A recent trip led me to a few days spent mostly in airports, hotels, hotel, and restaurants. A few days into the trip, I was having breakfast in a hotel restaurant. From where I was sitting, I could see three or four televisions mounted on the ceiling in the various corners of the large lobby restaurant. All of the televisions were tuned to CNN’s 24-hour news channel, Headline News. That morning, the image of choice was an enormous plume of smoke from a barge that had exploded in the harbour in New York. The black cloud unfolded on multiple screens, filling my peripheral vision like an electronic Warhol.
These images and others like them unfolded on screens in airport terminals, restaurants (obviously I wasn’t enjoying high cuisine), and hotel lobbies. Everywhere I went, the TV “news” was streaming images of bombings, war, and disasters.
For anyone who’s seen Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, his most potent thread is not availability of weapons, or gun laws, but rather the culture of fear. There it was, the culture of fear – when it dawned on me: television news is a kind of electronic wallpaper.
While watching Frasier in the hotel room one right, a news ticker appeared at the bottom of the screen to inform us that a child had been abducted – that was it – a boy had been abducted. There were no other details. How can news that vague serve any purpose other than spreading fear?
That said, my American TV experience wasn’t entiredly negative. I discovered Ali G.
Hail from the road. The lack of access to TV or the internet when in motion across the continent has had the opposite effect. Without the constant input from the screen, I have not seen what it is new that I am suppose to fear. Combined with the ubiquitousness of strip malls in Kitchener-Wateroo – today’s home of the in-law – I have the feeling of being on a different quieter planet. Without any TV for the first five weeks (didn’t fit) what will it be like to be informed only by radio?
I expected Bowling for Columbine just be a movie about guns, but as you noted it was about much more. After watching it, one finds that fear seems to be the real byline for many news stories. CNN is specifically guilty of sensationalizing the Showdown with Iraq, parroting government duct-tape-and-cover ballyhoo.
Ali G is possibly the funniest comedian since Mike Myers. I’m particularly fond of his interview with a feminist professor.
Ali: A lot of boys me know is trying to get their girlfriends into feminism, do you that is right?
Sue: Yes, I do actually I think it’s a good thing.
Ali: Do you think all girls should try feminism at least once?
Sue: Well girls today often don’t realise how much they’ve benefited from feminism…
Ali: But do you think it is right when they try feminism when they is drunk at a party or whatever with a few mates?
Sue: What does ‘trying feminism’ mean?
Ali: You know, try a bit of feminism and when they is sober the next day they get back together with their boyfriends?
Sue: I don’t understand what you mean by ‘get feminist’?
Steve wrote:
“…filling my peripheral vision like an electronic Warhol”
“television news is a kind of electronic wallpaper”
Honestly, Steve.
You have to put your very clever quips together in a book. I would buy it. (I would!)You ‘d do both Marshal Macluan and George Carlin proud if you did!
Sounds like you need a break – You are invited to join the campaign
I was recently in the US, Cananda and the UK and read during my return to Australia, Stupid White Men. The combination of reading this book and seeing Bowling for Columbine on my return really framed a few opinions i gathered about the US. Firstly the fact that though there are 24 hour news channels in the US almost every piece of information is incomplete and therefore confusing, depressing and secondly entired US related. I was shaken up when there was severe bush fires burning my National Capital (which i think deserves a mention seeing as we provided much needed help the previous summer for US fires) and yet scanning the news shows i couldn’t even find a political story about a foreign country let-a-lone a story on australia. teh news was full of morbid half assed accounts of rapes, murders, bombings, abductions, muggings etc. Most of it however seems to be propaganda designed to instill fear into citzens rather than thoroughly inform them about current events. Incredibly frustrating. The only place I could find any news on the outside world was on the internet on an australian or english site.
anyway if you want some really good british humour check out the “A League of Gentlemen” BBC series. very black and dark, you either hate it or you absolutely love.
There you have it,Steven. You’ve put your finger firmly on the American pulse of induced fear and paranoia.
You don’t mention, but I’d say there’s a chicken or egg question here. The question is: Was it fear-peddling news or the growth of ideological “warfare” that started first?
Ideologues are everywhere, trying to sell their particular brand of “answers for everything” by pointing out the “enemy” (usually a competing ideology). But news agencies have long recognized the value of emphasizing the negative, the fear-inducing, the alarming and the cynical.
But I think you may be off by a tad when you use only the example of American news compared to Australian. We now have a good example of the same thing — in the form of Arab news and Arab / Islamic ideology.
Putting Al Jazeerah and CNN side by side, you can see right off that BOTH can’t be right at the same time. When you read the statements of various extreme mullahs, the statements of Christian leaders, you get the same “slippage” (term borrowed from Stephen King) in reality.
My answer (so far) is to largely ignore both the news and ideologues (be they neocons, Libertarians or Castro Leftists, to name a few). Other than that, I take special pains to shoot down both inaccurate news reports and ideological propaganda. (I don’t, however, ignore news reports of approaching tornadoes, etc.)
As for Roger Moore; after his Oscars “speech” it became clear that this otherwise worthy iconoclast has lapsed into ideology. He’s a lost cause, start (mostly) ignoring him and shooting him down in print.
So, for all of those news agencies and their ideologic buddies, I’d say (like Rodney King), “Can’t we all just get along?”
But that’s too much to ask of their kind — they MAKE MONEY by making the masses nervous and fearful.