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Reality Bites
If you're like me, at some point in the past few years you've had the conversation about why there are so many dead bodies -- fake dead bodies -- on television.
We have dead bodies lying on slabs in the morgue on most of the "Law & Order" franchises -- and there are three of them, plus endless reruns. We have three "CSI" (Crime Scene Investigation) franchises, one each in Las Vegas, Miami and New York. We have two naval crime shows, although only one has an autopsy component. And only one has Mark Harmon, which is reason enough for watching.
Then we have all the non-uniformed detective shows -- the dead bodies battered, spattered, tossed, drowned, ripped apart or what have you just to jump-start the plot. Plus the British shows which pop up on PBS stations. Even "Inspector Lewis," the upscale British mystery series set in the ancient town of Oxford, England, features an occasional conversation around a slab.
The television conversation usually segues into why there are so many reality shows. There are far too many of those, too, of course, although the torrent appears to be slowing down. Several really bad ones (how can they tell?) have been pulled off the air, although Hugh Hefner has three new girlfriends, so there's that. There are even shows and Web sites that exist mostly to recap and/or make fun of all these shows. The recent Balloon Boy hoax is a good illustration of the damage these shows are doing.
Why is America endlessly entertained by all this? All this fake and staged reality? Is it because real reality hurts too much?
After all, this is a culture that has banished death from daily life. In the old days, homes had a "cooling room" where a relative's body, washed and dressed, could rest while people paid their respects. Now people die mainly in hospitals, or, if they die at home, their bodies are whisked away by professionals.
Since death is a part of life -- a terrifying part -- we humans remain intensely curious about it. Can it be that the more it disappears from our lives, the more we crave to see it, know it, understand it, inure ourselves to it?
And reality shows? Well, if you're dealing with real reality -- which can include raising children, caring for elderly parents and trying to do the jobs of two or more people at work because the others have been "laid off for the good health of the company," or you're afraid of being laid off, or you've been laid off and your unemployment insurance is running out, or if you or a loved one is sick and facing bankruptcy at the hands of the medical establishment, or if you're struggling with the death of a loved one who died in harm's way, or if you're homeless, or jobless or hungry, or... I can go on, but you know what I mean -- then reality once removed may be all you can handle.
Can Americans no longer deal with real reality? Newspapers and television news think so. Afraid to offend, they are endlessly squeamish about showing real blood and guts. Remember the bodies falling from the World Trade Center on 9/11? Those images were the perfect icons of that horrible day. And they were quickly scrubbed from our sight. A few years later, when a sculptor recreated one of those images, there was a huge outcry against his work. The Bush administration tried to hide the photos of coffins returning from Iraq. Just recently, some newspapers ran a picture of a soldier dying in Afghanistan and faced a national outcry.
After eight years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's difficult to conjure up images of the war because there are so few. Compare that to the iconic photographs from Vietnam or Korea or World War II. The only iconic image we have is that guy standing on the crate with a poncho over his head, and that's not exactly a good advertisement for American democracy.
So what is this weird dichotomy, where people have no qualms about sitting down in front of the television and watching three hours of dead bodies or strangers fighting to stay on an island, yet are somehow offended by an image of what war really looks like?
Bodies are piling up around the globe from rape, war, famine, pestilence and environmental degradation. Perhaps it is to our credit that we reach out to understand the dark side of 21st Century existence through our entertainment.
But perhaps we need to cut out the filters. Perhaps we need real images and real information about the damage we are doing to our fellow man and to our planet. And soon.
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38 Comments so far
Show AllI really can't think of anything to say about this article other than it is brings up a really interesting issue that I really had not really thought that much about. Good stuff here. Something to spend some time thinking about. Maybe I'll add something later, but I have to think on this one for a bit.
The reason people entertain themselves by watching, staging, imagining, etc., other people die is simple and fundamental. The underlying dynamic is that we think/feel if they die, we won't. It's similar to a religious sacrifice, God, take the sacrifice, and, don't take me. It's bizarre, for sure, but that's what's happening.
In reading the New York Times reporter David Rohde five part series on his captivity in Afghanistan at the hands of fundamentalist opponents of the US occupation, he mentions his captors watching resistance produced DVDs of IED explosions and beheadings, and speculates on this as a desensitization of his captors toward the use of violence.
We are losing a lot more than mere civility here in the USA.
Frankly, I'd suggest you stop reading the New York Times. They abdicated journalistic integrity years ago.
Yeah. Read the Post, or Murdochs Wall Street Journal, for journalistic integrity (LOL)
Hopefully these aren't the alternatives.
"Henry 8"
You remind me of the 'guy' who went to his Doctor with a 'complaint'.
One eye was blue and the other was brown.
His Doctor listened to his 'other symptoms'---articulated with much of the same 'rhetoric' you love to use; then he left the room.
When he returned he had a 'quart jar' full of a 'brown liquid' which he ordered the 'patient' to drink.
After he was through the 'guy' said 'wow, that stuff tasted like shit'--at which the Doctor responded, 'it was, you were a quart low'.
"If" indeed you 'were' a Marine, and you escorted other 'dead Marines' to a final resting place; and did not see that they died for nothing---then you are either blind, a fool, or --------'a quart low'. See your Doctor immediately.
Simply look at how few people still watch the "major" networks, get their demographics and you won't be so concerned.
As to Hollywood, they stopped making good movies for the most part years ago. Only the infantile attend their showings of trash.
They still drop a diamond from time to time like "Taking Chance" which will allow you to see the real America, the one behind the stereotypes commonly presented by the extremists and America haters.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I read the synopsis of this film. It sounds like it does not question at all the immoral and illegal invasion of Iraq; that it does not lament the sad misuse and manipulation of our men and women in the military who were wrongfully sent to invade and occupy that country under false pretenses of non-existent WMD in order to pressure control of Iraqi oil (a process still going on). It does not seem to lament the ignorance of 70% of our people who understood the situation in Iraq so little--and were so lazy and amoral about informing themselves about it--that rather than spend a few hours a week reading up on what was really going on they unquestioningly sent their own children over there into that atrocity. It does not seem to lament the same situation regarding the military men and women who, similarly out of ignorance and amoral intellectual laziness, went over there and devastated that country. What about the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians maimed and killed? The millions of Iraqi civilians displaced? The lack of any American help for the millions displaced? What, exactly, are the merits of this film? That it barely tells a fraction of even one side of the story so it's easier for people like you to understand?
Why don't you write your own film about how, when Duhhbya and Dick Cheney were praising the "heroism" of our troops in Iraq between '03 and '06 they were simultaneously pushing cuts in combat pay and military benefits? Or better yet, why don't you take Bill O'Reilly's patriotic advice and shut the fuck up?
I suggest you watch the film before telling anyone to shut the fuck up or deciding what someone else should do.
This comment was insulting and beneath you. I understand this very well, you obviously don't have a clue.
Again reading a synopsis is nothing. See the film. Its not about any of the things you mentioned. It has nothing to do with Bush, Cheney, Iraq, right or wrong of the war. It was simply about the loss of this kid and his escort taking him home and what typical Americans affiorded him. Kevin Bacon doesn't even speak that much. Its about real people, not stereotypes, not ideology.
I escourted three of these kids home myself years ago, so if you still want to say what you did above after actually seeing the film, then I'll tell you to kiss my ass. Till you see it....you take Bill O'Reilly's patriotic advice.
And I suggest you watch the film "Crash".
I suggest you watch the film before telling anyone to shut the fuck up or deciding what someone else should do.
This comment was insulting and beneath you. I understand this very well, you obviously don't have a clue.
Again reading a synopsis is nothing. See the film. Its not about any of the things you mentioned. It has nothing to do with Bush, Cheney, Iraq, right or wrong of the war. It was simply about the loss of this kid and his escort taking him home and what typical Americans affiorded him. Kevin Bacon doesn't even speak that much. Its about real people, not stereotypes, not ideology.
I escourted three of these kids home myself years ago, so if you still want to say what you did above after actually seeing the film, then I'll tell you to kiss my ass. Till you see it....you take Bill O'Reilly's patriotic advice.
I suggest you watch the film before telling anyone to shut the fuck up or deciding what someone else should do.
This comment was insulting and beneath you. I understand this very well, you obviously don't have a clue.
Again reading a synopsis is nothing. See the film. Its not about any of the things you mentioned. It has nothing to do with Bush, Cheney, Iraq, right or wrong of the war. It was simply about the loss of this kid and his escort taking him home and what typical Americans affiorded him. Kevin Bacon doesn't even speak that much. Its about real people, not stereotypes, not ideology.
I escourted three of these kids home myself years ago, so if you still want to say what you did above after actually seeing the film, then I'll tell you to kiss my ass. Till you see it....you take Bill O'Reilly's patriotic advice.
Well said. I would have added just one more question:
What does it say about a person's integrity that they change their online handle from Thomas Moore to henry8? He must think we are naive morons.
Yes we know the USMC produces men skilled in war. War requires many skills but, for the officers in particular, it requires well developed proficiency in mendacity. After all, I believe it was Sun Tzu that said that war is the art of deception. Marines know this ability to fool the "enemy" can save lives. I have a sneaking suspicion that henry8 thinks we are the enemy. Hence, lying to us is his patriotic duty. All's fair in love and war and all that sort of shit.
Most Hollywood movies about the US Military are Given the blessings of the Pentagon. The Pentagon will not allow movie makers access to facilities and the like unless they agree with "the message" the movie tries to get to the public.
This is not opinion. This is their stated Policy.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
1) Consider that the pro-violence propaganda supported by our political class and corporate infotainment class is all designed to mutually support and reinforce itself in its dominant themes.
2) Consider the nature of those themes as represented in the dominant violence saturated, popular entertainment TV dramas of our day: (A) Forensic crime dramas depicting the middle-class and poorer classes.
(B) Hospital dramas.
3) How are the various groups depicted in these dramas? (A) Cops are our friends and are heroes to be venerated. The few ones who go bad have plenty of reasons to justify it.
(B) The poor are ignorant, violent and atavistic throwbacks who deserve contempt and violent police methods--even if the cops violate the laws themselves to get results.
(C) The middle-class are corrupt and require police institutions to keep their lawless attempts at social climbing in line. [unsaid: The morally superior upper-class needs police institutions to keep the middle-class on its leash]
(D) The poor are a threat to the middle-class; the middle-class are a threat to the upper-class.
(E) Doctors are our friends who are morally upright, often heroic, indifferent to issues of the cost structures of health care, and our health care system is basically sound and beneficial to all.
They package the PR to manipulate our behavior and try to get us to pay for it too. Slick fuckers.
Thank you for shining a light on the way they try to game us.
The public has to be conditioned to acceptance of the "Dominator Model" wherein public order and Civilization is preserved from the Violent by the Violent.
It is so we accept that a world of violence is how it MUST be in that it was ever with us and will always be with us.
Thus the soldier or policeman with a gun and willing to use that gun in order to keep order and preserve liberty is the ONLY way and shall not be questioned.
Showing the REALITY interferes with this message. It harder to manipulate into the clearcut message presented by the televison screen of "Good guys and Bad guys".
The message fails in reality because BOTH sides sincerely believe they the good guys defending their own rights and liberties. The system can not have the viewer "empathizing" with the enemy so the "reality" of that "enemies" humanity must be hidden away. He MUST be a monster that HAS to be killed.
Good article, as I've often thought the same thing. We are trained to be passive in America, no doubt. Where I live, I can go snorkling in clear waters filled with coral and fish. I don't. And the reason I don't is a hidden suspicion that if a shark ate me my fellow Americans would somehow see it as my 'fault'. Smart Americans don't snorkle in shark infected waters, which means they don't snorkle at all. They also don't hike, because there are bears in the woods, and the horror of meeting with a bear is NOTHING compared to the embarrassment of having to explain to your fellow passive Americans that you actually WENT into the bears properties seeking... you don't know what... beauty? Why seek beauty? Have you SEEN Hefners new girlfriends? Hence, we engage reality through the TV and now internet. And these things tell us, its DANGEROUS out there in reality-land. There are lions and tigers and bears. And, given our modern conveniences, if you get eaten by them your fellows will see you rather shamefully, as someone who didn't have the sense to stay put, and eat from a cornucopia of WalMart wealth, positioned right next to your mouth.
Indeed, the lesson of CSI is not only should you stay away from the woods, but you should even stay away from your own downtown. Take a look at what happens to people who venture there, and congratulate yourself that you had the sense, indeed, the moral superiority, to stay in tonight, and last night, and the last ten years.
Praise the Lord and Pass the Almond Roca
One thing that makes the real world a somewhat scary place for me is my health insurance policy. And no I am not kidding here. It is so full of co-pays and huge deductibles that it makes me think twice about partaking in any activity where I might hurt myself. If I break something skiing, riding a bike etc it could literally cost me thousands of dollars. :-(
Engaging in reality is going to be harder and harder in years to come. It was a 4 hr drive to go backpacking 10 years ago, but for many American's its much more than that. And in many cities, our streets really ARE dangerous. Being a 'good parent' these days means sequestering your kids away, behind walls, where no stranger can abduct them.
Fortunately, the rest of the worlds isn't nearly as fvcked up as America has become.
In Orwell's 1984, the purpose of the telescreen was not just spying, but for the more insidious (useful for the state) purpose of indoctrination/brainwashing and propagandization through the same sort of crap shows now offered.
Frank Zappa's "I'm the Slime" is still the best descriptor of TV's offerings.
"Can Americans no longer deal with real reality?"
As if dealing w/real reality is easy?
We have been warned that we've all but killed Earth.
Our corporate and political leaders have openly conspired to steal and hoard as much wealth as possible, ignoring the dire consequences of their aberrant behavior that's right in front of their faces everyday.
We've been told that most of our rivers are undrinkable, that our entire food system is poisoned with chemicals and GMOs, that ocean death is epidemic, that all natural resources are rapidly depleting.
Extinction rate off the scale, have you heard?
We've killed and maimed millions of innocents worldwide, not to mention hundreds of thousands of US military personnel and PMCs - all because a few assholes lied in pursuit of their own personal agendas.
And my nephew has H1N1.
I'd be impressed if, say, 5% of humans are able to deal with real reality at the moment...
It's okay to watch phony dead bodies but not real ones because real ones might make us protest war and cut into war profiteer's profits.
Right. Our dear leaders continue to block the release of photos documenting what goes on at our concentration camps and torture chambers.
Bread and Circuses - kinda like the ancient Romans at the Coloseum watching the slaughter.
TV: The new Opiate of the Masses + Orwell's Panopticon rolled into one. Brilliant way to control information and provide diversions from serious social and economic problems we are facing. Take away net neutrality and the stranglehold shall be complete.
T.V. is the new opiate of the masses and has replaced religion. I am sure if Marx was around now he would agree with you; especially, cable news that has drugged and brainwashed the masses. The 99% of the rest of T.V. either is for diversion from reality; dumbing down the sheeple; a disingenuious non stop 24/7 of phony advertising for the sheeple by the corportocracy; a place for non-stop negative news of: rapes, murders, sick people, fear, disasters,ect. so I say: KILL YOUR T.V.!
"Why is America endlessly entertained by all this?"
I don't think all of America is entertained by it. I can barely stand all of the mystery and detective type shows that seem to prop up violence, torture and right wing politics. Even "House" is too violent and in-your-face for me.
I'm not all of America of course, and I think that TV today does appeal to a common denominator, lowest or not, of people who want to see action, gunshots, chases, blood, wrestling. Even football is somewhat violent and suspenseful, and think of how people have parties around certain televised football games. TV also appeals to an even greater common denominator, those who believe that TV always tells the truth, is always ethical, always balanced, always with appropriate content, and if you grow up in a certain TV era, you have no idea it could be any other way. What slays me is that we have increasingly violent and bloody TV, yet frontal nudity is still verboten. No nasty boobies in front of the kiddies!
In the era of political blogging, I'm able to see just how many of my like minded fellow Americans don't buy cable TV, don't watch much free TV, and are ever in search of other, more balanced and ethical news and entertainment outlets. The free flow of hard news on the internet also keeps me aware of why the internet may not remain free of control by the corporate/defense dynasty, which owns TV at something like 95 percent, much longer. As for really good, clever, witty, insightful, thought provoking entertainment, televised or recorded, the USA is a great desert, other than for a handful of movies you discover by keeping posted on film festivals and blog spots like Common Dreams.
Well said. Believe it or not I have never watched a reality show. I've read about them on the internet where I get 99% of my information. My entertainment comes from a flight simulator on google earth and a free cad program where you can build just about anything in 3D called google sketch. Also some planting in the Spring and Fall. Bill Moyers on PBS is the only TV program that I ever watch. I do not have cable TV.
Bill Moyers on PBS could be said to have saved TV, and actually I love many other PBS programs too, The Short List, Independent Lens, Point of View, but I notice, all over this country, that since the digital switch, people are not getting PBS unless they buy cable, and my people, described in my post above, like you, don't buy cable. I wouldn't care if I only got PBS, and no other channels. I've spent hours researching antennas, tried several different antennas (thank heavens you can easily re-sell things on Amazon and Ebay), researched other peoples experiences locally and online, and while PBS always had strong analog signals, they don't seem to be coming through on free TV in the digital era. Plan or happenstance? FOX always comes through very clearly. Google "don't get PBS since digital" and you'll find out that people everywhere are experiencing this problem. You're lucky you still get it.
"Why is America endlessly entertained by all this?"
Because Americans are entirely too stupid to be able to assimilate anything deep that requires thinking. This is also the reason why 85% of them still play with an invisible friend and delight themselves to orgasm watching a bunch of fat boys running after a ball on a field. There just is no accounting for stupidity.
Bacteria dead and gone millions years ago has managed to wake up and give life again so do humans
How sweet in the gardens of commondreams the commonpeople are seeing life through phony death than real death than at last life again.
Consciousness, Eyes wide open, vision, colours water & awakening awakening awakening wAKIN uP
Joyce,
I agree. I live in Colchester, Vermont and was grieved by the death of a 16 year old in Essex Junction at the hands of her legal guardian who is 30 years old. The lady guardian is accused of murder. This lady has other dependents and has always been a good citizen. Yet, out of the blue, she argues over laundry with a teenager and apparantly knifed the teen who died at the hospital. The 30 year old guardian is an African american, as is the 16 year old victim. Do you know what it's like to be an African american in Essex Junction? I am not an African American but I am frankly sick to death that our community, which the Burlington Free Press said on the front page back in 1999 or 2000 has endemic racism, is not being brought to task by YOU, the journalists. It's all fine and dandy to rail about mines in war zones and global warming and other such things but what's the deal with this "racism in Vermont" taboo? It's bad for Vermont to be racist. Live with it. Stop denying it. This is the number one issue here. Vermonters are getting MORE racist, not less because more minorities are moving in. This bigotry has to stop and you journalists have to stop hiding from this. This death in Essex Junction would probably not have happened if the 30 year old wasn't treated poorly on a daily basis from Hannaford's supermarket to the police department. It didn't cause it but you can be sure it contributed heavily to it.
Spare me your discomfort with not seeing dead bodies if you don't want to deal with an African American Vermonter death.
Sorry everyone, sorry because, however uncomfortable this comment is, it is not aggressive. I have no desire to offend. It is just the simple truth.
Like truly millions of others out here in the world, I do not care about Americans dying. Those who do are embarrassing. They have brought it on themselves and they are nothing but silly; like sad and warped suicides, or sad, failed self-improvers, even desperate or cynical 'drop-outs' earning a buck and caring nothing about what they do to others.
The deaths out here of the hundreds of thousand, unnamed and uncounted, virtually naked and often hungry people of whatever persuasion strategically killed by these well protected well armed and well fed American (can I call them?) misfits who do not face their enemy on equal ground are the ones that count; are what it is all about. In fact many of the killers feel profoundly that doing so makes a worthwhile man of them.
Funnily enough this is what the Republicans and many others think too.
Funny, because otherwise, these Republicans and I disagree so profoundly. For example I see the American way of killing others makes the resultant American man and his supporter into a silly little children.
Funny that with all this fun it is such sad futile story.
I am truly, truly sorry about it and do not know what to do.
"James Edwards"
Actually you are being kind to the Americans. But why?
Is it because they are constantly living up to their ambition to be a 'horrible example'---and very successfully, that you would be 'kind' and choose your words so well, and apply them so 'gently' ?
Or because their immense stupidity and arrogance is only surpassed by their short sightedness and equally immense capacity for repeating the same mistakes---often within the same generation?
They will only ridicule your kindness and veiw it as a weakness.
The Americans only understand what they know best--'barbarism' at its severest application, with equal denial and avoidance of the consequences of their actions, 'seasoned' with ample amounts of hypocricy and duplicity.
They have already exceeded the numbers of innocent lives they 'lament' from '9/11', by at least 100 times---with just a few of the 'guilty' who 'opposed them', as part of the vast numbers of innocents; and they do so this very moment with little or no remorse. In fact they refer to them as 'collateral damage'--garbage that just 'got in the way'; while at the same time claiming a 'higher purpose' 'motivated by a higher power'.
"If the USA were another nation the USA would invade the USA to keep the world safe; and they would be justified."
Well said, metal and GwNorth.
I'd just like to add one thing - much of the violence in US shows is directed against women. Why? To force us back to "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche." Sometimes this is made explicit, as in "the un(known) sub(ject) felt intimidated by strong, independent women - that's why he became a serial killer," (with the subtext that, "if you want to be safe, girls, you should be as "modest" as any woman in Afghanistan") but it's mostly always there.
Or maybe it's just that people GET OFF ON seeing women terrorized, brutalized and murdered.