[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Discomfiture among the celebrated has always been a popular source of entertainment, but never more so than today.We need celebrity in others, and not having it ourselves, we like to see those who do have it in difficulties.Whether envy or a scorn typical of a consciously non-deferential society, these are not fine feelings, and disrespect easily becomes a way of life.There is nothing new in the claim that the media lift us out of the real world into a world of easily digested stereotypes.But the extent of the removal is perhaps not fully appreciated.Instead of locating us where the action is, the media leave us with no real sense of location at all.Not having it we are unable to share in what we are shown.As the television camera closes slowly in on the stony face about to break down in grief and dwells there until it does so, we are brought no acy and the Mediacloser to grief itself.When the face crumbles and the tears appear in close up we either think, ‘I can’t stand it’ and turn Privto another channel, or merely note once again that much is 87wrong with the world and wait for the more cheerful item bound to follow.That this conforms with our hypothesis that a media-filled public space puts outward appearances in the way of an inner development is easy to see.No genuine feelings are evoked or can be cultivated by brief cuts showing the reactions of strangers in conditions of misery.At most one can either gaze in helpless fascination or relive the professional distance of the cameraman taking the shots.If the two are combined we are not far from the peculiar fascination of pornography.The same desensitization, or emotional pacification, of the observer is brought about by the constant repetition that is a feature of televisual imagery.What was real and made our hearts jump becomes mere illustration.That first sight of two large passenger jets plunging into each of the Twin Towers left an indelible image.Especially the second, since then it was clear there was no mistake.If incredulity was the first reaction, on the part both of eyewitnesses and of television viewers, subsequent images invoked horror rather than dis-belief.We saw people, not just bodies, falling from their office windows and pedestrians fleeing clouds of dust as the metal frames melted under a heat they were not designed to resist.The images haunt us even now, when the initial horror is less easy to recapture.Yet, today that image of the jets is a standard‘visual aid’ to almost any television mention of 11 September, just as close-ups of a syringe penetrating an arm accompany almost any reporting of matters medical.But what is now a movie sequence, from which the horror is erased, belongs to a train of events that of this date still produces its horrific the Publicimages, among them that of a wired-up and hooded prisoner.OnThat particular image now serves, too, as a regular back-88ground to discussions of atrocities on Iraqi detainees perpetrated by the US military.The sense of outrage may linger for a long time, and through public opinion it has its remedial effects, but the image itself is already just part of the television journalist’s stock in trade.No doubt it will soon appear in glossy collections as well as in history books to come.But if a tendency in the expansion of public space, noted here, is to discourage and even exclude active participation, the same public space is also one into which people can actually vanish.How so? Isn’t the great ‘out there’ just where we can at last escape anonymity, be someone, even makesome lasting mark on the world, speak and listen to each other?That we can, literally speaking, merge with a crowd is obvious enough.We can escape notice by doing that, whatever the reasons.Where someone is being openly persecuted, you may merge with the crowd in order not to suffer the same treatment.In a more abstract sense you can do the same by not coming out and defending someone in public.You may, out of envy perhaps, hold back your praise of someone.You may even merge with the crowd when you agree with it, for instance letting the crowd’s criticism do for your own or in general when you want to support a view but hold your support of it secret.In a society as privacy-based as ours the best way in public to avoid threats to privacy will always be to merge with the public, to toe the line, to be invisible in thought and habit – whether this means dressing and thinking in office grey or adopting some garish trend in some circles where office grey would be conspicuously out of place.However, there is also a sense in which it is oneself that gets acy and the Medialost in the crowd.The above examples may even be seen as cases in point.One way of losing yourself in the crowd is to Privbe so infected by its opinions as to come to hold them in 89respect of an opinion you would not have held had you not joined the crowd, and which, freeing yourself from the crowd, you come to realize was a foolish opinion.Something like this seems to happen in late-night television talk shows.In responding in unison, whether spontaneously or on cue, to the host, the individuals who elect or are chosen to form the studio audience cease to behave as individuals.In becoming the obedient audience of an expert nudge-and-wink artist, they merge with each other in a way that their numbers and composition make no difference.You may count them if youwant, or the ticket office can do that.But the count doesn’t mean anything since in fact no ‘one’ is there.Even if a countable number of seats are filled, the private citizens who found their way to the studio have vanished, along with their individualities, into this audience.As for those artists themselves, the talk-show hosts, they are not really there either, hiding as they do behind carefully constructed exteriors.But the more significant aspect of the talk show is the opportunity it provides for the expression of opinions without being personally accountable for them.It offers a perfect setting for someone wishing to invoke popular opinions, attitudes, or prejudices without taking personal responsibility for them.After all, it is only entertainment.It is as such that the talk show also provides a safe venue for the vulgar put-down [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]