Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel
good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury,
armies of corporate lobbyists grease the palms of our elected officials, our
corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia, and our imperial wars
expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We
are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is
like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world
of corporate advertising, this product is duping us into doing and
supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.
What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His
administration has spent, lent, or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer
dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to re-inflate
the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will
leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated
nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our
doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that
70,000 troops will remain for the next fifteen to twenty years. Brand Obama
has expanded the war in Afghanistan, increasing the use of drones sent on
cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan, which have doubled the number of
civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease
restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer,
not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not
prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of
torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush's secrecy laws and restore habeas
corpus.
Brand Obama offers us an image that appears radically individualistic and
new. It inoculates us from seeing that the old engines of corporate power
and the vast military-industrial complex continue to plunder the country.
Corporations, which control our politics, no longer produce products that
are essentially different, but brands that are different. Brand Obama does
not threaten the core of the corporate state any more than did Brand George
W. Bush. The Bush brand collapsed. We became immune to its studied
folksiness. We saw through its artifice. This is a common deflation in the
world of advertising. So we have been given a new Obama brand with an
exciting and faintly erotic appeal. Benetton and Calvin Klein were the
precursors to the Obama brand, using ads to associate themselves with risqué
art and progressive politics. This strategy gave their products an edge. But
the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers confound a brand
with an experience.
Obama, who has become a global celebrity, was molded easily into a brand. He
had almost no experience, other than two years in the Senate, lacked any
moral core, and could be painted as all things to all people. His brief
Senate voting record was a miserable surrender to corporate interests. He
was happy to promote nuclear power as "green" energy. He voted to continue
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reauthorized the Patriot Act. He would
not back a bill designed to cap predatory credit card interest rates. He
opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. He
refused to support the single-payer health care bill HR 676, sponsored by
Reps. Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. He supported the death penalty. And
he backed a class-action "reform" bill that was part of a large lobbying
effort by financial firms. The law, known as the Class Action Fairness Act,
would effectively shut down state courts as a venue to hear most
class-action lawsuits and deny redress in many of the courts where these
cases have a chance of defying powerful corporate challenges.
Obama's campaign won the vote of hundreds of marketers, agency heads, and
marketing-services vendors gathered at the Association of National
Advertisers' annual conference in October. The Obama campaign was named
Advertising Age's marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up
Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a
marketer's dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to
believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or
do what the advertisers want because of how they can make you feel.
Celebrity culture has leached into every aspect of our culture, including
politics, to bequeath to us what Benjamin DeMott called "junk politics."
Junk politics does not demand justice or the reparation of rights. Junk
politics personalizes and moralizes issues rather than clarifying them.
"It's impatient with articulated conflict, enthusiastic about America's
optimism and moral character, and heavily dependent on feel-your-pain
language and gesture," DeMott noted. The result of junk politics is that
nothing changes -"meaning zero interruption in the processes and practices
that strengthen existing, interlocking systems of socio-economic advantage."
Junk politics redefines traditional values, tilting "courage toward
braggadocio, sympathy toward mawkishness, humility toward self-disrespect,
identification with ordinary citizens toward distrust of brains." Junk
politics "miniaturizes large, complex problems at home while maximizing
threats from abroad. It's also given to abrupt unexplained reversals of its
own public stances, often spectacularly bloating problems previously
miniaturized." And finally, it "seeks at every turn to obliterate voters'
consciousness of socio-economic and other differences in their midst."
The old production-oriented culture demanded what the historian Warren
Susman termed "character." The new consumption-oriented culture demands what
he called "personality." The shift in values is a shift from a fixed
morality to the artifice of presentation. The old cultural values of thrift
and moderation honored hard work, integrity, and courage. The
consumption-oriented culture honors charm, fascination, and likeability.
"The social role demanded of all in the new culture of personality was that
of a performer," Susman wrote. "Every American was to become a performing
self."
The junk politics practiced by Obama is a consumer fraud. It is about
performance. It is about lies. It is about keeping us in a perpetual state
of childishness. But the longer we live in illusion, the worse reality will
be when it finally shatters our fantasies. Those who do not understand what
is happening around them and who are overwhelmed by a brutal reality they
did not expect or foresee search desperately for saviors. They beg
demagogues to come to their rescue. This is the ultimate danger of the Obama
Brand. It effectively masks the wanton internal destruction and theft being
carried out by our corporate state. These corporations, once they have
stolen trillions in taxpayer wealth, will leave tens of millions of
Americans bereft, bewildered, and yearning for even more potent and deadly
illusions, ones that could swiftly snuff out what is left of our diminished
open society.
Empire of Illusion
Obama is a product of a deeper cultural reality that I describe in some
detail in my book Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of
Spectacle.
In the contemporary world, celebrity worship increasingly encroaches on
reality. And this adulation is pervasive.
The frenzy around political messiahs, or the devotion of millions of women
to Oprah Winfrey, is all part of the yearning to see ourselves in those we
worship. We seek to be like them. We seek to make them like us. If Jesus and
The Purpose Driven Life won't make us a celebrity, then Tony Robbins or
positive psychologists or reality television will. We are waiting for our
cue to walk onstage and be admired and envied, to become known and
celebrated.
"What does the contemporary self want?" asked critic William Deresiewicz,
adding:
block quote
The camera has created a culture of celebrity; the computer is creating a
culture of connectivity. As the two technologies converge -broadband tipping
the Web from text to image; social-networking sites spreading the mesh of
interconnection ever wider -the two cultures betray a common impulse.
Celebrity and connectivity are both ways of becoming known. This is what the
contemporary self wants. It wants to be recognized, wants to be connected:
It wants to be visible. If not to the millions, on Survivor or Oprah, then
to the hundreds, on Twitter or Facebook. This is the quality that validates
us, this is how we become real to ourselves -by being seen by others. The
great contemporary terror is anonymity. If Lionel Trilling was right, if the
property that grounded the self in Romanticism was sincerity, and in
modernism was authenticity, then in postmodernism it is visibility.
block quote end
We pay a variety of lifestyle advisers -Neal Gabler calls them "essentially
drama coaches" -to help us look and feel like celebrities, to build around
us the set for the movies of our own lives. Martha Stewart built her
financial empire, when she wasn't insider trading, telling women how to
create and decorate a set design for the perfect home. The realities within
the home, the actual family relationships, are never addressed. Appearances
make everything whole. Plastic surgeons, fitness gurus, diet doctors,
therapists, life coaches, interior designers, and fashion consultants all,
in essence, promise to make us happy, to make us celebrities. And happiness
comes, we are assured, with how we look and how we present ourselves to
others. There are glossy magazines such as Town & Country that cater to the
absurd pretensions of the very rich to be celebrities. They are photographed
in expensive designer clothing inside the lavishly decorated set pieces that
are their homes. The route to happiness is bound up in how skillfully we
show ourselves to the world. We not only have to conform to the dictates of
this manufactured vision, but we also have to project an unrelenting
optimism and happiness.
The Swan was a Fox reality makeover show. The title of the series referred
to Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling," in which a bird
thought to be homely grew up to be a swan. "Unattractive" women were chosen
to undergo three months of extensive plastic surgery, physical training, and
therapy for a "complete life transformation." Each episode featured two
"ugly ducklings" who competed with each other to go on to the Swan beauty
pageant. "I am going to be a new person," said one contestant in the opening
credits.
In one episode, twenty-seven-year-old Cristina, an Ecuador-born office
administrator from Rancho Cordova, California, was chosen to be on the
program.
"It's not just the outside I want to change, but it's the inside, too,"
Cristina told the camera mournfully. She had long black hair and light brown
skin. She wore a baggy gray sweatshirt and no makeup. Her hair was pulled
back. We discovered that she was devastatingly insecure about being intimate
with her husband because of her post-pregnancy stretch marks. The couple
considered divorce.
"I just want to be, not a completely different person, but I want to be a
better Cristina," she said.
As a "dream team" of plastic surgeons discussed the necessary corrections,
viewers saw a still image of Cristina, in a gray cotton bra and underwear,
superimposed on a glowing blue grid. Her small, drooping breasts, wrinkled
stomach, and fleshy thighs were apparent. A schematic figure of an idealized
female form revolved at the left of the screen. Crosshairs targeted and
zoomed in on each flawed area of Cristina's face and body. The surgical
procedures she would undergo were typed out beside each body part. Brow
lift, eye lift, nose job, liposuction of chin and cheeks, dermatologist
visits, collagen injections, LASIK eye surgery, tummy tuck, breast
augmentation, liposuction of thighs, dental bleaching, full dental veneers,
gum tissue recontouring, a 1,200-calorie daily diet, 120 hours in the gym,
weekly therapy, and coaching. The effect was suggestive of a military
operation. The image of a blueprint and crosshairs was used repeatedly
throughout the program.
Cristina was shown writing in her diary: "I want a divorce because I think
that my husband can do better without me. And it would be best for us to go
in different directions. I am not happy with myself at all, so I think, why
make this guy unhappy for the rest of his life?"
At the end of the three months, Cristina and her opponent, Kristy, were
finally allowed to look in a mirror for "the final reveal." They were
brought separately to what looked like a marble hotel foyer. Curving twin
staircases with ornate iron banisters framed the action. A crystal
chandelier glittered at the top of the stairs. Sconces and oil paintings in
gold frames hung on the cream-colored walls.
The "dream team" was assembled in the marble lobby. Massive peach curtains
obscured one wall.
"I think Cristina has really grown into herself as a woman, and she's ready
to go back home and start her marriage all over again," said the team
therapist.
Two men in tuxedos opened a set of tall double doors. Cristina entered in a
tight black evening gown and long black gloves. She was meticulously made
up, and her hair had been carefully styled with extensions. The "dream team"
burst into applause and whoops.
"I've been waiting twenty-seven years for this day," Cristina told host
Amanda Byram tearfully. "I came for a dream, the American dream, like all
the Latinas do, and I got it!"
"You got it!" cheered Byram. "Yes, you did!"
Reverberating drumbeats sounded. "Behind that curtain," says Byram, "is a
mirror. We will draw back the curtain, the mirror will be revealed, and you
will see yourself for the first time in three months. Cristina, step up to
the curtain."
Short, suspenseful cello strokes were heard. There was a tumbling drumroll.
"I'm ready," quavered Cristina.
The curtain parted slowly in the middle. An elaborate full-length mirror
reflected Cristina. The cello strokes billowed into the Swan theme song.
"Oh, my God!" she gasped, covering her face. She doubled over. Her knees
buckled. She almost hit the floor. "I am so beautiful!" she sobbed. "Thank
you, oh, thank you so much! Thank you, God! Thank you, thank you, thank you
so much for this! Look at my arms, my figure... I love the dress! Thank you,
oh! I'm in love with myself!"
The "dream team" burst into applause again. "Well, you owe this to
yourself," said Byram. "But you also owe it to these fantastic experts.
Guys, come on in."
The crowd of smiling experts closed in on their creation, clapping as they
approached.
At the end of each episode, the two contestants were called before Byram to
hear who would advance to the pageant. The winner often wept and was hugged
by the loser. Byram then pulled the loser aside for "one final surprise."
The double doors opened once more, and her family was invited onto the set
for a joyful reunion. In celebrity culture, family is the consolation prize
for not making it to the pageant.
The Swan's transparent message is that once these women have been surgically
"corrected" to resemble mainstream celebrity beauty as closely as possible,
their problems will be solved. "This is a positive show where we want to see
how these women can make their dreams come true once they have what they
want," said Cecile Frot-Coutaz, CEO of FremantleMedia North America,
producer of The Swan. Troubled marriages, abusive relationships,
unemployment, crushing self-esteem problems -all will vanish along with the
excess fat off their thighs. They will be new. They will be flawless. They
will be celebrities.
In the Middle Ages, writes Alain de Botton in his book Status Anxiety,
stained glass windows and vivid paintings of religious torment and salvation
controlled and influenced social behavior. Today we are ruled by icons of
gross riches and physical beauty that blare and flash from television,
cinema, and computer screens. People knelt before God and the church in the
Middle Ages. We flock hungrily to the glamorous crumbs that fall to us from
glossy magazines, talk and entertainment shows, and reality television. We
fashion our lives as closely to these lives of gratuitous consumption as we
can. Only a life with status, valued physical attributes, and affluence is
worth pursuing.
Hedonism and wealth are openly worshipped on shows such as The Hills, Gossip
Girl, Sex and the City, My Super Sweet 16, and The Real Housewives of...
series. The American oligarchy, 1 percent of whom control more wealth than
the bottom 90 percent combined, are the characters we envy and watch on
television. They live and play in multimillion-dollar beach houses and
expansive modern lofts. They marry professional athletes and are chauffeured
in stretch limos to spa appointments. They rush from fashion shows to movie
premieres, flaunting their surgically enhanced, perfect bodies in haute
couture. Their teenagers throw $200,000 parties and have million-dollar
weddings. This life is held before us like a beacon. This life, we are told,
is the most desirable, the most gratifying.
The working classes, composed of tens of millions of struggling Americans,
are shut out of television's gated community. They have become largely
invisible. They are mocked, even as they are tantalized, by the lives of
excess they watch on the screen in their living rooms. Almost none of us
will ever attain these lives of wealth and power. Yet we are told that if we
want it badly enough, if we believe sufficiently in ourselves, we too can
have everything. We are left, when we cannot adopt these impossible
lifestyles as our own, with feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. We
have failed where others have succeeded.
We consume countless lies daily, false promises that if we spend more money,
if we buy this brand or that product, if we vote for this candidate, we will
be respected, envied, powerful, loved, and protected. The flamboyant lives
of celebrities and the outrageous characters on television, movies,
professional wrestling, and sensational talk shows are peddled to us,
promising to fill up the emptiness in our own lives. Celebrity culture
encourages us all to think of ourselves as potential celebrities, as
possessing unique if unacknowledged gifts. It is, as Christopher Lasch
diagnosed, a culture of narcissism. Faith in ourselves, in a world of
make-believe, is more important than reality. Reality, in fact, is dismissed
and shunned as an impediment to success, a form of negativity. The New Age
mysticism and pop psychology of television personalities and evangelical
pastors -along with the array of self-help bestsellers penned by
motivational speakers, psychiatrists, and business tycoons -all peddle a
fantasy. Reality is condemned in these popular belief systems as the work of
Satan, as defeatist, as negativity, or as inhibiting our inner essence and
power. Those who question, those who doubt, those who are critical, those
who are able to confront reality, and those who grasp the hollowness of
celebrity culture, are shunned and condemned for their pessimism. The
illusionists who shape our culture, and who profit from our incredulity,
hold up the gilded cult of us. Popular expressions of religious belief,
personal empowerment, corporatism, political participation, and
self-definition argue that all of us are special, entitled, and unique. All
of us, by tapping into our inner reserves of personal will and undiscovered
talent, and by visualizing what we want, can achieve (and deserve to
achieve) happiness, fame, and success. This relentless message cuts across
ideological lines. This mantra has seeped into every aspect of our lives. We
are all entitled to everything.
American Idol, a talent-search reality show that airs on Fox, is one of the
most popular shows on American television. The show travels to different
American cities in a "countrywide search" for the contestants who will
continue to the final competition in Hollywood. The producers of the show
introduced a new focus, in the 2008-2009 season, on the personal stories of
the contestants.
During the Utah auditions, we meet Megan Corkrey, age twenty-three, the
single mother of a toddler. She has long, dirty-blond hair and a wholesome,
pretty face. A tattoo sleeve covers her right arm from the shoulder to below
the elbow. She wears a black, grey, and white dress reminiscent of the
1950s, and ballet flats. She is a font designer.
In an interview Corkrey says, "I am a mother. He will be two in December."
We see Corkrey with a little blond boy, reading a book together on a beanbag
chair. Breezy guitar music plays. "His name is Ryder." We see Corkrey
kissing Ryder and putting him to bed. "I recently decided to get a divorce,
which is new." The guitar music turns pensive. "The life I had planned for
us, the life I'd pictured, wasn't going to happen. I cried a lot for a
while. I don't think I stopped crying. And Ryder, of course, you can be
crying, and then he walks by, and does something ridiculous, and you can't
help but smile and laugh." We see Corkrey laughing with her son on the
floor. "And a little piece kind of heals up a little bit."
The montage of Corkrey's life fills the screen as the rock ballad swells. "I
can laugh at myself, while the tears roll down..." sings the band. We see
Corkrey and her son looking out a window. She holds her son up to a
basketball hoop as he clutches a blue ball.
"It was kind of crazy, I found out Idol was coming to Salt Lake, and I'd
just decided on the divorce, and for the first time in my life it was a
crossroads where ANYTHING can happen! So why not go for what I love to do?"
Corkrey enters the audition room. The judges -Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul,
Randy Jackson, and Kara DioGuardi -are seated behind a long table in front
of a window. They all have large red tumblers with "Coca-Cola" printed on
them. They seem charmed by her exuberant presence. She sings "Can't Help
Lovin' Dat Man" from Show Boat. Her performance is charismatic and quirky.
She improvises freely and assuredly with the rhythms and notes of the song,
beaming the whole time.
"I really like you," says Abdul. "I'm bordering on loving you. I think I'm
loving you. Yeah, I do. Simon?"
"One of my favorite auditions," Cowell says in a monotone.
"Yes!" grins Corkrey.
"Because you're different," continues Cowell, sternly. "You are one of the
few I'm going to remember. I like you, I like your voice, I mean, seriously
good voice. I loved it."
"You're an interesting girl. You have a glow about you, you have an
incredible face," says DioGuardi.
The judges vote.
"Absolutely yes," says Cowell.
"Love you," says Abdul.
"Yes!" says DioGuardi.
"One hundred percent maybe," smiles Jackson.
"You're goin' to Hollywood!" cheers DioGuardi as the inspirational rock
music swells.
"YES! Thank you, guys!" Corkrey screams with delight. She runs out of the
audition room into a crowd of her cheering friends. The music plays as she
dances down the street waving her large yellow ticket, the symbol of her
success.
Celebrities, who often come from humble backgrounds, are held up as proof
that anyone, even we, can be adored by the world. These celebrities, like
saints, are living proof that the impossible is always possible. Our
fantasies of belonging, of fame, of success, and of fulfillment are
projected onto celebrities. These fantasies are stoked by the legions of
those who amplify the culture of illusion, who persuade us that the shadows
are real. The juxtaposition of the impossible illusions inspired by
celebrity culture and our "insignificant" individual achievements, however,
eventually leads to frustration, anger, insecurity, and invalidation. This
juxtaposition results, ironically, in a self-perpetuating cycle that drives
the frustrated, alienated individual with even greater desperation and
hunger away from reality, back toward the empty promises of those who seduce
us, who tell us what we want to hear. We beg for more. We ingest these lies
until our money runs out. And when we fall into despair we medicate
ourselves, as if the happiness we have failed to find in the hollow game
were our deficiency. And, of course, we are told it is.
Human beings become a commodity in a celebrity culture. They are objects,
like consumer products. They have no intrinsic value. They must look
fabulous and live on fabulous sets. Those who fail to meet the ideal are
belittled and mocked. Friends and allies are to be used and betrayed during
the climb to fame, power, and wealth. And when they are no longer useful
they are to be discarded. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's novel about a
future dystopia, people spend most of the day watching giant television
screens that show endless scenes of police chases and criminal
apprehensions. Life, Bradbury understood, once it was packaged and filmed,
became the most compelling form of entertainment.
The moral nihilism of celebrity culture is played out on reality television
shows, most of which encourage a dark voyeurism into other people's
humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal. Education, building community,
honesty, transparency, and sharing are qualities that will see you, in a
gross perversion of democracy and morality, voted off a reality show. Fellow
competitors for prize money and a chance for fleeting fame elect to
"disappear" the unwanted. In the final credits of the reality show America's
Next Top Model, a picture of the woman expelled during the episode vanishes
from the group portrait on the screen. Those cast aside become, at least to
the television audience, non-persons. Life, these shows teach, is a brutal
world of unadulterated competition. Life is about the personal humiliation
of those who oppose us. Those who win are the best. Those who lose deserve
to be erased. Compassion, competence, intelligence, and solidarity with
others are forms of weakness. And those who do not achieve celebrity status,
who do not win the prize money or make millions in Wall Street firms,
deserve to lose. Those who are denigrated and ridiculed on reality
television, often as they sob in front of the camera, are branded as
failures. They are responsible for their rejection. They are deficient.
In an episode from the second season of the CBS reality game show Survivor,
cast members talk about exceptional friendships they have made within their
"tribe," or team. Maralyn, also known as Mad Dog, is a fifty-two-year-old
retired police officer with a silver crew cut and a tall, masculine build.
She is sunning herself in a shallow stream, singing "On the Street Where You
Live." Tina, a personal nurse and mother, walks up the stream toward her.
"Sing it, girl! I just followed your voice."
"Is it that loud?"
"Maralyn, she's kind of like our little songbird, and our little cheerleader
in our camp," Tina says in an interview. "Maralyn and I have bonded, more so
than I have with any of the other people. It might be our ages, it might
just be that we kind of took up for one another."
We see Tina and Maralyn swimming and laughing together in the river.
"Tina is a fabulous woman," says Maralyn in an interview. "She is a star. I
trust Tina the most."
Maralyn and Tina's tribe, Ogakor, loses an obstacle course challenge, in
which all the tribe members are tethered together. If one person falls, the
entire team is slowed. Mad Dog Maralyn falls several times and is hauled
back to her feet by Colby, the "cowboy" from Texas.
Because they lost, the members of Ogakor must vote off one of their tribe
members. The camera shows small groups of twos and threes in huddled,
intense discussion.
"The mood in the camp is a very sad mood, but it's also a very strategic
mood," says Tina. "Everyone's thinking, 'Who's thinking what?'"
The vote is taken at dusk, in the "tribal council" area. It resembles a set
from Disney World's Adventureland. A ring of tall stone monoliths is
stenciled with petroglyphs. Torches flicker above. A campfire blazes in the
center of the ring. Primitive drums and flutes accompany the scene.
The Ogakor team arrives at dusk, each holding a torch. They sit before
Survivor's host, Jeff Probst.
"So I just want to talk about a couple of big topics," says Probst, who
wears a safari outfit. "Trust. Colby, is there anyone here that you don't
trust, wouldn't trust?"
"Sure," says Colby.
"Tell me about that."
"Well, I think that's part of the game," says Colby. "It's way too early to
tell exactly who you can trust, I think."
"What about you, Mitchell? Would you trust everyone here for forty-two
days?" asks Probst. "I think the motto is, 'Trust no one,' " answers
Mitchell. "I have a lot of faith in a good number of these people, but I
couldn't give 100 percent of my trust."
"What about you, Mad Dog?" asks Probst. "These all your buddies?"
Maralyn looks around at her team members. "Yes," she says unequivocally.
"Yes. And, Jeff, I trust with my heart."
"I think friendship does enter into it at some point," says Jerri. "But I
think it's very important to keep that separate from the game. It's two
totally different things. And that's where it gets tricky." Jerri will say
later, as she casts her vote, "This is probably one of the most difficult
things for me to do right now. It's purely strategic, it's nothing personal.
I am going to miss you dearly."
"Jeff," Maralyn breaks in. "I'm conjoined with Tina. She is a constellation.
And, the cowboy [Colby]! The poor cowboy has dragged me around so many times
[during the obstacle course challenge]. I appreciate it."
"I'd do it again," laughs Colby broadly.
"Hey, you hear that? He'd do it again!" says Maralyn.
It is time to vote. Each team member walks up a narrow bridge lit by flaring
torches, again looking like something out of Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room,
made of twisted logs lashed with vines, to a stone table. They write the
name of the person they want to eliminate and put it in a cask with
aboriginal carvings. Most of the votes are kept anonymous, the camera
panning away as each person writes. But as Tina, Mad Dog Maralyn's best
friend and "constellation," casts her vote, she shows us her ballot: Mad
Dog. "Mad Dog, I love you," she says to the camera, "I value your friendship
more than anything. This vote has everything to do with a promise I made, it
has nothing to do with you. I hope you'll understand." She folds her vote
and puts it in the cask.
"Once the vote is tallied, the decision is final, and the person will be
asked to leave the tribal council area immediately," says Probst.
Five people of the seven voted to eliminate Maralyn.
"You need to bring me a torch, Mad Dog," says Probst. She does so, first
taking off her green baseball cap and putting it affectionately on Amber,
who sits next to her and gives her a hug. The camera shows Tina looking
impassive.
"Mad Dog," says Probst, holding the flaming torch Maralyn has brought him,
"the tribe has spoken." He takes a large stone snuffer and extinguishes the
torch. The camera shows Maralyn's rueful face behind the smoking, blackened
torch. "It's time for you to go," says Probst. She leaves without speaking
or looking at anyone, although there are a few weak 'byes from the tribe.
Before the final credits, we are shown who, besides her friend Tina, voted
to eliminate Maralyn. They are Amber, who gave Maralyn a farewell hug, along
with Mitchell, Jerri, and Colby, Maralyn's "cowboy."
Celebrity culture plunges us into this moral void. No one has any worth
beyond his or her appearance, usefulness, or ability to "succeed." The
highest achievements in a celebrity culture are wealth, sexual conquest, and
fame. It does not matter how these are obtained. These values, as Sigmund
Freud understood, are illusory. They are hollow. They leave us chasing
vapors. They urge us toward a life of narcissistic self-absorption. They
tell us that existence is to be centered on the practices and desires of the
self rather than the common good. The ability to lie and manipulate others,
the very ethic of capitalism, is held up as the highest good. "I simply
agreed to go along with [Jerri and Amber] because I thought it would get me
down the road a little better," says young, good-looking Colby in another
episode of Survivor. "I wanna win. And I don't want to talk to anybody else
about loyalties -don't give me that crap. I haven't trusted anyone since day
one, and anyone playing smart should have been the same way."
The cult of self dominates our cultural landscape. This cult shares within
it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity, and
self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying,
deception, and manipulation; and the inability to feel remorse or guilt.
This is, of course, the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of
unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and
personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic
equality. In fact, personal style, defined by the commodities we buy or
consume, has become a compensation for our loss of democratic equality. We
have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do
anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends,
to make money, to be happy, and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are
achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one
gets there is irrelevant. Once you get there, those questions are no longer
asked.
It is this perverted ethic that gave us Wall Street bankers and investment
houses that willfully trashed the nation's economy, stole money from tens of
millions of small shareholders who had bought stock in these corporations
for retirement or college. The heads of these corporations, like the winners
on a reality television program who lied and manipulated others to succeed,
walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and
compensation. In his masterful essay "The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin wrote, "The cult of the movie
star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique
aura of the person but the 'spell of the personality,' the phony spell of a
commodity."
According to C. Wright Mills, "The professional celebrity, male and female,
is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish
of competition." Mills added:
block quote In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who
can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more
efficiency and skill than anyone else thereby gains access to the President
of the United States. It is carried to the point where a chattering radio
and television entertainer becomes the hunting chum of leading industrial
executives, cabinet members, and the higher military. It does not seem to
matter what the man is the very best at; so long as he has won out in
competition over all others, he is celebrated. Then, a second feature of the
star system begins to work: all the stars of any other sphere of endeavor or
position are drawn toward the new star and he toward them. The success, the
champion, accordingly, is one who mingles freely with other champions to
populate the world of the celebrity.
block quote end
Degradation as entertainment is the squalid underside to the glamour of
celebrity culture. "If only that were me," we sigh, as we gaze at the
wealthy, glimmering stars on the red carpet. But we are as transfixed by the
inverse of celebrity culture, by the spectacle of humiliation and debasement
that characterizes tabloid television shows such as The Jerry Springer Show
and The Howard Stern Show. We secretly exult, "At least that's not me." It
is the glee of cruelty with impunity, the same impulse that drove crowds to
the Roman Colosseum, to the pillory and the stocks, to public hangings, and
to traveling freak shows.
Celebrity is the vehicle used by a corporate society to sell us these
branded commodities, most of which we do not need. Celebrities humanize
commercial commodities. They present the familiar and comforting face of the
corporate state. Supermodel Paulina Porizkova, on an episode of America's
Next Top Model, gushes to a group of aspiring young models, "Our job as
models is to sell." But they peddle a fake intimacy and a fantasy. The
commercial "personalizing" of the world involves oversimplification,
distraction, and gross distortion. "We sink further into a dream of an
unconsciously intimate world in which not only may a cat look at a king but
a king is really a cat underneath, and all the great power-figures Honest
Joes at heart," Richard Hoggart warned in The Uses of Literacy. We do not
learn more about Barack Obama by knowing what dog he has bought for his
daughters or if he still smokes. This personalized trivia, passed off as
news, diverts us from reality.
In his book Celebrity, Chris Rojeck calls celebrity culture "the cult of
distraction that valorizes the superficial, the gaudy, the domination of
commodity culture." He goes further:
block quote Capitalism originally sought to police play and pleasure,
because any attempt to replace work as the central life interest threatened
the economic survival of the system. The family, the state, and religion
engendered a variety of patterns of moral regulation to control desire and
ensure compliance with the system of production. However, as capitalism
developed, consumer culture and leisure time expanded. The principles that
operated to repress the individual in the workplace and the home were
extended to the shopping mall and recreational activity. The entertainment
industry and consumer culture produced what Herbert Marcuse called
'repressive desublimation.' Through this process individuals unwittingly
subscribed to the degraded version of humanity.
block quote end
This cult of distraction, as Rojeck points out, masks the real
disintegration of culture. It conceals the meaninglessness and emptiness of
our own lives. It seduces us to engage in imitative consumption. It deflects
the moral questions arising from mounting social injustice, growing
inequalities, costly imperial wars, economic collapse, and political
corruption. The wild pursuit of status and wealth has destroyed our souls
and our economy. Families live in sprawling mansions financed with mortgages
they can no longer repay. Before the meltdown, consumers recklessly rang up
Coach handbags and Manolo Blahnik shoes on credit cards because they seemed
to confer a sense of identity and merit. Our favorite hobby, besides
television, used to be -until reality hit us like a tsunami -shopping.
Shopping used to be the compensation for spending five days a week in tiny
cubicles. American workers are ground down by corporations that have
disempowered, used, and now discarded them.
This article was in part adapted from Empire of Illusion: The End of
Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (Nation Books, 2009).
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the
Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His
latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of
Spectacle.
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury,
armies of corporate lobbyists grease the palms of our elected officials, our
corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia, and our imperial wars
expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We
are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is
like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world
of corporate advertising, this product is duping us into doing and
supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.
What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His
administration has spent, lent, or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer
dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to re-inflate
the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will
leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated
nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our
doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that
70,000 troops will remain for the next fifteen to twenty years. Brand Obama
has expanded the war in Afghanistan, increasing the use of drones sent on
cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan, which have doubled the number of
civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease
restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer,
not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not
prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of
torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush's secrecy laws and restore habeas
corpus.
Brand Obama offers us an image that appears radically individualistic and
new. It inoculates us from seeing that the old engines of corporate power
and the vast military-industrial complex continue to plunder the country.
Corporations, which control our politics, no longer produce products that
are essentially different, but brands that are different. Brand Obama does
not threaten the core of the corporate state any more than did Brand George
W. Bush. The Bush brand collapsed. We became immune to its studied
folksiness. We saw through its artifice. This is a common deflation in the
world of advertising. So we have been given a new Obama brand with an
exciting and faintly erotic appeal. Benetton and Calvin Klein were the
precursors to the Obama brand, using ads to associate themselves with risqué
art and progressive politics. This strategy gave their products an edge. But
the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers confound a brand
with an experience.
Obama, who has become a global celebrity, was molded easily into a brand. He
had almost no experience, other than two years in the Senate, lacked any
moral core, and could be painted as all things to all people. His brief
Senate voting record was a miserable surrender to corporate interests. He
was happy to promote nuclear power as "green" energy. He voted to continue
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reauthorized the Patriot Act. He would
not back a bill designed to cap predatory credit card interest rates. He
opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. He
refused to support the single-payer health care bill HR 676, sponsored by
Reps. Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. He supported the death penalty. And
he backed a class-action "reform" bill that was part of a large lobbying
effort by financial firms. The law, known as the Class Action Fairness Act,
would effectively shut down state courts as a venue to hear most
class-action lawsuits and deny redress in many of the courts where these
cases have a chance of defying powerful corporate challenges.
Obama's campaign won the vote of hundreds of marketers, agency heads, and
marketing-services vendors gathered at the Association of National
Advertisers' annual conference in October. The Obama campaign was named
Advertising Age's marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up
Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a
marketer's dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to
believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or
do what the advertisers want because of how they can make you feel.
Celebrity culture has leached into every aspect of our culture, including
politics, to bequeath to us what Benjamin DeMott called "junk politics."
Junk politics does not demand justice or the reparation of rights. Junk
politics personalizes and moralizes issues rather than clarifying them.
"It's impatient with articulated conflict, enthusiastic about America's
optimism and moral character, and heavily dependent on feel-your-pain
language and gesture," DeMott noted. The result of junk politics is that
nothing changes -"meaning zero interruption in the processes and practices
that strengthen existing, interlocking systems of socio-economic advantage."
Junk politics redefines traditional values, tilting "courage toward
braggadocio, sympathy toward mawkishness, humility toward self-disrespect,
identification with ordinary citizens toward distrust of brains." Junk
politics "miniaturizes large, complex problems at home while maximizing
threats from abroad. It's also given to abrupt unexplained reversals of its
own public stances, often spectacularly bloating problems previously
miniaturized." And finally, it "seeks at every turn to obliterate voters'
consciousness of socio-economic and other differences in their midst."
The old production-oriented culture demanded what the historian Warren
Susman termed "character." The new consumption-oriented culture demands what
he called "personality." The shift in values is a shift from a fixed
morality to the artifice of presentation. The old cultural values of thrift
and moderation honored hard work, integrity, and courage. The
consumption-oriented culture honors charm, fascination, and likeability.
"The social role demanded of all in the new culture of personality was that
of a performer," Susman wrote. "Every American was to become a performing
self."
The junk politics practiced by Obama is a consumer fraud. It is about
performance. It is about lies. It is about keeping us in a perpetual state
of childishness. But the longer we live in illusion, the worse reality will
be when it finally shatters our fantasies. Those who do not understand what
is happening around them and who are overwhelmed by a brutal reality they
did not expect or foresee search desperately for saviors. They beg
demagogues to come to their rescue. This is the ultimate danger of the Obama
Brand. It effectively masks the wanton internal destruction and theft being
carried out by our corporate state. These corporations, once they have
stolen trillions in taxpayer wealth, will leave tens of millions of
Americans bereft, bewildered, and yearning for even more potent and deadly
illusions, ones that could swiftly snuff out what is left of our diminished
open society.
Empire of Illusion
Obama is a product of a deeper cultural reality that I describe in some
detail in my book Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of
Spectacle.
In the contemporary world, celebrity worship increasingly encroaches on
reality. And this adulation is pervasive.
The frenzy around political messiahs, or the devotion of millions of women
to Oprah Winfrey, is all part of the yearning to see ourselves in those we
worship. We seek to be like them. We seek to make them like us. If Jesus and
The Purpose Driven Life won't make us a celebrity, then Tony Robbins or
positive psychologists or reality television will. We are waiting for our
cue to walk onstage and be admired and envied, to become known and
celebrated.
"What does the contemporary self want?" asked critic William Deresiewicz,
adding:
block quote
The camera has created a culture of celebrity; the computer is creating a
culture of connectivity. As the two technologies converge -broadband tipping
the Web from text to image; social-networking sites spreading the mesh of
interconnection ever wider -the two cultures betray a common impulse.
Celebrity and connectivity are both ways of becoming known. This is what the
contemporary self wants. It wants to be recognized, wants to be connected:
It wants to be visible. If not to the millions, on Survivor or Oprah, then
to the hundreds, on Twitter or Facebook. This is the quality that validates
us, this is how we become real to ourselves -by being seen by others. The
great contemporary terror is anonymity. If Lionel Trilling was right, if the
property that grounded the self in Romanticism was sincerity, and in
modernism was authenticity, then in postmodernism it is visibility.
block quote end
We pay a variety of lifestyle advisers -Neal Gabler calls them "essentially
drama coaches" -to help us look and feel like celebrities, to build around
us the set for the movies of our own lives. Martha Stewart built her
financial empire, when she wasn't insider trading, telling women how to
create and decorate a set design for the perfect home. The realities within
the home, the actual family relationships, are never addressed. Appearances
make everything whole. Plastic surgeons, fitness gurus, diet doctors,
therapists, life coaches, interior designers, and fashion consultants all,
in essence, promise to make us happy, to make us celebrities. And happiness
comes, we are assured, with how we look and how we present ourselves to
others. There are glossy magazines such as Town & Country that cater to the
absurd pretensions of the very rich to be celebrities. They are photographed
in expensive designer clothing inside the lavishly decorated set pieces that
are their homes. The route to happiness is bound up in how skillfully we
show ourselves to the world. We not only have to conform to the dictates of
this manufactured vision, but we also have to project an unrelenting
optimism and happiness.
The Swan was a Fox reality makeover show. The title of the series referred
to Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling," in which a bird
thought to be homely grew up to be a swan. "Unattractive" women were chosen
to undergo three months of extensive plastic surgery, physical training, and
therapy for a "complete life transformation." Each episode featured two
"ugly ducklings" who competed with each other to go on to the Swan beauty
pageant. "I am going to be a new person," said one contestant in the opening
credits.
In one episode, twenty-seven-year-old Cristina, an Ecuador-born office
administrator from Rancho Cordova, California, was chosen to be on the
program.
"It's not just the outside I want to change, but it's the inside, too,"
Cristina told the camera mournfully. She had long black hair and light brown
skin. She wore a baggy gray sweatshirt and no makeup. Her hair was pulled
back. We discovered that she was devastatingly insecure about being intimate
with her husband because of her post-pregnancy stretch marks. The couple
considered divorce.
"I just want to be, not a completely different person, but I want to be a
better Cristina," she said.
As a "dream team" of plastic surgeons discussed the necessary corrections,
viewers saw a still image of Cristina, in a gray cotton bra and underwear,
superimposed on a glowing blue grid. Her small, drooping breasts, wrinkled
stomach, and fleshy thighs were apparent. A schematic figure of an idealized
female form revolved at the left of the screen. Crosshairs targeted and
zoomed in on each flawed area of Cristina's face and body. The surgical
procedures she would undergo were typed out beside each body part. Brow
lift, eye lift, nose job, liposuction of chin and cheeks, dermatologist
visits, collagen injections, LASIK eye surgery, tummy tuck, breast
augmentation, liposuction of thighs, dental bleaching, full dental veneers,
gum tissue recontouring, a 1,200-calorie daily diet, 120 hours in the gym,
weekly therapy, and coaching. The effect was suggestive of a military
operation. The image of a blueprint and crosshairs was used repeatedly
throughout the program.
Cristina was shown writing in her diary: "I want a divorce because I think
that my husband can do better without me. And it would be best for us to go
in different directions. I am not happy with myself at all, so I think, why
make this guy unhappy for the rest of his life?"
At the end of the three months, Cristina and her opponent, Kristy, were
finally allowed to look in a mirror for "the final reveal." They were
brought separately to what looked like a marble hotel foyer. Curving twin
staircases with ornate iron banisters framed the action. A crystal
chandelier glittered at the top of the stairs. Sconces and oil paintings in
gold frames hung on the cream-colored walls.
The "dream team" was assembled in the marble lobby. Massive peach curtains
obscured one wall.
"I think Cristina has really grown into herself as a woman, and she's ready
to go back home and start her marriage all over again," said the team
therapist.
Two men in tuxedos opened a set of tall double doors. Cristina entered in a
tight black evening gown and long black gloves. She was meticulously made
up, and her hair had been carefully styled with extensions. The "dream team"
burst into applause and whoops.
"I've been waiting twenty-seven years for this day," Cristina told host
Amanda Byram tearfully. "I came for a dream, the American dream, like all
the Latinas do, and I got it!"
"You got it!" cheered Byram. "Yes, you did!"
Reverberating drumbeats sounded. "Behind that curtain," says Byram, "is a
mirror. We will draw back the curtain, the mirror will be revealed, and you
will see yourself for the first time in three months. Cristina, step up to
the curtain."
Short, suspenseful cello strokes were heard. There was a tumbling drumroll.
"I'm ready," quavered Cristina.
The curtain parted slowly in the middle. An elaborate full-length mirror
reflected Cristina. The cello strokes billowed into the Swan theme song.
"Oh, my God!" she gasped, covering her face. She doubled over. Her knees
buckled. She almost hit the floor. "I am so beautiful!" she sobbed. "Thank
you, oh, thank you so much! Thank you, God! Thank you, thank you, thank you
so much for this! Look at my arms, my figure... I love the dress! Thank you,
oh! I'm in love with myself!"
The "dream team" burst into applause again. "Well, you owe this to
yourself," said Byram. "But you also owe it to these fantastic experts.
Guys, come on in."
The crowd of smiling experts closed in on their creation, clapping as they
approached.
At the end of each episode, the two contestants were called before Byram to
hear who would advance to the pageant. The winner often wept and was hugged
by the loser. Byram then pulled the loser aside for "one final surprise."
The double doors opened once more, and her family was invited onto the set
for a joyful reunion. In celebrity culture, family is the consolation prize
for not making it to the pageant.
The Swan's transparent message is that once these women have been surgically
"corrected" to resemble mainstream celebrity beauty as closely as possible,
their problems will be solved. "This is a positive show where we want to see
how these women can make their dreams come true once they have what they
want," said Cecile Frot-Coutaz, CEO of FremantleMedia North America,
producer of The Swan. Troubled marriages, abusive relationships,
unemployment, crushing self-esteem problems -all will vanish along with the
excess fat off their thighs. They will be new. They will be flawless. They
will be celebrities.
In the Middle Ages, writes Alain de Botton in his book Status Anxiety,
stained glass windows and vivid paintings of religious torment and salvation
controlled and influenced social behavior. Today we are ruled by icons of
gross riches and physical beauty that blare and flash from television,
cinema, and computer screens. People knelt before God and the church in the
Middle Ages. We flock hungrily to the glamorous crumbs that fall to us from
glossy magazines, talk and entertainment shows, and reality television. We
fashion our lives as closely to these lives of gratuitous consumption as we
can. Only a life with status, valued physical attributes, and affluence is
worth pursuing.
Hedonism and wealth are openly worshipped on shows such as The Hills, Gossip
Girl, Sex and the City, My Super Sweet 16, and The Real Housewives of...
series. The American oligarchy, 1 percent of whom control more wealth than
the bottom 90 percent combined, are the characters we envy and watch on
television. They live and play in multimillion-dollar beach houses and
expansive modern lofts. They marry professional athletes and are chauffeured
in stretch limos to spa appointments. They rush from fashion shows to movie
premieres, flaunting their surgically enhanced, perfect bodies in haute
couture. Their teenagers throw $200,000 parties and have million-dollar
weddings. This life is held before us like a beacon. This life, we are told,
is the most desirable, the most gratifying.
The working classes, composed of tens of millions of struggling Americans,
are shut out of television's gated community. They have become largely
invisible. They are mocked, even as they are tantalized, by the lives of
excess they watch on the screen in their living rooms. Almost none of us
will ever attain these lives of wealth and power. Yet we are told that if we
want it badly enough, if we believe sufficiently in ourselves, we too can
have everything. We are left, when we cannot adopt these impossible
lifestyles as our own, with feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. We
have failed where others have succeeded.
We consume countless lies daily, false promises that if we spend more money,
if we buy this brand or that product, if we vote for this candidate, we will
be respected, envied, powerful, loved, and protected. The flamboyant lives
of celebrities and the outrageous characters on television, movies,
professional wrestling, and sensational talk shows are peddled to us,
promising to fill up the emptiness in our own lives. Celebrity culture
encourages us all to think of ourselves as potential celebrities, as
possessing unique if unacknowledged gifts. It is, as Christopher Lasch
diagnosed, a culture of narcissism. Faith in ourselves, in a world of
make-believe, is more important than reality. Reality, in fact, is dismissed
and shunned as an impediment to success, a form of negativity. The New Age
mysticism and pop psychology of television personalities and evangelical
pastors -along with the array of self-help bestsellers penned by
motivational speakers, psychiatrists, and business tycoons -all peddle a
fantasy. Reality is condemned in these popular belief systems as the work of
Satan, as defeatist, as negativity, or as inhibiting our inner essence and
power. Those who question, those who doubt, those who are critical, those
who are able to confront reality, and those who grasp the hollowness of
celebrity culture, are shunned and condemned for their pessimism. The
illusionists who shape our culture, and who profit from our incredulity,
hold up the gilded cult of us. Popular expressions of religious belief,
personal empowerment, corporatism, political participation, and
self-definition argue that all of us are special, entitled, and unique. All
of us, by tapping into our inner reserves of personal will and undiscovered
talent, and by visualizing what we want, can achieve (and deserve to
achieve) happiness, fame, and success. This relentless message cuts across
ideological lines. This mantra has seeped into every aspect of our lives. We
are all entitled to everything.
American Idol, a talent-search reality show that airs on Fox, is one of the
most popular shows on American television. The show travels to different
American cities in a "countrywide search" for the contestants who will
continue to the final competition in Hollywood. The producers of the show
introduced a new focus, in the 2008-2009 season, on the personal stories of
the contestants.
During the Utah auditions, we meet Megan Corkrey, age twenty-three, the
single mother of a toddler. She has long, dirty-blond hair and a wholesome,
pretty face. A tattoo sleeve covers her right arm from the shoulder to below
the elbow. She wears a black, grey, and white dress reminiscent of the
1950s, and ballet flats. She is a font designer.
In an interview Corkrey says, "I am a mother. He will be two in December."
We see Corkrey with a little blond boy, reading a book together on a beanbag
chair. Breezy guitar music plays. "His name is Ryder." We see Corkrey
kissing Ryder and putting him to bed. "I recently decided to get a divorce,
which is new." The guitar music turns pensive. "The life I had planned for
us, the life I'd pictured, wasn't going to happen. I cried a lot for a
while. I don't think I stopped crying. And Ryder, of course, you can be
crying, and then he walks by, and does something ridiculous, and you can't
help but smile and laugh." We see Corkrey laughing with her son on the
floor. "And a little piece kind of heals up a little bit."
The montage of Corkrey's life fills the screen as the rock ballad swells. "I
can laugh at myself, while the tears roll down..." sings the band. We see
Corkrey and her son looking out a window. She holds her son up to a
basketball hoop as he clutches a blue ball.
"It was kind of crazy, I found out Idol was coming to Salt Lake, and I'd
just decided on the divorce, and for the first time in my life it was a
crossroads where ANYTHING can happen! So why not go for what I love to do?"
Corkrey enters the audition room. The judges -Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul,
Randy Jackson, and Kara DioGuardi -are seated behind a long table in front
of a window. They all have large red tumblers with "Coca-Cola" printed on
them. They seem charmed by her exuberant presence. She sings "Can't Help
Lovin' Dat Man" from Show Boat. Her performance is charismatic and quirky.
She improvises freely and assuredly with the rhythms and notes of the song,
beaming the whole time.
"I really like you," says Abdul. "I'm bordering on loving you. I think I'm
loving you. Yeah, I do. Simon?"
"One of my favorite auditions," Cowell says in a monotone.
"Yes!" grins Corkrey.
"Because you're different," continues Cowell, sternly. "You are one of the
few I'm going to remember. I like you, I like your voice, I mean, seriously
good voice. I loved it."
"You're an interesting girl. You have a glow about you, you have an
incredible face," says DioGuardi.
The judges vote.
"Absolutely yes," says Cowell.
"Love you," says Abdul.
"Yes!" says DioGuardi.
"One hundred percent maybe," smiles Jackson.
"You're goin' to Hollywood!" cheers DioGuardi as the inspirational rock
music swells.
"YES! Thank you, guys!" Corkrey screams with delight. She runs out of the
audition room into a crowd of her cheering friends. The music plays as she
dances down the street waving her large yellow ticket, the symbol of her
success.
Celebrities, who often come from humble backgrounds, are held up as proof
that anyone, even we, can be adored by the world. These celebrities, like
saints, are living proof that the impossible is always possible. Our
fantasies of belonging, of fame, of success, and of fulfillment are
projected onto celebrities. These fantasies are stoked by the legions of
those who amplify the culture of illusion, who persuade us that the shadows
are real. The juxtaposition of the impossible illusions inspired by
celebrity culture and our "insignificant" individual achievements, however,
eventually leads to frustration, anger, insecurity, and invalidation. This
juxtaposition results, ironically, in a self-perpetuating cycle that drives
the frustrated, alienated individual with even greater desperation and
hunger away from reality, back toward the empty promises of those who seduce
us, who tell us what we want to hear. We beg for more. We ingest these lies
until our money runs out. And when we fall into despair we medicate
ourselves, as if the happiness we have failed to find in the hollow game
were our deficiency. And, of course, we are told it is.
Human beings become a commodity in a celebrity culture. They are objects,
like consumer products. They have no intrinsic value. They must look
fabulous and live on fabulous sets. Those who fail to meet the ideal are
belittled and mocked. Friends and allies are to be used and betrayed during
the climb to fame, power, and wealth. And when they are no longer useful
they are to be discarded. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's novel about a
future dystopia, people spend most of the day watching giant television
screens that show endless scenes of police chases and criminal
apprehensions. Life, Bradbury understood, once it was packaged and filmed,
became the most compelling form of entertainment.
The moral nihilism of celebrity culture is played out on reality television
shows, most of which encourage a dark voyeurism into other people's
humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal. Education, building community,
honesty, transparency, and sharing are qualities that will see you, in a
gross perversion of democracy and morality, voted off a reality show. Fellow
competitors for prize money and a chance for fleeting fame elect to
"disappear" the unwanted. In the final credits of the reality show America's
Next Top Model, a picture of the woman expelled during the episode vanishes
from the group portrait on the screen. Those cast aside become, at least to
the television audience, non-persons. Life, these shows teach, is a brutal
world of unadulterated competition. Life is about the personal humiliation
of those who oppose us. Those who win are the best. Those who lose deserve
to be erased. Compassion, competence, intelligence, and solidarity with
others are forms of weakness. And those who do not achieve celebrity status,
who do not win the prize money or make millions in Wall Street firms,
deserve to lose. Those who are denigrated and ridiculed on reality
television, often as they sob in front of the camera, are branded as
failures. They are responsible for their rejection. They are deficient.
In an episode from the second season of the CBS reality game show Survivor,
cast members talk about exceptional friendships they have made within their
"tribe," or team. Maralyn, also known as Mad Dog, is a fifty-two-year-old
retired police officer with a silver crew cut and a tall, masculine build.
She is sunning herself in a shallow stream, singing "On the Street Where You
Live." Tina, a personal nurse and mother, walks up the stream toward her.
"Sing it, girl! I just followed your voice."
"Is it that loud?"
"Maralyn, she's kind of like our little songbird, and our little cheerleader
in our camp," Tina says in an interview. "Maralyn and I have bonded, more so
than I have with any of the other people. It might be our ages, it might
just be that we kind of took up for one another."
We see Tina and Maralyn swimming and laughing together in the river.
"Tina is a fabulous woman," says Maralyn in an interview. "She is a star. I
trust Tina the most."
Maralyn and Tina's tribe, Ogakor, loses an obstacle course challenge, in
which all the tribe members are tethered together. If one person falls, the
entire team is slowed. Mad Dog Maralyn falls several times and is hauled
back to her feet by Colby, the "cowboy" from Texas.
Because they lost, the members of Ogakor must vote off one of their tribe
members. The camera shows small groups of twos and threes in huddled,
intense discussion.
"The mood in the camp is a very sad mood, but it's also a very strategic
mood," says Tina. "Everyone's thinking, 'Who's thinking what?'"
The vote is taken at dusk, in the "tribal council" area. It resembles a set
from Disney World's Adventureland. A ring of tall stone monoliths is
stenciled with petroglyphs. Torches flicker above. A campfire blazes in the
center of the ring. Primitive drums and flutes accompany the scene.
The Ogakor team arrives at dusk, each holding a torch. They sit before
Survivor's host, Jeff Probst.
"So I just want to talk about a couple of big topics," says Probst, who
wears a safari outfit. "Trust. Colby, is there anyone here that you don't
trust, wouldn't trust?"
"Sure," says Colby.
"Tell me about that."
"Well, I think that's part of the game," says Colby. "It's way too early to
tell exactly who you can trust, I think."
"What about you, Mitchell? Would you trust everyone here for forty-two
days?" asks Probst. "I think the motto is, 'Trust no one,' " answers
Mitchell. "I have a lot of faith in a good number of these people, but I
couldn't give 100 percent of my trust."
"What about you, Mad Dog?" asks Probst. "These all your buddies?"
Maralyn looks around at her team members. "Yes," she says unequivocally.
"Yes. And, Jeff, I trust with my heart."
"I think friendship does enter into it at some point," says Jerri. "But I
think it's very important to keep that separate from the game. It's two
totally different things. And that's where it gets tricky." Jerri will say
later, as she casts her vote, "This is probably one of the most difficult
things for me to do right now. It's purely strategic, it's nothing personal.
I am going to miss you dearly."
"Jeff," Maralyn breaks in. "I'm conjoined with Tina. She is a constellation.
And, the cowboy [Colby]! The poor cowboy has dragged me around so many times
[during the obstacle course challenge]. I appreciate it."
"I'd do it again," laughs Colby broadly.
"Hey, you hear that? He'd do it again!" says Maralyn.
It is time to vote. Each team member walks up a narrow bridge lit by flaring
torches, again looking like something out of Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room,
made of twisted logs lashed with vines, to a stone table. They write the
name of the person they want to eliminate and put it in a cask with
aboriginal carvings. Most of the votes are kept anonymous, the camera
panning away as each person writes. But as Tina, Mad Dog Maralyn's best
friend and "constellation," casts her vote, she shows us her ballot: Mad
Dog. "Mad Dog, I love you," she says to the camera, "I value your friendship
more than anything. This vote has everything to do with a promise I made, it
has nothing to do with you. I hope you'll understand." She folds her vote
and puts it in the cask.
"Once the vote is tallied, the decision is final, and the person will be
asked to leave the tribal council area immediately," says Probst.
Five people of the seven voted to eliminate Maralyn.
"You need to bring me a torch, Mad Dog," says Probst. She does so, first
taking off her green baseball cap and putting it affectionately on Amber,
who sits next to her and gives her a hug. The camera shows Tina looking
impassive.
"Mad Dog," says Probst, holding the flaming torch Maralyn has brought him,
"the tribe has spoken." He takes a large stone snuffer and extinguishes the
torch. The camera shows Maralyn's rueful face behind the smoking, blackened
torch. "It's time for you to go," says Probst. She leaves without speaking
or looking at anyone, although there are a few weak 'byes from the tribe.
Before the final credits, we are shown who, besides her friend Tina, voted
to eliminate Maralyn. They are Amber, who gave Maralyn a farewell hug, along
with Mitchell, Jerri, and Colby, Maralyn's "cowboy."
Celebrity culture plunges us into this moral void. No one has any worth
beyond his or her appearance, usefulness, or ability to "succeed." The
highest achievements in a celebrity culture are wealth, sexual conquest, and
fame. It does not matter how these are obtained. These values, as Sigmund
Freud understood, are illusory. They are hollow. They leave us chasing
vapors. They urge us toward a life of narcissistic self-absorption. They
tell us that existence is to be centered on the practices and desires of the
self rather than the common good. The ability to lie and manipulate others,
the very ethic of capitalism, is held up as the highest good. "I simply
agreed to go along with [Jerri and Amber] because I thought it would get me
down the road a little better," says young, good-looking Colby in another
episode of Survivor. "I wanna win. And I don't want to talk to anybody else
about loyalties -don't give me that crap. I haven't trusted anyone since day
one, and anyone playing smart should have been the same way."
The cult of self dominates our cultural landscape. This cult shares within
it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity, and
self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying,
deception, and manipulation; and the inability to feel remorse or guilt.
This is, of course, the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of
unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and
personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic
equality. In fact, personal style, defined by the commodities we buy or
consume, has become a compensation for our loss of democratic equality. We
have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do
anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends,
to make money, to be happy, and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are
achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one
gets there is irrelevant. Once you get there, those questions are no longer
asked.
It is this perverted ethic that gave us Wall Street bankers and investment
houses that willfully trashed the nation's economy, stole money from tens of
millions of small shareholders who had bought stock in these corporations
for retirement or college. The heads of these corporations, like the winners
on a reality television program who lied and manipulated others to succeed,
walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and
compensation. In his masterful essay "The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin wrote, "The cult of the movie
star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique
aura of the person but the 'spell of the personality,' the phony spell of a
commodity."
According to C. Wright Mills, "The professional celebrity, male and female,
is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish
of competition." Mills added:
block quote In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who
can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more
efficiency and skill than anyone else thereby gains access to the President
of the United States. It is carried to the point where a chattering radio
and television entertainer becomes the hunting chum of leading industrial
executives, cabinet members, and the higher military. It does not seem to
matter what the man is the very best at; so long as he has won out in
competition over all others, he is celebrated. Then, a second feature of the
star system begins to work: all the stars of any other sphere of endeavor or
position are drawn toward the new star and he toward them. The success, the
champion, accordingly, is one who mingles freely with other champions to
populate the world of the celebrity.
block quote end
Degradation as entertainment is the squalid underside to the glamour of
celebrity culture. "If only that were me," we sigh, as we gaze at the
wealthy, glimmering stars on the red carpet. But we are as transfixed by the
inverse of celebrity culture, by the spectacle of humiliation and debasement
that characterizes tabloid television shows such as The Jerry Springer Show
and The Howard Stern Show. We secretly exult, "At least that's not me." It
is the glee of cruelty with impunity, the same impulse that drove crowds to
the Roman Colosseum, to the pillory and the stocks, to public hangings, and
to traveling freak shows.
Celebrity is the vehicle used by a corporate society to sell us these
branded commodities, most of which we do not need. Celebrities humanize
commercial commodities. They present the familiar and comforting face of the
corporate state. Supermodel Paulina Porizkova, on an episode of America's
Next Top Model, gushes to a group of aspiring young models, "Our job as
models is to sell." But they peddle a fake intimacy and a fantasy. The
commercial "personalizing" of the world involves oversimplification,
distraction, and gross distortion. "We sink further into a dream of an
unconsciously intimate world in which not only may a cat look at a king but
a king is really a cat underneath, and all the great power-figures Honest
Joes at heart," Richard Hoggart warned in The Uses of Literacy. We do not
learn more about Barack Obama by knowing what dog he has bought for his
daughters or if he still smokes. This personalized trivia, passed off as
news, diverts us from reality.
In his book Celebrity, Chris Rojeck calls celebrity culture "the cult of
distraction that valorizes the superficial, the gaudy, the domination of
commodity culture." He goes further:
block quote Capitalism originally sought to police play and pleasure,
because any attempt to replace work as the central life interest threatened
the economic survival of the system. The family, the state, and religion
engendered a variety of patterns of moral regulation to control desire and
ensure compliance with the system of production. However, as capitalism
developed, consumer culture and leisure time expanded. The principles that
operated to repress the individual in the workplace and the home were
extended to the shopping mall and recreational activity. The entertainment
industry and consumer culture produced what Herbert Marcuse called
'repressive desublimation.' Through this process individuals unwittingly
subscribed to the degraded version of humanity.
block quote end
This cult of distraction, as Rojeck points out, masks the real
disintegration of culture. It conceals the meaninglessness and emptiness of
our own lives. It seduces us to engage in imitative consumption. It deflects
the moral questions arising from mounting social injustice, growing
inequalities, costly imperial wars, economic collapse, and political
corruption. The wild pursuit of status and wealth has destroyed our souls
and our economy. Families live in sprawling mansions financed with mortgages
they can no longer repay. Before the meltdown, consumers recklessly rang up
Coach handbags and Manolo Blahnik shoes on credit cards because they seemed
to confer a sense of identity and merit. Our favorite hobby, besides
television, used to be -until reality hit us like a tsunami -shopping.
Shopping used to be the compensation for spending five days a week in tiny
cubicles. American workers are ground down by corporations that have
disempowered, used, and now discarded them.
This article was in part adapted from Empire of Illusion: The End of
Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (Nation Books, 2009).
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the
Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His
latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of
Spectacle.
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
check out my blog
www.curiouscarlscorner.blogspot.com
www.curiouscarlscorner.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment