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Inside Television 516
Publication date: 8-27-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn
I recently finished reading an advance copy of the paperback release of Chris Hedges’ 2009 Pulitzer Prize Winner, The End of Illusion. It is an immensely thoughtful book; a highly critical examination of American and by extension Western society. I recommend it to anyone who might be mildly curious regarding the near future of civilization.
The opening section delves into the modern cult of celebrity and how it is that an ever-increasing number of people are perfectly willing to go through bizarre humiliation on reality television in order to be celebrities. It is as though one is invited to a private planet on the planet where celebrities talk just with celebrities and drive celebrity cars and do celebrity things. They are richer than us, prettier than us, and most of all we want to be like them whereas they don’t want to be like us.
It’s on the whole a pretty ugly picture but the argument is well-founded and difficult to debate in opposition. It can be proven anecdotally. I would be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that at some point both you and I have thought - fantasized perhaps - about going on a reality show. One gazes around the living room and wonders how the family would look on TV. I know that ours, before recent illness, would have made Everybody Loves Raymond look like Swedish depressive cinema.
Obviously taking this beyond an inner chuckle or two is not healthy. Hedges book came out before the notorious Balloon Boy incident, but that is a sterling example. This too, I am writing just as the story has broken in the UK that Simon Cowell’s long successful X Factor talent show that he is bringing to Fox next season ... has its vocals sweetened. Not just the full performances before a rapturous live audience, which is trickier to do, but the sweetening extends to the auditions. Everybody involved with the show swears up and down that the sweetening is done in editing and the judges base their opinions on what is in the room. But that’s not the point. The point is that even the auditioners are made better than the great unwashed us. Put as bluntly as possible: we suck worse even than the people who suck on the show because their sucking was made to sound better, whereas we would just suck; A Capella.
Cowell will have a bad day or three, but surely deep down he will be musing that controversy creates cash. I will almost guarantee you that ratings will go up as more people will tune in trying to ‘spot the cheating.’ One almost wonders if Cowell’s people intentionally leaked this, just so people like me would write about it and people like you would read about it. This is television. people are capable of doing Machiavellian plots. The modern Machiavelli abandoned politics long ago for media; that is where the power is after all.
The long-time reader will know that I’ve cast spears disguised as words at the cults of celebrity and pseudo-reality TV before. I’m as on the record as the Watergate Tapes. But I’ve recently been working on a theory that absolutely everything we ingest: food, air, culture and thought alike all have both positive and negative effects. Even a reformed smoker will likely admit that he felt generally happy and more relaxed while killing himself.
And so, even the cult of celebrity and its off-shoot the celebrity confessional have their good sides. Put it this way - knowing an awful lot about someone you will likely ever meet does expand one’s range of knowledge. How many people do you know as well, in terms of triumphs and tribulations, as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan or Sandra Bullock? Family, yes. Close friends, certainly. A work colleague or two. A hundred people or so would you say? Even five hundred is a tidy little village but a rather small pool from which to draw experience and wisdom on the myriad problems life presents.
I thought of this while watching Christopher Hitchens give an interview to Charlie Rose on PBS about the former’s battle with cancer of the esophagus. I know I’ve written a lot about Hitchens lately, but I don’t apologize. If in fact he is soon to be missed, he will be sorely missed. I greatly admire those who can state an opinion with confidence and style and defend that opinion with flame and passion.
Being an eloquent man, Hitchens took the time given to him by a wisely uninterrupting Charlie Rose to muse about cancer, death and what it’s like. He said that one deludes one’s self by thinking that one is in control of the situation, whereas it is the tumor which really has the initiative. One reacts to what the tumor does.
He wants to be conscious at the moment of death and hopes to be able to make an observation at the moment preceding. A reporter to the end. But he also knows that may not be possible, given the painful state that death by cancer involves. And his fear? That he will not be able to write, for that is his recreation.
His recreation. There is meaning in that, for he did not say his job, career, or means of living. I won’t dwell on it, for that is a subject for another day, but just thinking about someone describing their skill as their recreation made for a time well absorbed. So would that moment were Hitchens not a celebrity and on a talk show, discussing his personal medical crisis? Possible, but it hasn’t before. So celebrity and its membership has its benefits. Be seeing you.
Publication date: 8-27-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn
I recently finished reading an advance copy of the paperback release of Chris Hedges’ 2009 Pulitzer Prize Winner, The End of Illusion. It is an immensely thoughtful book; a highly critical examination of American and by extension Western society. I recommend it to anyone who might be mildly curious regarding the near future of civilization.
The opening section delves into the modern cult of celebrity and how it is that an ever-increasing number of people are perfectly willing to go through bizarre humiliation on reality television in order to be celebrities. It is as though one is invited to a private planet on the planet where celebrities talk just with celebrities and drive celebrity cars and do celebrity things. They are richer than us, prettier than us, and most of all we want to be like them whereas they don’t want to be like us.
It’s on the whole a pretty ugly picture but the argument is well-founded and difficult to debate in opposition. It can be proven anecdotally. I would be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that at some point both you and I have thought - fantasized perhaps - about going on a reality show. One gazes around the living room and wonders how the family would look on TV. I know that ours, before recent illness, would have made Everybody Loves Raymond look like Swedish depressive cinema.
Obviously taking this beyond an inner chuckle or two is not healthy. Hedges book came out before the notorious Balloon Boy incident, but that is a sterling example. This too, I am writing just as the story has broken in the UK that Simon Cowell’s long successful X Factor talent show that he is bringing to Fox next season ... has its vocals sweetened. Not just the full performances before a rapturous live audience, which is trickier to do, but the sweetening extends to the auditions. Everybody involved with the show swears up and down that the sweetening is done in editing and the judges base their opinions on what is in the room. But that’s not the point. The point is that even the auditioners are made better than the great unwashed us. Put as bluntly as possible: we suck worse even than the people who suck on the show because their sucking was made to sound better, whereas we would just suck; A Capella.
Cowell will have a bad day or three, but surely deep down he will be musing that controversy creates cash. I will almost guarantee you that ratings will go up as more people will tune in trying to ‘spot the cheating.’ One almost wonders if Cowell’s people intentionally leaked this, just so people like me would write about it and people like you would read about it. This is television. people are capable of doing Machiavellian plots. The modern Machiavelli abandoned politics long ago for media; that is where the power is after all.
The long-time reader will know that I’ve cast spears disguised as words at the cults of celebrity and pseudo-reality TV before. I’m as on the record as the Watergate Tapes. But I’ve recently been working on a theory that absolutely everything we ingest: food, air, culture and thought alike all have both positive and negative effects. Even a reformed smoker will likely admit that he felt generally happy and more relaxed while killing himself.
And so, even the cult of celebrity and its off-shoot the celebrity confessional have their good sides. Put it this way - knowing an awful lot about someone you will likely ever meet does expand one’s range of knowledge. How many people do you know as well, in terms of triumphs and tribulations, as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan or Sandra Bullock? Family, yes. Close friends, certainly. A work colleague or two. A hundred people or so would you say? Even five hundred is a tidy little village but a rather small pool from which to draw experience and wisdom on the myriad problems life presents.
I thought of this while watching Christopher Hitchens give an interview to Charlie Rose on PBS about the former’s battle with cancer of the esophagus. I know I’ve written a lot about Hitchens lately, but I don’t apologize. If in fact he is soon to be missed, he will be sorely missed. I greatly admire those who can state an opinion with confidence and style and defend that opinion with flame and passion.
Being an eloquent man, Hitchens took the time given to him by a wisely uninterrupting Charlie Rose to muse about cancer, death and what it’s like. He said that one deludes one’s self by thinking that one is in control of the situation, whereas it is the tumor which really has the initiative. One reacts to what the tumor does.
He wants to be conscious at the moment of death and hopes to be able to make an observation at the moment preceding. A reporter to the end. But he also knows that may not be possible, given the painful state that death by cancer involves. And his fear? That he will not be able to write, for that is his recreation.
His recreation. There is meaning in that, for he did not say his job, career, or means of living. I won’t dwell on it, for that is a subject for another day, but just thinking about someone describing their skill as their recreation made for a time well absorbed. So would that moment were Hitchens not a celebrity and on a talk show, discussing his personal medical crisis? Possible, but it hasn’t before. So celebrity and its membership has its benefits. Be seeing you.
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