I watch a lot of television and films. I spent 10 years working as a producer and studio executive. A large part of the job is finding something that will resonate with the public. I think there's a not-so-fine line between entertaining folks and creating depravity. Beyond VH-1's twisted decision to air BREAKING BONADUCE is a frighening review of it I found on Newsweek. You can link to it
here.
A couple of things first: 1. Capitalism insures the pursuit of capital above things like compassion, decency or the greater good. It just does. 2. Commercial art places the idea of artistic expression at the center of this tension. I do not believe that all art is about compassion, decency or the greater good. I do believe that artists generally express things in an attempt to describe their perspective on the
ser humano, the human being, the soul. My experience in Hollywood has proven to me, over and over, that executives do not think about these things when they are working. Not in anyway that is complimentary to the viewing audience or complementary to the artist's expression. At best it's parasitic. At best. And I say this having been one of the vampiric suits feeding off of human suffering for my own 30%-100% cash bonus plus stock options.
I avoid shows that are about people who are losing their damn minds. It’s my passive boycott against the degeneration of my frontal lobes. These reality shows are like crack for your sensibilities. I watched the first season of the Apprentice because, in it's own over-hyped way, it exposed people to corporate business practices in a way that may help some folks to succeed in Corporate America. Other than that, some of the shows
may help people who can’t crawl out of their own shit long enough to realize it stinks, but for the most part, they just allow us to fictionalize reality. Yeah, I said it. I think reality tv promotes disassociative behaviour in otherwise compassionate, caring individuals, and I think it reinforces people who didn’t give a fuck to begin with to act like fools. Negative reinforcement on a monumental scale.
Newsweek, apparently, doesn’t give a good goddamn about any of this. The reviewer refers to Danny Bonaduce “like the protagonist of a twisted FX drama.” No reference to real people – afterall, readers of his article probably don’t know any real people anyway unless they’ve been “celebritized” on reality tv. He continues with this real people = fictional chacters, “It turns out that, despite whatever horrors Hollywood visited upon his own childhood, Danny is a sweet and caring father—like Tony Soprano, another complicated guy who finds himself unexpectedly exposed in therapy. Bonaduce can be a monster, but he’s a great dad.” OK, stop, take a minute to think about this. As a culture, we’ve come to the point where real people suffering from breakdowns are quickly subsumed into a fictional reality about a mobster who kills people – a
serial killer.
This isn’t new. I’ve read reviews like this one before. Today it just struck me because I’d been reading about our foreign policy mess, the need for compassionate relief work, GW’s call for faith-based groups to lead the way in recovery efforts, and all the Karl Rove stuff. When you have a culture that’s driven by money, that pays to see the worst of the human condition, of course you end up with comments like this: "One of the things that makes the show great—and it is a great show in its bleakly raw way—is how real it feels. The promise that anything can happen animates reality TV, unlike scripted shows. We expect a certain train-wreck quality in reality TV. “Breaking Bonaduce” dares to show us the blood on the tracks—a first. (Though, to its credit, VH1 does not show Danny actually slitting his wrists.) In our celebrity-addicted culture, seeing a quasi-famous person bear his warts and scars the way Bonaduce does never happens. That can be weirdly refreshing."
Cut to: six months from now, someone will die on a nationally televised reality tv show and WE WILL ALL BE WATCHING. We’re back in Rome folks. Time for a revolution. My friend
Van Jones has an interesting post on
Huffington.com. I don’t agree with him on everything, but I think it’s a good discussion start point and one that needs to be had, urgently. Media reflects culture and creates it.
Scary thought…
