STANDING ROOM ONLY: Media tell us what and how to feel
Published 7:00 pm Wednesday, August 21, 2002
It’s starting already: the full-tilt media barrage of special programs commemorating the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. Soon enough, Americans everywhere will be enveloped in an amniotic fluid of grave emotions, a sort of sentimental cocktail composed of two parts blind patriotism, one part parochial self-assertion, a dash of shrink-wrapped schmaltz and an obligatory twist of nostalgia. Television will remember the tragedy for us. We are required only to float passively in the fizzy glow of pre-packaged history, and shed an inevitable tear to the soaring strings and cracking drumbeat of heroic soundtracks. No chain will be left unyanked. That’s info-tainment.
All important historical events, it’s been said, occur twice: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. In the age of television, the velocity with which tragedy is converted to farce has been amped to such a degree that it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish reproduction from reality. Live? Or Memorex? For most of us, the reality of Sept. 11 was itself an image of atrocity, planes crashing again and again into the towers, from which sprang very real emotions of fear, uncertainty and anguish. It wasn’t long, however, before the media began manipulating the event by suffusing it with artificial trappings of grandiosity and importance: music by turns maudlin and heroic, flashy graphics, quick cuts, movie titles (“The Empire Strikes Back!”), puffed-up tearjerker commentaries. As if the naked fact of the event wasn’t sufficiently dramatic; as though people couldn’t be trusted to react without a little nudge.
It’s no secret that television news has lost all integrity; that the demands of entertainment have subsumed the principles of critical thought and nard-nosed investigation; that news anchors are talking heads parroting the scripts of network higher-ups who themselves capitulate to both corporations and powerful political blocs. A little less obvious is how the networks determine the framework of political dialogue and public debate, simply by what they choose to focus on. We rely on the news for information, but what we get instead is soft-core propaganda with a Hollywood sheen. Unfortunately, the Sept. 11 attacks, like everything else on television, have been packaged for mass consumption – to go down easy, make us feel wise. That’s how you sell ads.
The problem is not the act of remembering and memorializing the tragedy of Sept. 11; everyone will remember that day, whether they want to or not. The question is precisely how one remembers it. By allowing mainstream news media to determine how we think about Sept. 11, we have also allowed mainstream media to dictate the ways we don’t think about Sept. 11. For instance, how much coverage has been given to the significant popular opposition to the war on terrorism that has arisen in Europe and the rest of the world? Or how about the ways the Bush administration has begun decimating civil rights as a short-sighted response to the threat of terrorism, through the U.S. Patriot Act. Perhaps if we weren’t so involved in a collective act of hand-wringing over the lingering shock of Sept. 11, we might be tipped off to the no less significant tragedy of Attorney General John Ashcroft’s trampling of the Bill of Rights through roving wire-taps and a suspension of habeas corpus. Makes you wonder where the real threat lies.
One of the most damning results of Sept. 11 has been the equation of patriotism with blind support of the Bush administration, when that administration itself is guilty of violating the most basic tenets of the American democratic ideal: freedom, liberty, openness and fairness. Undoubtedly, Sept. 11 anniversary programming will partake of the typical uplift-narrative of patriotism, heroism and pride – all fine traits, no question. The problem is that it will all be turned into a movie, a translation of reality into a story with a message and a moral. All ambivalence will be erased, as though ambivalence is tantamount to justifying the views of Osama bin Laden. Remember the agonized pleas: “Why did this happen? How could someone hate us so?” Well, President Bush answered, they’re evil. The question proved intolerable, and the media largely obeyed the command of “My country, right or wrong.” Just ask Bill Maher, host of Politically Incorrect, what happens when someone challenges the party line. Cancelled.
Perhaps, as we pay witness to the onslaught of calculated hype that is Sept. 11 anniversary programming, we should keep in mind the words of Congressman Dennis Kucinich from Ohio, who calls for a different type of heroism and patriotism: “Let us pray that we have the courage and the will as a people and as a nation to shore ourselves up, to reclaim from the ruins of Sept. 11 our democratic traditions. Let us declare our love of democracy. Let us declare our intent for peace.”
