Recently, I spent an evening with a woman friend and we decided to kick back and watch a movie. We tried three or four different flicks, but each time, we ended up jumping off within a few minutes – the action was just too violent for both of us. We easily could have found something less triggering by going down any number of alternate roads; had we gone for a rom-com or classic film, for example, we could have easily found content that we found to be less upsetting. But we felt like watching something exciting and relatively recent, and this ended up being a much harder challenge than we had originally thought.
Ultimately, never having found something that fit the bill, we gave up and called it an early evening. Oh, well.
I’m a member of SAG (Screen Actors’ Guild) and each year I look forward to screening season and voting on the awards. So if I want to do right by the actors, I have a fair amount of programming to get through… and it can be nice to have company. So a few weeks later, I invited a friend (let’s call him Joe) to screen a limited TV series – a series I knew nothing about.
Now, Joe is not the most sensitive of souls. I’m well aware of that. But I was still taken aback at his reaction to certain scenes. One of the main characters had obvious physical and mental challenges, and at some heartbreakingly poignant moments in the episode, her scenes almost brought me to tears.
Joe’s reaction was totally different. At those same moments, he laughed.
I was shocked at Joe’s reaction. I found his apparent insensitivity to be absolutely stunning. It was as if he thought the show was a comedy, and for all that I know, he might still think so. Yes, the show did have its lighter moments (what show doesn’t?) but I found Joe’s reactions to be wildly inappropriate. He, on the other hand, wasn’t bothered at all. In fact, the moments that were most painful for me to watch seemed to actually give him a charge.
I flashed back on the many of the movies I’ve seen in recent years. Every year the bar seems to be raised a little bit higher when it comes to the level of pain I’m witnessing. This year, I’ve walked out of more more movies that I ever recall doing and similarly, it feels like I’ve quickly jumped off more TV series than I can count. Sure, violence is to be expected for many genres, but it feels to me like the severity and duration of bad behavior and sheer cruelty up on the screen has been increasing – and to me it feels very much like a trend.
So all this got me thinking about what seems to me to be Americans’ increasing acceptance of – if not appetite for – violence and/or cruelty in what they’re watching. And about how that acceptance may be affecting our political moment, both now and going forward.
Capitalism is Stupid
No, I don’t mean that capitalism is a stupid idea. Capitalism is the single largest vehicle for the widespread generation of wealth in human history, so you could argue that capitalism might be the best idea since the invention of fire.
Nor do I mean that successful capitalists are dumb. Quite the opposite. Successful companies analyze their market down to the molecular level and act accordingly – from ingredients, to packaging, to advertising, to competition, to store display… everything is thought through to the nth degree.
What I mean by “stupid” is that capitalism goes in one direction and one direction only: towards greater profits… period. There’s no more intelligence that goes into the process of seeking profit than that of a flower pointing towards the sun.
Higher wages? Bad for profits. Product safety? Bad for profits. Environmental impact? Competition? Workplace safety? Bad, bad, bad for profits. Which brings me to one of my favorite quotes of all time:
“Capitalism is great. Capitalism without limits… isn’t.”
– Howard Dean
You won’t find this quote on the web, by the way. I was in the room when Governor Dean said it and it’s one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard. Why?
Think about it. What is capitalism without limits? You can let your imagination run wild, but for me, capitalism without limits means a plantation economy, where workers have no rights at all. Under such a system (or lack of one) the only people with rights are the plantation/company owners… and that’s it. End of story.
You might think differently, and that’s one reason why I think the quote is so powerful. It basically begs you to come up with your own answer. And when you really think about what “capitalism without limits” looks like, it’s not a pretty picture.
“Capitalism without limits” is precisely what we had in the US prior to the Civil War. And with the exception of certain people no longer being able to purchase other people, that’s what we had from the end of the Civil War to FDR’s New Deal, near 70 years later. That’s 157 years of “capitalism without limits.”
It not only tore us apart as a nation, with racial issues that still plague us, it also brought us the Great Depression, which was not only the greatest economic catastrophe America has ever faced (thus far), the collateral damage of the Great Depression also caused the economic collapse in Germany that led to the rise of the Nazi Party and World War II.
Nice. The “Walrus Class” (my coinage) can never make enough to keep them satisfied; they will always want more. And more. And more. So for almost a century now they’ve been trying to turn the clock back to the “good old days” when nobody could tell them what to do.
And it now looks as if they’ve hit the jackpot.
As I said, one of the great things about the quote is that the listener can fill in the blanks for him/herself. Almost everybody would agree that corporations need to have some limits. For example, few people would say that making unsafe products and using child labor to do it should be allowed. So, unless you’re dealing with someone who has deep psychological issues, you’re starting from a point of agreement.
(In case you hadn’t noticed, starting from a point of agreement isn’t very easy to do these days.)
Anyway, once you agree that there should be some limits on what corporations can or can’t do, the discussion then turns to what those limits should be. This is a great discussion to have; I think it’s far more productive than the usual political argument. And besides, it goes straight to the heart of the matter:
Because what are Musk and the right-wing cabal trying to create? You got it: Capitalism without limits. Every single thing they’re doing is consistent with destroying government, which is the only possible brake we have on runaway capitalism and the damage it does to everyone – including, at times, even the companies themselves. (How’s your Lehman Brothers portfolio doing these days?)
But to get back to the point, why do I say that capitalism is stupid? Because a successful business pays slavish attention to what the consumer wants. If the business doesn’t pay attention to what the people want, the business is not in business for long. So successful companies are followers, not leaders. Even the most innovative and ground-breaking of products has been tested eight ways from Sunday well before it hits the market.
So successful companies need to be “stupid” in questioning their own possible preconceived notions when it comes to analyzing the marketplace. If you bring too much “intelligence” to the process by over-thinking things, you can easily be tripped up by something you didn’t see coming. To avoid unpleasant surprises, successful companies need to listen first and identify market trends. Then and only then do they act accordingly. At least, that’s the “smart” way to go about it. So that’s how “stupid” works when it comes to selling. And when it comes to making profits, well, we already know why flowers turn to face the sun. Duh.
Market Trends
Anyway, what does all this have to do with where I started, namely, violence in the media? My point is this: we’re seeing more violence and cruelty in TV and in the movies for one reason:
It makes money. It’s that simple. If it didn’t, we’d be seeing less violence, not more. That’s how the marketplace works.
There’s a lot that’s been written about possible causal connections between violence on the screen and violence in real life. My feeling is that it’s a vicious cycle: the more violence there is, the more desensitized the audience, and the more desensitized the audience, the higher a level of violence it takes the next time to have the same impact. And so on and so on.
It may seem that I’m making a case for less violence in media. I’m not. At least not here. I’m merely making an observation, but it’s an observation with a point that I’ll get to shortly. But before we get there, it’s important to realize that the public appeal of cruelty is nothing new. After all, America has a sordid history of public lynchings, to cite just one of many, many examples. And centuries before that, people crammed the Coliseum to see Christians being fed to the lions. So there’s nothing new about some peoples’ appetite for seeing pain inflicted upon others.
But there is one difference between now and then – one big difference. In Lincoln’s second inauguration speech, he exhorted Americans to appeal to the “better angels of our nature.”
In 2016, with the emergence of Trump, we now had, for the first time in American history, a presidential candidate from one of America’s two major political parties whose strategy was to appeal not to “the better angels of our nature,” but to the absolute worst in us.
And it worked.
So now that some mix of cruelty, division, hatred, fear and lies has proven to be a successful political strategy, can the genie ever be put back in the bottle?
I think it highly unlikely. And that’s my point. George H.W. Bush’s vision of a “kinder, gentler nation” seems not merely quaint, but almost laughable, particularly in light of Americans’ apparently increasing desensitization to cruelty.
With out-of-control corporate predators ransacking our democracy on a daily basis, we are already in uncharted, hitherto virtually-unimaginable territory. And as if that wasn’t enough, add to that the encouragement of violence by a president who’s a convicted felon, sadist and pathological liar. And don’t forget Trump’s pardon of over 1,500 of his supporters who forcibly tried to overthrow the government. Trump personally unleashed hundreds of these violent criminals on society, cult members who are just itching to do what they perceive to be his will.
Now throw the American public’s apparently increasing desensitivity to violence into the mix. And finally, the “special sauce” of a media ecosystem that pumps disinformation, hatred and fear into the American psyche on a 24/7 basis through radio, TV and the internet.
The term FUBAR has never been more appropriate. (If you don’t know what it stands for, look it up. “Beyond all recognition” indeed.)
There’s no telling where it all will end… save for one thing:
It will not end well.
Who are we, really?
“American Exceptionalism” is a term that’s often been used to imply that America stands apart from other nations in various ways. It’s generally used in a complimentary way to highlight the more positive aspects of American society, aspects such as democracy, freedom and economic opportunity.
Of course, it’s a myth. In truth, much of America’s real history is very ugly indeed, laden with ignorance, intolerance and unspeakable cruelty. Here are just a few “highlights”:
- Genocidal policy against Native Americans (estimates are difficult, but deaths certainly number in the hundreds of thousands)
- Over 200 years of institutionalized slavery, starting with colonial America (1661-1865)
- Another 100 years of legitimized racial repression (1865-1965)
- Brutal racial exclusionary policies (Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Japanese interment camps during WWII)
- Over 4,500 lynchings in the US from 1882 to 1968
- Millions of civilian casualties in foreign wars (1.2 million in Vietnam alone)
I could go on, but you get the idea. (You can also understand why the right wing is so frantic in their efforts to erase these facts from history. But I digress.)
I don’t mean to single out America; in fact, no nation I can think of has their hands clean. But my larger question is this:
Who are we as a country? Who are we really? Are we “the shining city on the hill” that stands as a beacon of hope and freedom for the rest of the world? Or are we a country of Joes who cruelly laugh at the suffering of others?
I think we’re about to find out.
America has turned down a long, dark road – much longer and darker than most of us can imagine. The America we once thought we knew may soon be unrecognizable – and the transformation may happen much sooner than we think. The America we know and love is slipping away rapidly, and it may not return to anything resembling its former self in our lifetimes, if ever.
The damage is severe. It has been a long time coming and if we’re able to be fix it at all, the process will not be quick, nor will it be easy. And if we do somehow manage to repair what we used to know as America, it’ll take a lot more than just flipping a few House or Senate seats. The damage goes deeper than that. Much deeper.
There are two possible meanings to the title of this post. Do I mean “desensitized to death” as in “bored to death?” Or do I mean that America has become desensitized to the subject of death itself?
You can take your pick, but in either case, forewarned is forearmed. The storm isn’t coming; it’s already here. So I say that now the best we can do is to keep our eyes fixed on the big picture and try to explain to as many people as we can who the real enemy is, what they’re doing and why. That’s the best chance we’ve got.
The days ahead may be very very different from what you might have imagined only a few months ago. We can only hope that the storm will end, and end soon. And we can hope that when it does, the “better angels of our nature” will have prevailed. That is, if they exist in sufficient numbers. Right now, I think that’s very much an open question.
Look, hopefully, I’ve got it all wrong and things will turn out just fine. But one way or the other, it’s going to be very tough slog to try to put things back together when and if the time comes. So I think the best thing we can all do right now is to keep our eyes on the prize, tell friends what’s really going on and let the charlatans who are running the show that we’re not going to let them get away with it.
And in the meantime, I think it’s a good idea to buckle up. To paraphrase Bette Davis, It’s going to be a bumpy ride. Get ready.
