In “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon discusses several different reasons why he believes McDonald’s has been successful in their marketing to people from all different kinds of backgrounds. Solomon says that this is due to the company’s expert manipulation of “commercial illusions” (413). By tapping into the inherent fantasies of the American public — at all ages — McDonald’s offers its singular product of fast food to the American public — at all ages. Instead of marketing the same thing to all people as the one and only for everyone, McDonald’s took the approach of marketing to each individual target market individually. As Solomon notes, McDonald’s “presents a fantasy world that has little to do with hamburgers” (414) for the youngest crowd. For the next up group — teenagers — McDonald’s has given the illusion of the perpetual date machine if they merely pick up a burger. Indeed, for both older groups of parent and grandparent age, McDonald’s wrapped up their illusions of freedom, ease, and relaxation only to package them with a side of fries and a small coke. Solomon also notices that McDonald’s works on the so-called child inside of each of us by showing their efforts to put the elderly to work next to the high school kid (414). It shares in that American paradox of equality for all with illusions of making it to the top of the McDonald’s heap.

Guilt ads, according to Jack Solomon, are those ad that “work by creating narrative situations in which someone is ‘accused’ of some social ‘transgression’” (417). Everything from bad breath, dandruff, and dirty shirts was used to make them feel different from us. By turning the them into a sacrificial scapegoat, the advertisers played hellfire and brimstone priest to those who wanted to be socially acceptable from the inside out (410). Written in the mid-1980s, the essay quietly draws on the irony of those who were still influenced by the nonconformist ideas of the 1970s but moving into the cut-and-paste Carnation Instant Stereotypes of the 1980s. By drawing on the lower common denominator of humanity, guilt ads rely on attempting to bully and shame consumers into buying a product. Solomon calls these kinds of ads “parodies of ancient religious rituals” (417) aimed to ostracize on the one hand while “offering salvation” (417) on the other. In badly paraphrasing the infamous Anton LaVey, by shaming people to be all the same in their bodily habits — smells, dress, color, texture — advertisers have worked to destroy individuality on every level thereby making it easier to indoctrinate the herd to an unnatural standard of conformity.

I couldn’t help but try to add a little subterfuge myself. Call it a bad habit. But let’s see if he even notices that I paraphrased LaVey.

In Jack Solomon’s essay, “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” he discusses his ideas on the paradox of the American dream (410). The idea that there is opportunity for everyone to rise to the top of the heap lies on one hand, facilitated by the illusions of rungs on a ladder of obtainable success. One the other is the equally fallacious illusion that everyone is created equally, a deliberate and misleading parody of the U.S. Constitution’s “every man is created equal” phrase, and that what is mine is certainly yours if not by some manifest destiny then by the sweat of your ambition. In practice, more often than in theory, what is yours is really mine if I am shady enough to figure out how to get it from you without breaking any laws. I might even get more points if I can get you to willingly hand over your dreams to me for the mere promise of even bigger dreams and even more fallacious illusions of success in a bottle right over the rainbow to the pot of American gold right behind that unicorn in the corner humping the leprechaun. And yet the paradox of the American dream keeps people striving over and over again to find their way crushed under the illusions of opportunity to the top of that heap.

Linda Seger, in Creating the Myth, posits that a successful story or film is written around a structure symbolized by the hero’s journey or mythic quest (317). In comparing her idea of this mythic structure with Charles Ealy’s three academic explanations for the popularity of Star Wars, it is possible to see where Seger might favor one explanation over the others. In Understanding Star Wars, Ealy provides us with three explanations that span the scope of reasonable possibilities with a basic coming of age story, a subtle exposure of the Nixon years through Vietnam and Watergate, and a not so subtle representation of the class struggle between blacks and whites (327). There is certainly a little bit of the mythic in each of these explanations, but Seger would most likely favor the coming of age story more so than the Nixon explanation or the class struggle. She might provide a nod in the direction of this latter class struggle explanation, but only in the sense that freedom from slavery is a strong motif throughout most of known history.

Ealy provides his first academic explanation as a fairly standard coming of age story. Boy gets into trouble — Boy gets out of trouble. It is a straightforward and simple story with minimal confusion insofar as the structure is concerned. Certainly there are other aspects that are important in the mythic journey, but given Seger’s provisions this particular explanation fits her structure quite nicely. Even as Ealy describes this explanation in terms of Joseph Campbell and the same terms that Seger uses in her essay. Quoting Dr. Gordon, Ealy makes a point of looking at the various mythic elements in the coming of age story that are particular elements of Campbell’s take on the heroic journey (328).

Ealy does not spend any significant amount of time on any one academic view of Star Wars and most of that time is spent quoting other people. With the coming of age story, however, most of the elements of the hero’s journey are represented within Star Wars. He uses as archetypal examples, “the wise old man, the beautiful princess, the animal helpers, the gnomes and dwarves, [and] the Black Knight” (Ealy 328). Ealy converges on a conclusion that Star Wars, through the elements of this heroic journey, “has the unifying structure of the monomyth” (328). In this, the view that Star Wars represents the hero’s journey is most like Seger’s assertions of the element for a successful movie.

Another of Ealy’s academic explanations centers on politics. There are views that Star Wars is a political commentary of the times. Of course, there are two different views on which political era it represents and that is never really explored with any depth through Ealy’s essay.

The first political era is thought to be part of the Nixon era through the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. There is a loose connection made between Nixon as “the ‘evil emperor’ and the dark lieutenant, Darth Vader, representing Henry Kissinger” (Ealy 327). Very little time is spent on this connection other than to suggest that George Lucas seems to favor this view.

The Reagan era is thought to be the second political highlight of Star Wars. Given that the President called his space defense program “Star Wars“, there is some room for speculation. However, Ealy and his sources lean more toward the use of the elements of a “clear-cut theme of good and evil” (328) rather than any specific elements of the heroic journey. Again, quoting Dr. Gordon, the essay suggests that “Authors are not necessarily responsible for the uses to which their work it put” (Ealy 328).

There is little to nothing in the particular explanation through politics that actually provides a solid connection to Seger’s work. In fact, this is probably the least connected explanation to her thoughts on the hero’s journey and the monomythic elements.

One explanation that Ealy seems to spent more time with but not take as seriously as the others is Clyde Taylor’s assertion that Star Wars represents “racist undertones” (328) in the movie and its elements with a direct connection to D.W. Giffith’s Birth of a Nation. Taylor has a place for everyone in the movie to provide the backdrop of the post-Civil War era and its focus on gentrifying the blacks while holding out the whites as some kind of pure and feudal ideal. Taylor believes that public needed “an evil adversary” with which to relate in their recycled fantasy of the American Dream (Ealy 329). Star Wars provided for and supported that mythic need.

There are certainly some minor elements of this explanation that Seger might give a nod to in her breakdown of the hero’s journey. Taylor’s explanation does not actually provide any mythical elements of that monomyth, but there is a certain air of mythic need in the exploitation of the underdog, i.e., Blacks, and their subsequent road to freedom. Taylor’s application of archetypes to the characters of Star Wars does not leave much room for their adequate placement within the monomyth, but they are close enough approximations that Seger might allow due to this overriding element that could be seen as “the tests and obstacles necessary to overcome the enemy” (Seger 320).

Looking over the three primary explanations for Star Wars that Ealy examines in relation to the elements of Seger’s text, there is a clear connection between one of these explanations. She might give a slight nod to Taylor’s association of Star Wars with Birth of a Nation, but this support most likely would be tenuous at best. Given that Seger prefers the straightforward mythic elements, she most likely would reject the political explanations of Star Wars. At the end of the day, Seger would most likely support the explanation of Star Wars as a coming of age story with all the quirks of the journey and the mythic archetypes associated with it.

I made a 93 (out of 100) on my first response paper. I’ll take that thank you very much. My professor’s comments? (And you can’t say that I don’t get a huge ego boost from these comments)

Bishop: Keep going next time. I enjoyed it and wanted to see more. You can bring other readings in a unit into these papers to aid in development. Keep that in mind. Your approach is good here. I just ask that you write in third person only as I requested. It formalizes your tone and is customary for academic and professional writing. You have a nice style as is, you want it too [sic] read objectively. Also, conclusion – needs development [lengthening]. A good paper deserves a good conclusion. Restate thesis and wrap up by summarizing key points.

I’m certainly not arguing with him on this. I did screw up the third person at the end. I actually think I knew that before I submitted it and did that whole ‘pressed for time’ crap like I’m under right now. In any case, I see these points and can see exactly where he’s talking about. I’ll work better on the next one. If I have time, I can certainly rewrite this for a better grade and I might (again, if I have time). But, really, I wish this kind of “luck” would rub off on my Math.

Voting Reality off the Island

It is ironic that I sit here and write on the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States in New York. Many, like Elizabeth Frank, felt like it was “nothing more than a silent movie played surreally in constant and slow motion” (Frank, par. 5). CBS News quoted Lawrence Wright, writer of the movie, The Siege: “People said, ‘You know, it looks like a movie,’ and I was thinking, ‘Yeah, it looks like my movie’” (Martin, Par. 9). The whole event was too horrific for many of the current generation to fathom as a reality. It is — at least for a heavy portion of blame — the current obsession with so-called reality television in the United States that promotes a false sense of reality. In doing so, reality television desensitizes people to the events happening in the world around them. It keeps them from coming to an understanding of just how real reality really is. When reality strikes back, the best many can do is compare it to their favorite thriller or horror flick. Elizabeth Prose takes us one more step from the movie theater to our living rooms.

In her essay, “Voting Democracy off the Island,” Prose makes an interesting connection between the elements of reality television and the current state of affairs in our government (226). Comparing our current administration to an episode of Survivor, she writes that it is a “travesty of democracy so painfully familiar, so much like what our political reality is actually becoming” (228). Indeed, the events of the presidential election of 2000 gave rise to a perception of reality television as the votes in Florida were counted and recounted, haggled over, and eventually ruled on by a committee. It could have been a scene straight out of Survivor with all the camps pulling for their own, the alleged backroom conspiracies, and the fight to the bitter end where there can be only one. Whether or not anyone believes that President Bush won or cheated for his election strategy, the fact remains that the perception of what the country saw on television was little more than another reality show at its best. When one’s vote is an illusion it is not a hard leap to conclude one’s face, life, and destiny are all an illusion.

Sadly, however, the only thing that so-called reality television promotes is this sense of self-illusion. Anita Creamer provides a timely illustration of this illusion making potential of television and reality shows when she talks about the twins who decide to elect for surgery “to look like Brad Pitt” (230) and the girl who wants to have the face of Pamela Anderson (229). These children are not facing the reality of their lives but escaping it. Of course, it is nothing more than they have seen over and over again on television. If you do not like the results of any particular aspect of yourself or your personal life, change it. It’s not through hard work and luck like our parents, but through a little magic of illusion, the luck of the draw, the backstabbing of a friend, neighbor, or stranger.

Prose also takes on The Bachelorette in her essay. You can have the perfect husband or wife for just a television show and some hours of punishment (223). But what happens after that? Even if we assume that Ms. Perfect and Mr. Average strike it lucky on their television show, will we see them again later on an episode of Cheaters? What kind of lesson does this teach our youth? The issue of whether or not our youth should be learning lessons from television is actually moot at this point. We know they learn from what they absorb around them in (just to name a few) movies, television shows, television commercials, and the attitudes and actions of their parents and peers. If their country’s leaders are acting like some half-tribal idiots on Survivor — I use that term “tribal” loosely — and their parents are acting like a bad rerun of Cheaters, then why should they not begin to take on certain perspectives that have more in common with reality television than otherwise might be healthy?

But unlike for Melanda in her episode of Average Joe (223), life is not scripted. We do not have the luxury of having everything around us played out after a rehearsal. We do not have the luxury of camera angles or crafty editors after a day of bloopers. But it would seem that for millions of viewers these shows offer some kind of vicarious action they might not otherwise feel or receive out of their own lives. They begin to feel as if they have the ability to live life after the manner of what they see. It would not surprise me to find any number of studies on the effects of reality television on different pathologies of human existence from divorce to murder to suicide to accidental deaths of extreme sports by the “Average Joes and Joans” of our society.

This is where we find our society desensitized through the exposure to reality television. Once the fantasy sets in, the pathology arises and “I can be like that too” becomes a mantra of the disaffected and disenchanted of our times. It might seem unfair to leave out other influences that contribute to this wholesale numbing of society. However, when we examine the elements of this medium common to the primrose policies enacted our leaders, the rare examples of justice — such as Richard Hatch’s tax evasion indictment — are just not seen as convincing impediments to the illusion of a dog-eat-dog world presented by reality shows where lies, deception, cruelty, and pettiness are the vices extolled by a few over the virtues of the many.

In another context Ms. Prose’s use of democracy as the political process of the United States might be called into question. Its use here, however, mirrors exceptionally well the devastating effects of reality television on our society when she writes that reality television is “a parody of democracy, robbed of its heart and soul, a democracy in which everyone always votes, for himself” (228).
 

Creamer, Anita. “Reality TV Meets Plastic Surgery: An Ugly Shame.” Massik, Sonia and Jack Solomon. Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Fifth Edition. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2006. 808.

Frank, Elizabeth. “New Yorker sees terror, heroism in wake of attacks.” 19 Sep 2001. Jacksonville.com. 11 Sep 2007 < http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/091901/dsr_7315140.html>.

Martin, David. “Reporting The Bin Laden Beat.” 9 Sep 2007. CBS News. 11 Sep 2007 < http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/09/sunday/main3244713.shtml>.

I have to be honest and suggest that anthropologists of the future would not likely find much congruency between these so-called reality programs as their primary sources and their secondary sources of just about anything else. Ms. Prose argues this type of programing would constitute some kind of standard reading of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and proof of a Spencer dream come true (225). As an aside, it would not be until the fifth edition of On the Origin of the Species that Darwin would pick up Spencer’s phrase — survival of the fittest — and use it, though with a certain air of a man disclaiming an annoying stepchild. Spencer’s ’survival of the fittest’ was not a proper reading of Darwin’s theory with the beginnings of its end in the 1920s and its final demise in the serious academic scene after World War II. On the contrary, we do not find Spencer’s or Darwin’s theories at work. Natural selection as defined in modern evolutionary theory is about variation in the reproductive process through heritable characters rather than a group of nobodies stuck on a island with a camera crew. None of these shows provide any evidence whatsoever of such evolutionary characteristics. Future anthropologists, then, would not come to any actual understanding of our culture or times. Indeed, they would find a confused mass of contradiction with accepted science — assuming and hoping that it had continued to advance without mere television as its guide — and they would have to dismiss it as nonsense and begin looking for more reliable evidence of our civilization.

[Yes. I obviously suck at writing about "Pop Culture"]

The source material here is for the next part. The text references are for my textbook, not the website.

Part 1 of 4

In his essay “The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life”, Mr. Matheson uses the term quotationalism, a literary style from the 1970s where references from other aspects of popular culture are necessary to understanding the context or content of a work. We find quotationalism in all aspects of life and art. In keeping with Mr. Matheson’s illustrations, we might hear someone say, “Don’t have a cow, man!” and think it is funny. But without a direct understanding of the reference to The Simpsons, we don’t have a mental or emotional comparison by which we can examine the context. A fan of the show, however, might understand that there is a sarcasm and nonchalance to the phrase that really is more of a “blow-off” of the recipient or a way to humorously defuse a tense situation. Mr. Matheson’s hyper-irony is a form of irony on steroids. Hyper-irony is a loss of the stability of authority — he calls it a “crisis of authority” (256) — in the face of progress. It is the postmodern deconstructionist’s fantasy of taking anything of worth and undercutting its meaning and purpose by turning it into a mere cog in the machine rather than an object of importance unto itself.

Part 2 of 4

Historical appropriation is the use or misuse of the past by popular culture in pursuit of illustrating the present. An example might be the use of the Woodstock era posters to promote any model of the Volkswagen Beetle past 1998 or the use of hunter-gatherer societies by neo-pagan groups for their religious sentimentality while maintaining a hairdryer in the bathroom of their brick-and-mortar home. Mr. Matheson, however, shows that not all historical appropriation is for not-so-good reasons. He mentions that at least one example of the New Urbanist movement as a direct attempt to stop erosion in many places by encouraging a “small feel” of towns from decades ago (257) with the idea — however farfetched it may be — that a simpler time would be a more ecologically sound climate of attitudes and behaviors in relation to the environment. With this small exception, Mr. Matheson’s conclusions toward historical appropriation seem to mirror those of quotationalism: that is, it is this undercutting of meaning, this “crisis of authority” (256), that has led to a lack of substance in the current trends of popular culture beyond the mere mimicking of history or of other cultural landmines. In the end, it is the irony of watching the elite drive around in what was once the transportation of choice for the anti-elite.

Part 3 of 4

Mr. Matheson, in his essay “The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life”, believes that there has been a “crisis of authority” (256) in many different disciplines from art to philosophy to science. In all his illustrations from Danto in painting to Kuhn and Feyerabend in science to Derrida in philosophy (255), he finds that there is a pervasive need to undermine the essence of the discipline itself either by removing its inherent meaning or its part in the history of that discipline’s progress or by making fun of its peers. As these disciplines retreat to an examination and rethinking — and possibly to a reconstruction — of their history rather than bowling forward to an unknown future with a possible continuation of a lack of inherent meaning, Mr. Matheson sees in this a connection with TV shows like The Simpsons (256). Since there is no inherent meaning to any cultural context, comedy shows such as The Simpsons are not actually undercutting anything at all. While this may be the ultimate irony in itself, nonetheless they are forced back into a bland route of quotationalism and flat historical appropriation. Where Mr. Matheson ends up with his examination is in questioning the moral agenda of The Simpsons (257) in an effort to get beneath the surface of this “crisis of authority”.

Part 4 of 4

Mr. Matheson’s hyper-irony is about undercutting any position at all so deeply that “it manages to undercut its [own] cynicism too” (257). Because we are no longer concerned with meaning, with knowledge, we have begun a turn to what he calls “the cult of knowingness” (258). What he means is that knowledge is no longer sufficient for superiority but it is the process of undercutting all meaning out of a sense of already knowing or not caring to know exactly what the meaning is in the first place. It is more of a “what you see is what you get” approach to anything at all. Mr. Matheson sees comedy, and The Simpsons specifically, as a prime example of this approach. Given this “crisis of authority”, The Simpsons goes so far as to undercut itself with this hyper-irony. Due to the inability of the show to actually provide any kind of moral or ethical meaning to its viewers, Mr. Matheson observes that the power of the show itself dissipates whenever the show attempts any storyline that involves family values or individual morals or any kind of ethical stance (260). In the end he find that there is a paradox involved with these kinds of TV shows. Without this ominous “crisis of authority”, the hyper-ironic sense of comedy such as in The Simpsons would fall flat.

Unlike the last part of this assignment, we can certainly see the source material here (PDF) for the next part. The text references are for my textbook, not the PDF file.

Part 1 of 4

Keyed into an insightful examination of the talk show phenomenon in relation to the growing divide between the feminine working class and their less motivated counterparts, Mr. Stark provides the backdrop for this “group therapy for the masses” (267) through the observation that “the more well-educated women left home for the workplace, and found other outlets for their interests” (266). One of the implications is that the less well-educated women who did not leave home for the workplace needed a distraction that made them feel as if they had a place in society somewhere between the laundry and the potato chips. Another implication is that these women, who had thus far relied on a kind of ‘common bond’ of womanhood — or at least a cheap tabloid of sensationalism — for their gossip or therapy with each other now had to find new outlets for their loss of the more grounded and motivated women who had moved out into the working world. Rather than spend money on the tabloids, they could just turn on the television for a slice of the imaginary life where people “thrived on the violation of taboos” (267). Rather than look at themselves for signs and avenues of improvement, they could now point a finger at those poor or devastated souls on the talk show and say, “At least it’s not me.”

Part 2 of 4

Mr. Stark believes that talk shows have a special appeal to women for several reasons. Among these reasons he includes “a feminine style of disclosure and a focus on issues considered to be of particular relevance to women” (264) and a sense of “conflict [along with] a smattering of TV religion [and] melodrama” (265). He contrasts two different talk show hosts, Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey, the first and the ultimate in talk show hosts for women and afternoon talk shows. With Donahue, Mr. Stark shows that he started out with a niche market of women interested in a show that was interested in them and their interests while addressing issues from which mainstream media was turning away (265). He then contrasts the approach taken by Oprah Winfrey when she brought the revelations of the confessional together with the “therapeutic sensibility” (266) of the analyst’s couch together on one show. Mr. Stark says that Oprah’s show was about “revealing problems, improving self-esteem, and receiving empathy” (266). Given Mr. Stark’s characterization of the type of woman left at home after the more educated women had gone off to work (266), this kind of psychological approach to afternoon talk shows was a formula of instant success.

Part 3 of 4

Mr. Stark seems to believe that talk shows are “oddly traditional [and appeal to] Bible Belt females who considered themselves conservative” (268). He uses as his evidence the appearance of the shows that provided lurid guests with an audience that appeared to be more conservative in their moral views (268). At the same time he says that because of “the parade of ‘trash’” (268) these women could “feel better about themselves ” (268) because they were not the ones with all the problems being aired on television. Mr. Stark’s ideas of what is conservative and what is not seems slightly skewed when understood in the context of these shows. In the March 24, 2003 edition of The Nation, John Nichols writes that by the time NBC was finally working to cancel Donahue’s show, they ” were brandishing the study that labeled Donahue ‘a tired, left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace’” (”Donahue—War Casualty”, The Nation, para. 6). It seems to be that observation of these shows is not a matter of more or less conservative but rather the “form of reassurance” was a sense of isolating deviant behavior for comparison with the average American lifestyle regardless of their conservative or liberal ideology.

Part 4 of 4

Given the events of the early nineties, it is without a doubt that Mr. Stark would suggest Bill Clinton “ran a kind of talk-show presidency” (268). With the advent of MTV’s “Rock the Vote” campaign, Clinton wisely took advantage of the effort to reach a younger, more television savvy, audience than any previous presidency campaign. The informal settings, audience participation, and what Mr. Stark calls the “‘I feel your pain’ trademark” (268) all brought together the right mix of elements to begin a presidency exemplified by infidelities, sexual scandals, publicized impeachment proceedings, and, according to a January 2001 poll by Gary Langer of ABC News, still the highest end of term presidency rating of any postwar president. Without the more familiar, down-to-earth approach to his presidency, Bill Clinton might not have been so well accepted by the American people throughout his personal and presidential ordeals. While his trials were certainly divisive of the public, his approach of an open house, talk-show style demeanor was disarming to many. As many of the regular viewers of Oprah and other shows would mistake empathy for personal connection, so Clinton would be able to draw on the sympathy of these same emotional connections rather than any newsworthy difference between substance and Republican lynch mobs. In the end, it was the talk-show conditioned sympathy that saved him with the American people.

I’m done!! Okay, Grammar Police, do your worst! Ha!

Part 1 of 5

When referring to anything as a “smallpox” one is left with the impression of something that blisters our minds and scars us for life. TV seems to have that affect on many people. The news reports, as Ms. Douglas writes, seem to work from a perspective of rehashing old stories or focusing on surface events of little consequence to our real lives (271) leaving gaping holes in our need for escapism due to the high pressures of family, work, and other areas of daily life. Ms. Douglas takes on a feminist perspective with her article. Like Alessandra Stanley, writing in the New York Times about Grey’s Anatomy, she finds the men to be hyper-sensitized and the women to be stereotyped in their presentations. Ms Stanley writes that “today’s heroines have to be weak, needy and oversexed to be liked by women and desired by men” (”The New Modern Woman, Ambitious and Feeble”, The New York Times, para. 6). However, this is opposite the criticism leveled by Ms. Douglas. She finds them to be overly masculine in demeanor and stereotyped in all the wrong ways (273). Both women, however, find these “over-the-top escapist” shows, as Ms. Stanley calls them, to fill a need. Ms. Douglas finds them to be a poor but acceptable vaccination against the “ideological smallpox” (271) rendered to the public by the media only out to infect others with their sense of bland news and irrelevant storylines. Ms. Stanley finds them to be indicative of the demeaning aspect of women in the media. Regardless of which perspective one takes, the attitude toward the media is the same: that is, “real life” media is force-feeding us this “make-believe” reality while we run off to watch “make-believe” to feel better about our “real life”.

Part 2 of 5

Susan Douglas in her essay, “Signs of Intelligent Life on TV,” seems to believe that professional women are attracted to gutsy, hard edged, drama shows because they show a side of women the news media seems to overlook on a regular basis (274). Ms. Douglas, however, seems to find herself attracted to the men in these types of dramas that, interestingly enough as an observation, also seem to be some of the same types of men portrayed — however abrupt or minimal in context — on the nightly news. Police officers, firemen, doctors; all of these are the kinds of “real life” individuals the news media reports about on a regular basis. The difference seems to be in Ms. Douglas’ view of how she relates to these kinds of men and women in her obsession with dominant women and her ideas of “real men”. In her haste to de-objectify women as helpless or merely “bitches” (272), she has no hesitation in objectifying men, even if only one man in NYPD Blue, by quite overtly suggesting that one of the draws to these types of shows was “male nudity” (271). Even her descriptions of the music for these shows as “supported by the driving, phallic backbeat” (271) just salivates all over her ability to differentiate between the demeaning of women’s roles in society and her desire to objectify her ideals of men.

Part 3 of 5

Ms. Douglas claims in her essay that the overt roles of women are changing through such dramas as ER and NYPD Blue. Using the former as an example, she claims that women appear to be “smart, efficient, and successful” (272). She then launches into a diatribe about the roles of women as they are actually played through the scenes as either buffoons or backseat riders to the men they support (272). She provides evidence of her claims through the roles of mistress, mother, or victim in many of the relationships that are held by the leading men in these dramas. However, Ms. Douglas says the hidden message about gender roles in these shows is that women are still second fiddle to men, home-wreckers, and — even after all these years of advances in feminism —”the weaker sex” (272). Through several of her examples she mentions how helpless or evil the heroine seems in her role against, or at least in contrast to, a man whom she describes more as a stalker than a broken or tragic hero (273). There is an undertone in her hidden message that says heroines in these dramas exemplify a single, childless, “upper-middle class” (273) woman with few responsibilities therefore few struggles in life. It is the healthy, handsome and headstrong myth that is so very nineties — as is this essay.

Part 4 of 5

Non-Caucasian women, to Ms. Douglas in her essay on TV, are depicted in ways that are demeaning at best and inadequate at worst. She seems to have an inadequate understanding of actor “billing” when it comes to TV shows but finds that the “black women” in ER “don’t get top billing” (273). Furthermore, she finds that Oriental and Latin American woman are rarely seen in these shows and African-American woman are usually cast in more degrading roles such as prostitutes (273). Her opinion seems to be that this kind of “ideological sludge” (273) is taking over what should be strong female role models in these shows. While Ms. Douglas does not back up her statements with any kind of research or validation model, she seems to assume these are caricatures of bad people rather than attempts by the show’s creators at a true-to-live mockup of the locations being depicted. In many ways it is interesting to read her projections onto the women she views in these shows. She claims to be a “sucker for the men” (273) while exclaiming that she is looking for strong female role models in these shows that are merely surface level characters at best. She doesn’t really ever present a strong case for the men she wants while she tears apart the women she wants to admire.

Part 5 of 5

Somehow, in her essay “Signs of Intelligent Life on TV,” Susan Douglas manages to equate police brutality and ignorance of the Fourth Amendment as some kind of “new conservatism” (273). In one of her examples, police “frequently” threaten and beat suspects under the guise of “it’s O.K. because they all turn out guilty” (273). She lumps all women into two classes of privileged — single, childless, independent, financially secure — and everyone else. She characterizes these latter as “adoptive [moms] who desert their kids, abusive [moms] who burn their kids, and hooker [moms] (ipso facto bad)” (273). She neglects, for instance, moms in the show ER who are not married, not upper-middle class, not childless and who see their share of struggles with ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends, and the trauma of their own jobs in a hospital. And these are actresses with good billing and the characters have names and important roles in the show itself. Ms. Douglas say that TV has not “achieved everyday homosexual couples on TV” (272), but we find that not only is the primarily gay character in ER a woman, but a successful doctor with a healthy relationship and a child with her partner. We should not hold it against her that she is Caucasian, but see that TV provides a radius of characters from all different walks of life. These particular dramas, filled with their strong women and equally strong men, are just a selection of possibilities that Ms. Douglas could have picked. But she seems to be working from some kind of “new liberalism” that paints women as victims no matter what they do — even when what they do is merely an illusion of real life on a TV show.