The Great American Circus - David Loftus

I don’t watch much television news anymore (never mind television in general), but searching for election coverage earlier this week I happened to catch a disturbing local story.

Four adults (I use the term advisedly) were arraigned in McMinnville, a town of 32,000 about 35 miles southwest of Portland, on a variety of criminal charges that stem from an incident in which they apparently urged a pair of 9-year-old boys into a violent fight in front of a video camera.

They uploaded the result onto Facebook. Someone in Pennsylvania saw the clip and phoned the McMinnville Police Department, which resulted in arrests on charges of criminal mistreatment, assault, reckless endangering, endangering the welfare of a child, and strangulation. Some of these charges resulted from a search of the two apartments where the children lived, which authorities described as “extremely filthy,” with rotten and insufficient food, and drug paraphernalia. The accused, two men and two women, were not teenagers; three are in their 30s and the last is 22.

I saw a brief clip on the TV report of two little boys punching and kicking each other while adult voices could be heard egging them on. Though taken into protective custody by social workers, the children were said not to be seriously hurt. But this incident appears symptomatic of larger, unhealthy changes in how many Americans see themselves and the world around them. These grownups (again, a relative term) regarded their kids as tools for entertaining themselves and others (much the way Michael Vick treated pit bull dogs before his conviction) -- for gaining attention from the great wide world out there. And they sought to reproduce the sort of violent thrills they probably derive from television, movies, and video games. The problem is that they were using vulnerable, dependent, and growing human beings entrusted by law to their care and training as tools.

Humans have always had a problem distinguishing between fiction and truth … art and reality … entertainment and news. Over the years I’ve enjoyed collecting stories about such confusion. A woman who visited Modigliani’s studio roughly a century ago noticed a work in progress on an easel and commented, “But surely this woman’s arm is too long?” The artist replied: “Excuse me, madame; that is not a woman, that is a painting.” Magritte made the same point with his painting “The Treachery of Images” -- you know, the one that pictures a smoking pipe with the legend below: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Similarly, a man verbally attacked Picasso because, like too many other artists of the time, he did not paint things “the way they really are.” The complainer took a photo of his daughter out of his wallet and showed it to the artist, saying, see -- this looks just like her; why can’t you do that? Picasso gazed at the photo for a moment and remarked, “Small, isn’t she?”

More recently, in the late 1980s, I heard a story on National Public Radio about a man who went stomping into a sheriff’s office in Pennsylvania to complain that an Amish farmer had refused to pose for the tourist’s camera with his wife and kids. The deputy on duty patiently explained that the farmer was a member of a spiritual community that chooses to live their lives in a certain simple way, free of modern technologies, and he was under no obligation to do as a passerby demanded. The tourist was flabbergasted; he said: “You mean, they aren’t PAID to do this?”

It is as if he, like many other Americans, regarded anything outside the cocoon of his home as one big Disneyland. And why shouldn’t he? That’s the message from the news (which shamelessly conflates stories about local shootings and fires with “reports” about the latest developments among the network’s hit shows and stars), to advertising (“These burgers/coffee drinks/vacations/homes/furniture/babes, etc., etc. are ALL MADE OR EXIST JUST FOR YOU!!!”), to movies (“there are millions of threats out there just itching to GET you, from vampires and terrorists and aliens and evil politicians to global warming, but our handsome leading guy and gal will deal with them in less 2 hours, so you don’t have to worry or do a thing -- just enjoy your fears!”). Through all these avenues, corporate America is teaching Americans to be passive slug consumers who are responsible for nothing and entitled to everything.

How does this relate to our losers in McMinnville? They couldn’t let entertainment stay where it was: a product manufactured by experts. They wanted in on the action. And as long as a video of their kids hurting each other got attention from thousands, possibly even millions, of fellow American viewers, that made the bruises and blood no more real or hurtful than the vivid violence on their computer and plasma screens. Converting real life into entertainment both validates and objectifies it into something more -- and less -- than real.

Because real just isn’t good enough. Or magic enough. Or interesting enough.