Train Wreck Television

There has long been a chicken and egg debate over entertainment. Does entertainment reflect a changing culture, or does culture reflect changing entertainment? Certainly the two are intertwined, which is why such a debate even exists, but when I look to movement in a society, I point clearly to the entertainment. Rather, to media in general.

Changes to a society take place for two reasons: fundamental flaws that impinge on the happiness of the mainstream, and changes that somebody thinks up and then advocates to others. There are any number of blendings of the two reasons, but those are the two primary motive forces.

At the time of the American Revolution, discontent about British rule was widespread. It was far from universal, but there were enough people unhappy about how the colonies were being treated to demand a radical change. Interestingly, it took visionaries to turn the colonies into a democratic society instead of a clone of the British empire. That is a case where fundamental flaws were a motive force for social change, and the change become something unexpected because of the imagination of a select few.

As suggested in Five Sigmas, as a population increases, the numbers of people who hold extreme views increases. When enough people who share an extreme view congregate, they form a community that feeds upon itself, reinforcing its views and encouraging exploration of even the fringes of those already extreme views. Such is the case with the entertainment industry.

Entertainment has long occupied itself, at least in part, with showing the unusual, the new, the different. Zoos and museums are assemblages of things that people rarely get a chance to see: animals from foreign lands, artwork, machines, clothing, weapons, and all manner of paraphernalia. As the world opened up routes of travel and trade, there was a constant and fascinating stream of apparent oddities and strangness.

The darker side of entertainment has been found in things such as freak shows, gladiatorial games, public executions and the like. These are things that call to us at a visceral level. People cannot take their eyes away from survival situations because there is something deep within us that insists that we learn what we can from them so that we can hope to survive them if they should happen to us. A train wrecks, and people want to watch the mayhem. Not because they like to see suffering, but because it is important to them at that deep level to know what happens in a train wreck. Who was hurt? Who survived? Were parents and children separated? Human drama.

Modern entertainment is predicated more on train wrecks and less on museums. This is because we've seen most everything that there is to see on our planet. We have video cameras by the millions, and still cameras by the billions. There is little that we have not seen that simply exists, unless we look very closely. Countless discoveries are taking place at the scale of the solar system and the molecule, but few are interested in such things because there is no direct tie to their own lives. Nothing calls to the mainstream of society at a visceral level when it comes to Mars rovers or nanotechnology. It takes a threat such as global warming to awaken our fascination.

This all leads back to entertainment. How is the mainstream of America entertained? The most effective means of drawing someone into your entertainment is to call to them at a visceral level. Train wrecks and dancing girls. Violence and sex. Unless we consciously turn away, we will remain fascinated by the crunching of metal and the sensuous show of skin. Those interested in grabbing our attention know this simple formula.

Note that reality shows, soap operas and the like are just calling to us at slightly higher than a visceral level. In Relationship PIES, relationships were presented as having four facets: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. Entertainment may be viewed in the same way. The visceral is the most primitive way of being entertained; it relates to us at the physical level. Reality shows, soap operas and such as calling to us at the emotional level as well as the physical.

Is there entertainment that call to us at the intellectual and spiritual level? Certainly. Any reputable documentary is calling to us at the intellectual level. Spiritual entertainment is that which we turn to in order to reinforce and affirm our ethics, morality and our faith.

What does all this have to do with the chicken and egg problem described above? Those outside of the mainstream possess views that fascinate the mainstream because they are different. Their views of reality are like seeing elephants from Africa for the first time. Or watching a Japanese kabuki dance for the first time. Non-mainstream views are like seeing a far-off land that a mainstream mind would never have imagined. They call to us at any number of levels. We call the originators of such shows geniuses and visionaries because they are showing us something that is new, different - and entertaining. Lucille Ball. The Beatles. Johnny Carson.

Unfortunately, we run into a problem. We've seen "I Love Lucy". We've seen "The Tonight Show". We want something that is new and different. How about some reality television? We've never seen that before. That's an entirely new genre of entertainment. Within existing genres, we can have things that we've never seen before as well. Television dramas can start to use cruder language. That's shockingly new. They can also start to address issues that were never considered tolerable before. Rape. Incest. Child abuse. Murder. Not to serve as an intellectual means of addressing issues, but purely for its value as shock entertainment. Writers and producers are interested in "pushing the envelope" ever farther. This has become our entertainment because it is about things that don't just call to us at a visceral level, but scream at us. It is Train Wreck Television. We cannot look away unless we will it.

We are a society that is being exposed to this ever more extreme form of entertainment, and it is dragging the mainstream around with it. This happens because the lives of the youth of America are dominated by their pursuit of entertainment. They don't work the farm. They don't even have chores to handle around the home. Free time in abundance and nothing to do with it. So they turn to entertainment to fill their time. Because entertainment is dominated by a desire to scream at the visceral side of each young person, our youth is being ever more strongly dragged into extremist positions.

In the challenge to understand the chicken and egg problem of which is pushing which, entertainment or society, the finger must be pointed firmly at our entertainment pushing our society around. That entertainment is affecting - perhaps even infecting - our youth with ever more extreme views, all in the name of bringing something new and different to the masses. Untrained minds are being drawn off into beliefs that are completely unwholesome to them and to the society that they belong to. Extremism is mainstream.

What should America do about such things? Should we simply pass laws stating that shows should never include murder as a point of entertainment? Should we call for legislation insisting that everyone in media be fully clothed at all times? An Ounce of Prevention suggests that such solutions are ill-considered. Invariably, reacting to problems by trying to push hard in an opposing direction leads to extremism in the other direction: a complete intolerance to departures from the mainstream (or extremism "on the other side of" the mainstream).

The solution is the ounce of prevention already described. Train the minds of our young to be discerning of ethics and morality so that when the time comes for them to make decisions about their own ethics and morality - or the ethics and morality of their children - that they are properly equipped to make a conscious decision. That, instead of following their gut instinct towards a dream of wealth and fame.