Tuesday, November 8, 2011

American Verdict: Media and Spectacle

The crawl on all the cable news channels yesterday struck me as strange. The same headline appeared twice: once under the "Top Stories" banner, presumably the more important events of the day; and again under the "Entertainment" heading, along with this week's top-grossing movies. Herman Cain's troubles, rumblings about possible military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, and census data reporting 49 million Americans now living in poverty were relegated to the electron-bombarded back pages.

For 30 minutes prior to the reading of the verdict, the networks cut away from other stories (CNN left a reporter in Afghanistan in mid-sentence to announce the "breaking news"), gathered legal experts and entertainment "reporters," and speculated  as to what the verdict might be. The crowd of thousands outside the courthouse pumped signs that included "Murray Burn in Hell." When the verdict was actually announced, a roar worthy of the Colosseum rose, punctuated by a cacophony of car horns. Ambulances arrived to assist stricken swooners in the crowd. And it continued, on into the night.

But this is not the usual screed about the banality of Big Media or even the old battle over who is biased and who is a counterbalance. We have been gawkers at the freak show for millennia.

Before Hypermedia, we had village gossip, attendance at public punishments, popular salacious scandal, and all manner of vicarious mob mentalities. We sold tidbits and trinkets, brought the kids, hissed the villains, and mourned the righteous. The progression arcs all the way through the famous spectacles we recall from our own cultural history: John Wilkes Booth, Oscar Wilde, Bruno Hauptmann, Fatty Arbuckle, OJ, Casey Anthony, ad infinitum. Although each is different in detail, they share three things: spectacle, celebrity, and our vicarious interest. The differences in media are ones of scale and speed: from word of mouth around the village hearth, to the speed of light around a global one.

We are all, of course, still tribal. That evidence, in politics, conflict, ethnicity, and sect, is irrefutable. Small wonder that we are drawn to community events, for humans seek to belong. The magnetism of spectacle is the sheer ecstatic grandeur of it. The neolithic priests at Stonehenge used resonant sound within that enclosure to induce rapt, trance-like states in the congregants. Spectacle is our collective cultural High Mass, our secular ritual.

We are now and ever have been consumers of spectacle through media. The question of whether media drives our appetites or vice-versa was answered presciently by McLuhan: when we use a tool, the tool uses us. Ever since our antecedent picked up a stick and used it as an implement, our tools have been acting on us, extending and refining our grasp, enlarging our environments. The tools we use today are brain-tools, and they act upon our brains in turn, changing how we think.

Is this a good or a bad thing? The responsibility for that outcome, lies, of course, with us. Are we passive consumers, responding to spectacle in a media-soaked trance? Are we casually dismissive of these mass events? Or do we critically examine them, noting what they have to say about who we are?

Deconstruct spectacles, and they become lenses, magnifiers of what is in us.

10 comments:

  1. A Sardonic and accurate comment, which I choose to display as text, which has its own rewards:

    CROWD OF WOMEN: [yelling]

    JEWISH OFFICIAL: Matthias, son of Deuteronomy of Gath.

    MATTHIAS: Do I say 'yes'?

    STONE HELPER #1: Yes.

    MATTHIAS: Yes.

    OFFICIAL: You have been found guilty by the elders of the town of uttering the name of our Lord, and so, as a blasphemer...

    CROWD: Ooooh!

    OFFICIAL: ...you are to be stoned to death.

    CROWD: Ahh!

    MATTHIAS: Look. I'd had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was 'That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.'

    CROWD: Oooooh!

    OFFICIAL: Blasphemy! He's said it again!

    CROWD: Yes! Yes, he did! He did!

    OFFICIAL: Did you hear him?!

    CROWD: Yes! Yes, we did! We did!

    WOMAN #1: Really!

    [silence]

    OFFICIAL: Are there any women here today?

    CROWD: No. No. No. No...

    OFFICIAL: Very well. By virtue of the authority vested in me--

    [CULPRIT WOMAN stones MATTHIAS]

    MATTHIAS: Oww! Lay off! We haven't started yet!

    OFFICIAL: Come on! Who threw that? Who threw that stone? Come on.

    CROWD: She did! She did! He did! He! He. He. Him. Him. Him. Him. He did.

    CULPRIT WOMAN: Sorry. I thought we'd started.

    OFFICIAL: Go to the back.

    CULPRIT WOMAN: Oh, dear.

    OFFICIAL: Always one, isn't there? Now, where were we?

    MATTHIAS: Look. I don't think it ought to be blasphemy, just saying 'Jehovah'.

    CROWD: Oooh! He said it again! Oooh!

    OFFICIAL: You're only making it worse for yourself!

    MATTHIAS: Making it worse?! How could it be worse?! Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!

    CROWD: Oooooh!

    OFFICIAL: I'm warning you. If you say 'Jehovah' once more... [MRS. A. stones OFFICIAL]

    Right. Who threw that?

    MATTHIAS: [laughing]

    [silence]

    OFFICIAL: Come on. Who threw that?

    CROWD: She did! It was her! He! He. Him. Him. Him. Him. Him. Him.

    OFFICIAL: Was it you?

    MRS. A.: Yes.

    OFFICIAL: Right!

    MRS. A.: Well, you did say 'Jehovah'.

    CROWD: Ah! Ooooh!

    [CROWD stones MRS. A.]

    OFFICIAL: Stop! Stop, will you?! Stop that! Stop it! Now, look! No one is to stone anyone until I blow this whistle! Do you understand?! Even, and I want to make this absolutely clear, even if they do say 'Jehovah'.

    CROWD: Ooooooh!...

    [CROWD stones OFFICIAL]

    WOMAN #1: Good shot!

    [clap clap clap]

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  2. It's the first scene that came to mind, upon reading this post. Another example could come from Charles Dickens "A tale of two cities".

    From wiki:

    "“[T]he sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction.”[20] The sea here represents the coming mob of revolutionaries. After Gaspard murders the Marquis, he is “hanged there forty feet high—and is left hanging, poisoning the water.”[21] The poisoning of the well represents the bitter impact of Gaspard's execution on the collective feeling of the peasants.

    After Gaspard’s death, the storming of the Bastille is led (from the St. Antoine neighbourhood, at least) by the Defarges; “As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this raging circled around Defarge’s wine shop, and every human drop in the cauldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex...”[22] The crowd is envisioned as a sea. “With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into a detested word [the word Bastille], the living sea rose, wave upon wave, depth upon depth, and overflowed the city...”[22]"

    I once tried to read McLuhan but didn't quite become enthusiastic about him.

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  3. Forgive me, but when I read this, my first impression was that it applied pertinently to the OWS discussion. Maybe that was what occupied my mind. Maybe it applies to both. In any case, these were my first thoughts upon reading your post:

    It sounds as if you are describing revolution as rule of the unconscious, visceral mob, driven by emotion, rage, and, perhaps, a desire for vengeance.

    Sounds about right.

    Nevertheless, these are elemental human motivations, some of which served as the vanguard for our own American revolution. We all know the Great Terror which arose under Robespierre. Why did this anarchic and bloody result differ from our own? We had formulators and thinkers, idealists who nonetheless had a working framework beyond Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, which is what OWS lacks. It took us awhile after the conflict to codify this, but we did, in 1789. We made the revolution practical and applicable in everyday life and in our institutions.

    Revolutions do sometimes, if rarely, succeed. Does the current one stand a chance? Only if their ideals are matched by pragmatism toward those ends. This is the dilemma faced by the Arab Spring, and by all of us who stand on the cusp of history.

    Sorry for the digression.

    As to McLuhan, he had a unique and prescient insight into the interaction between humans and the extensions of their thoughts via media. He postulated our media-driven universe when television was barely more than an amusement, a novelty. Worth investigating.

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  4. You are correct. Wrong quote. I was thinking of Madame Defarge, knitting away furiously as she spends her days in front of the guillotine that worked day and night, without the mobs ever arriving to the point satiation.

    I'm not really against revolution. I do have a deep gratitude and appreciation for the Zionist revolution. Revolution through hard work, persistence and principle do not slide into wanton bloodiness. But there are no miracles and human nature is far the most part more interested and stimulated by revenge, a romantic concept if you think about it. It scares the living daylights out of me, I can tell you.

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  5. I did indeed think of the lady and her needles as I was writing that historical arc of spectacles.

    Here's the question: If I've established that it's important to critically analyze these mass displays of vicarious participation, what does it tell us about the ecstatic mob, about ourselves? Why were those Pythonic women picking up stones?

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  6. I thought there was only one woman in the Pythonic mob.

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  7. "... what does it tell us about the ecstatic mob, about ourselves?"


    from Crowds and Power, by Elias Canetti

    "Attributes of the Crowd:
    * the crowd always wants to grow
    * within the crowd, there is equality
    * the crowd loves density
    * the crowd needs a direction or a common goal"

    But we know all that already, right? It's about power.

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  8. Not necessarily. The key word I used in the essay was "vicarious." We participate in the mob without being a corporeal part of the actual mob. I'm more focused, in this media piece, with vicarious participation (the observers) than the folks in front of the courthouse--who have their own vicarious attachments, yet another story. As we watch, uncritically, we feel an echo of what they feel. We, collectively, ARE the mob.

    And so, it is about power, or can be, in the context of your "crowd" formulation, but it's even more about Feeling powerful, feeling equal, a part of things, feeling a commonality.

    We are talking about the virtual crowd, and vicarious experience. My favorite literary association for this is Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," or Truffaut's movie of the same name, where Montague's wife lives her life in the company of her "cousins" in a three-wall video room.

    and so, the meta-formulation of the Crowd becomes:

    I want to feel I'm part of something big.

    I want to feel that I'm just like everybody else. (The foundation of reality TV shows)

    I feel close to a lot of people.

    I want just what others want.


    The progression between these two formulations tells you something. As we use the tool, the tool uses us.

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  9. Mmmm. Beef stew. Red wine is the secret.

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  10. Another literary echo just occurred to me:

    "Oh, brave new world, that has such people in it."

    Miranda's comment (in "The Tempest") accrues a more sinister irony in Huxley's novel, which is, like Bradbury's, uncannily prescient.

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