told of supposed foretellings of the deaths of Popes and emperors and of natural and man-made disasters. The scientists and engineers of the previous show were replaced by astrologers and their ilk. The voiceover announced portentously that “experts believe . . .” without telling us who these “experts” are or what they are expert in. The show was a pandering to mindless loonies and credulous ninnies. As soon as the other person in the room left, I grabbed the remote and switched to the noon news. (Speaking of being confronted by “mindless loonies and credulous ninnies.”)

So this is America in the Twenty-first century: Presented as equally valid, scientific and engineering investigation and bozo prognostication. Something like Fox News plus science.

Chance of a Ghost; Ghost of a Chance

I read a lot of detective fiction and mysteries. And, as I imagine most fans of the genre do, I follow my favorite authors and their detectives from book to book. However, over the years I have from time to time waved farewell to authors and their detectives, abandoning series, not caring a hoot about what new mischief may be afoot in subsequent books. There were several reasons why I gave up on them, but I wish to discuss only one.

Last year I bid farewell to two police procedural series—both featuring detectives in contemporary England. In the last book I read of each series, the author wanted the reader to accept supernatural occurrences—ESP, stigmata, spirit channeling—as real events. Because the mystery genre demands reason and logic, and thus cannot countenance superstition and obscurantism, I could not tolerate such nonsense—and so ditched the authors and their works. Twenty-first-century rationalism was not to be flouted.

But why, if I am unable to accept ghosts and such in modern-era detective fiction, am I tolerant of the ghosts, for example, of Hamlet’s father and Banquo? The reason is the same as that for my acceptance of the intervention of the god Herakles in Sophocles’ Philoctetes or of the oracles whose prophecies cause so much trouble for Oedipus, Laius, and Jocasta. I accept, for Shakespeare, his work in the context of the belief system of Elizabethan/Jacobean England, and for Sophocles, his work in the context of the belief system of 5th-century B.C. Greece. In context, our “supernatural” was their “natural,” and part of the warp and woof of their belief systems. However, what is most important isn’t their intellectual, philosophical, religious differences from us, but the similarity of their concerns about the conundrums of human existence: chance, evil, honor, greed, love, lust, etc.

So, I am willing to allow an Elizabethan ghost to walk the battlements of Elsinore and move his son to revenge or a Greek god at the last moment to reconcile the irreconcilable.

But if Herakles appears in the mystery I am now reading and solves the detective’s case, that book is straight for the dumpster.

OMG

Did it ever occur to you that God’s name isn’t “God”? (I will assume here that God does exist, but only for the sake of argument, mind you.)

“God” is a native English word. But English, as a distinct language, has only been on the scene for about one-and-a-half millennia. Now, even if we dismiss (for the sake of argument) the Big Bang Theory and the existence of the universe for some twelve billion years or so (who’s counting?) and accept the contention (again for the sake of argument only) of those loopy creationists who believe that T-Rex and missus had outside cabins on Noah’s Ark and that the universe is only about six-and-a-half millennia old, that means that God either went around anonymously for five thousand years before deciding to latch on to an English name or had a real, non-English name from way back. We’re not buying the former possibility, are we?

So, if God had a real name prior to English, then what I mentioned in the first sentence is true: God’s name is not “God.”

Now here’s the point I’m leading up to: Why, if God’s name isn’t “God,” do some people feel it is necessary to write “G-d” instead of “God”? Even if there were an interdiction against writing the true name of God (is there?), surely there can’t be an interdiction against writing the non-name of God.

(Now, for my French translation, which vowel do I leave out of “Dieu”?

The Act of Living

We all act better than we know how.

Erving Goffman

***

Each of our days consists of a series of performances. At some moments it’s an individual star turn; at others it’s standing to the side holding a spear. Sometimes we are forced by events of the moment to improvise our roles; at other times we play out parts that we have been able to practice (at least in our minds) at leisure.

Consider the blind date, for example: who has not, in anticipation of the event, envisioned, as a mini-drama, the forthcoming meeting? We plotted the story line and scripted the dialogue (I’ll say this; she/he will say that) as we prepared our costume and makeup.

All the little playlets and mini-dramas of daily life are part of a bigger drama—the drama of one’s own life. And here too, we have in our minds (even if not always in the forefront of our consciousness) a scenario to be enacted. But what happens when the Hollywood screenplay of our mind breaks down? When the anticipated lines are not recited by other actors? Without our cues, the words we were so certain of stick in our throat. And without words to speak, we no longer have a role, a persona. We are cast into an existential void.

(I am not concerned here with those “True Believers” I wrote about in my previous post. They shed one certainty and clothe themselves quickly in another. They are the owners of a factitious seriousness, and, therefore, not to be bothered with.)

***

We are in nineteenth-century Norway, a bastion of Lutheran propriety. Nora Helmer, years before Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House opens, forged her father’s signature to obtain a loan, the money of which was used to allow her ailing (and unaware) husband to travel to a healthy clime to recuperate. But now the truth has been revealed to him, and he reacts—not as Nora expected him to (or perhaps we should say, as the script in her mind fostered by the patriarchal society expected him to) react.

Nora:

I have waited so patiently for eight years; for, goodness knows, I knew very well that wonderful things don't happen every day. Then this horrible misfortune came upon me; and then I felt quite certain that the wonderful thing was going to happen at last. When Krogstad's letter was lying out there, never for a moment did I imagine that you would consent to accept this man's conditions. I was so absolutely certain that you would say to him: Publish the thing to the whole world. And when that was done—
. . .

When that was done, I was so absolutely certain, you would come forward and take everything upon yourself, and say: I am the guilty one.
. . .

You mean that I would never have accepted such a sacrifice on your part? No, of course not. But what would my assurances have been worth against yours? That was the wonderful thing which I hoped for and feared; and it was to prevent that, that I wanted to kill myself.

Because her husband, Torvald, does not play his part as Nora rehearsed it in her mind, her role as heroine in the melodrama has to be abandoned, and she has to face the erasure of all meaning of her previous life.

Nora:

it dawned upon me that for eight years I had been
living here with a strange man, and had borne him
three children—

With no life script in her mind any more, Nora walks out the door on her former life. “I have no idea what is going to become of me,” she declares, but her actions will not be scripted by the conventions and beliefs of other people.

***

For Hamlet, too, the scenario no longer holds together. It is like an artifact whose parts have loosened, compromising its integrity.

The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

If he can no longer trust the scenario, who—or what—is there to trust? It is no wonder, then, that he tests the honesty and loyalty of those around him.

To Horatio:

And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?
. . .
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
. . .
But what is your affair in Elsinore?

To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:

What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?
. . .
But in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?
. . .
Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a
free visitation? Come, deal justly with me. Come, come! Nay, speak.

To Ophelia [in a letter]:

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers;
I have not art to reckon my groans; but that
I love thee best, O most best, believe
it.

But what exactly caused Hamlet to see his life script fall to pieces?

Horatio:

My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.

Hamlet:

I prithee do not mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

Horatio:

Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

The sudden death of his father and the hasty re-marriage of his mother to his uncle were the events that undermined the scenario. Hamlet’s “O that this too too solid flesh would melt“ soliloquy is occasioned by his torment over his mother’s action. Notice how his thoughts do not run smoothly but are broken up by by pained outbursts:

That it should come to this!
But two months dead! Nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; and yet, within a month-
Let me not think on't! Frailty, thy name is woman!-
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body
Like Niobe, all tears- why she, even she
(O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourn'd longer) married with my uncle;
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

The “Happy Family” script gone, what does the world look like to Hamlet now?

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah, fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.