Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Numbing
Hear Bill talking with Matt Swaim about this commentary on"The Son Rise Morning Show" on Aug. 21: Click here for the archived audio and scroll to the 1 hr 37 min mark in the program.
“All the world’s a stage” rings true today even more than it did in Shakespeare’s time. The business of America is entertainment. Our civic life is increasingly driven by narrative and performance. And our scripts are tragicomic.
Our commercialized popular culture gives the entertainment industry an outsized influence on how we think.
Act One: The Fault is Not in our Stars, But in Ourselves
Members of the industry pack their ideas into a cavalcade of engrossing products, shaping messages and media. These inseparable forces, which media scholar Marshall McLuhan analyzed decades ago, roil our politics, our economy, our psychology, and our values.
The lessons and illusions, meanings and emotions, conveyed by these forces often earn our applause for excellence. But they can also gaslight us, or spark dubious approaches to social interaction. Oscar Wilde explained the cause for concern: “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
Our culture of escapism, with its positive and negative aspects, is simply the water in which we swim. The risk of poisoning does not come from responsible portrayals of principles and truths. And censorship is not the answer to any portrayals.
But we must acknowledge that some amusements unleash dangers in the public square.
Where are the viral exposures occurring? In films and in the on-demand menus of our home theaters. Plus a metaverse that serves up social media, artificial reality, video games, and porn.
Effects from our screens are now more complex and numerous than they were in 1995, when a Frontline documentary titled “Does TV Kill?” examined the contagion of violence.
“Before the average American child leaves elementary school, researchers estimate that he or she will have witnessed more than 8,000 murders on TV,” says the online summary of that report. “Has this steady diet of imaginary violence made America the world leader in real crime and violence?”
The quantum leap in “mature-content” programming since that documentary must be taking an even bigger toll today. Our entertainment ecology arguably can breed crime, cultural coarseness, oversexualization of the young, and the epidemic of mental illness and psychological impairment.
Sadly, we perpetrate that ecological hazard. Much of the destructive or numbing content is made on our own smartphones and posted on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. We form our own Hollywood, making videos that betray human dignity. We traffic in brief “messages” that embarrassingly resemble vaudeville or farce.
Yet, we seem to treat all these influences as a given. We debate about other cures for crime and crazy behavior, or we normalize the problems.
During a recent two-hour “town hall meeting” presented on the Cuomo news program to address America’s growing challenge of crime, I heard only two or three brief mentions of perpetrators’ “values” as a contributor to violence.
The infusion of harmful media messages into the lives of our youth seems to be a truth we can’t handle. When a Modesto Bee editorial this month complained about convenience-store workers taking a vigilante-like stance toward a shoplifter, it quickly passed over the possible role of entertainment:
“Street justice may be popular in movies and among frustrated citizens,” the editors said, “but it has no place in a society governed by the rule of law.”
This raises the question of whether our proclivities can indeed be tamed by a respect for law, order, and civilized behavior if we catechize the population with alternative rules.
Those are based on power, greed, explosive emotions, anything-goes attitudes, carelessness about the past and future, and the manipulation of facts. Add to the list: cruel conflict, self-centeredness, oversimplification, materialism, relativism, utilitarianism, victimhood, and quick fixes.
We need to ponder this broad catechism of entertainment because of the broad truth about humans. We are inveterate imitators, eager to learn popular ideas and copy popular experiences.
“Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind,” wrote René Girard (1923-2005), a social theorist who studied this search for meaning under the rubric of “mimetic desire.”
Our copy-cat instincts intensify in an environment where realities change rapidly and many are trapped in a vacuum without rock-steady principles or authoritative guidance.
We retreat to online “communities” which comfort us with confirmation bias or mindless titillation. And we rely on movies and shorter visual bursts to tell us what the in-crowd is seeing and thinking.
Our opportunities to be influenced are abundant.
Of course, messages we receive may be straightforward and beneficial—with content that informs or inspires, whatever its perspectives and politics. Many movies and programs tell great stories, whether funny or sad, romantic or shocking.
Hollywood, like life, can explore many genres of experience with excellence.
What exploration do we prefer? A recent issue of Christianity Today noted a 2022 study of young adults in Gen Z and their favorite film genres. Comedy came in first, with “action” and “horror” essentially tied for second place. Twenty years ago, “drama” was the favorite in both TV and film.
There is also a deeper, or perhaps shallower, layer we explore. Much of our entertainment obsesses about compelling images, symbols, and appearances, consumed with brief, partial attention.
The characters are often stereotypical and predictable.
Mass-market programs showcase diversity, but we seldom penetrate the complicated life of a unique character dealing with darkness and light over time (with the exception of some dramas).
Relationships are frequently turbulent and shaped by tragedies against which we harden our hearts.
Many of those portrayed are mere spectators or victims in battles of “good vs. evil.” These must be won at all costs so the world can be saved—especially if a superhero is involved.
Superheroes typically represent a person’s independent formation of a new identity, an easily understood “brand.” They are loners with powers that win them allies and enemies. Their problem-solving goes to extremes.
Alas, they don’t seek time-consuming solutions through the technicalities and nuances of the justice system or mediation. Even this moderated approach is being further radicalized as “lawfare.”
We leave the theater only to view, up-close or on the news, neighborhoods that remind us of Gotham City post-Adam West. Looking for safety, we desire to become superheroes, to “do something” for our suffering planet, or at least for our children.
Lots of parents want their kids to have superpowers and cloaks of protection, not run-of-the-mill lives handling their joys and sorrows with traditional utility belts of purpose, family, prudence, resilience, and valor.
Kids may grow up seeing vampires, video-game enemies, and the walking dead around every corner. Some assume nearly everyone is a villain until proven “normal.” Deep down, kids know they have a dark side too, but that can be covered up with a colorful costume and signals of virtue, or with a hasty retreat from the turmoil.
Narratives encouraging these thoughts tend to replace authentic (but boringly detailed) stories of simple human heroism retold by elders and friends. Pre-digested, dystopian scenarios also replace the classic movies, TV shows, and books to which kids were never exposed. There’s so much new information (and potential deformation) to consume!
We risk winding up as “poor players” in scenes of silence or fury, not as agents aspiring to better roles in a brighter future. Even political “leaders” are sometimes selected as cookie-cutter avatars who will deliver their assigned lines to preserve the scripts of a mediocre, partisan, performative machine.
We need to earn and share the spotlight, as Pope Francis instructed in his 2020 message for World Communications Day. “With the gaze of the great storyteller—the only one who has the ultimate point of view—we can then approach the other characters, our brothers and sisters, who are with us as actors in today’s story,” he said. “For no one is an extra on the world stage, and everyone is open to possible change.”
See “Phronesis Plus” for part two of this commentary.
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