Entertainment and American Culture

When historians have gathered information from the current period of America, what will be the ultimate judgment that is cast down? Will it be positive, with a nostalgic rendering of a paradise now lost, or will the story be one filled with a society that watched it's own fall from grace and took no action to halt the process? I am capitulated to the idea that this period of American history will not be presented in a favorable light. In fact, it is my assertion that the current period of American history will be seen as a people who, if they had made even a minor attempt, could have seen that they were falling as the leading moral and technological leader of the world, and instead of taking action to prevent this occurrence, the citizens decided frivolous entertainment was much more essential to the quality of their lives, with this attitude even infecting the way many Americans consumed news.

For most Americans, a typical day consists of going to work, at a job they are apathetic towards, and then going home and watching sitcoms or other forms of entertainment until they fall asleep. They then wake up and do the same thing all over again. Existence is much more of an automatic, unthinking sort of process. People do not consider that the system could be different, or that filling your mind with only meaningless work that is contributing nothing to society and watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians could actually stagnant one's intellectual development, and also the rest of society as a whole.

Where is the intellectual debate about the problems in society? Do the majority of citizens in the United States even care about the future of the country they reside in, and also the planet?! Often times, when confronted, most will simply say "politics is boring" or "I don't like reading." Anytime I hear such phrases, I am filled with fear, and also disdain. Democracy requires an informed and attentive citizenry in order to function. On the 2006 version of American Idol, sixty-three million people voted for Taylor Hicks to win. Contrast this with the 1984 Presidential election of Ronald Reagan, who received approximately fifty-four million votes, the most any President has ever had. Any society that is willing to pay more attention to the madness known as the celebrity, rather than vote for the leader of their country, is not far from destruction.

One may attempt to take heart in the fact that there are a consistent group of people that do vote on a regular basis. Surely, a detractor may say, these are at least moderately informed and able to make good judgments when choosing Presidential candidates. However, there are only a small percentage that actually go through the intellectual rigors of learning about issues and the economic and political system they live in. Most people vote the way their parents vote, without giving much thought to the why of the matter, regardless of party affiliation. Or there are those that, while attempting to be informed, actually end up less informed than they already were. These are the viewers of Fox "news."

Numerous studies have shown that Fox is the least qualified to be discussing news with an audience. For example, in one study, researchers found that Fox "news" viewers knew less than people who did not watch news at all! Astonishing. Another study, done by the University of Maryland, found that Fox is the most misleading, popular news source currently available. The scholars discovered that "Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (8 points more likely), most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points), the economy is getting worse (26 points), most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points), the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points), their own income taxes have gone up (14 points), the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points), when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points) and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points). The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it--though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican." All one has to do is listen to the current GOP talk about President Obama, and it's obvious they are dangerously misinformed.

So most Americas are either entertaining themselves into oblivion, or they are so misinformed that their voices are bringing absolutely nothing constructive to the public debate. The fact that George Bush, one of the most intellectually vapid, and morally bankrupt politicians of our time, was elected twice shows just how far America has fallen. There is hope that since Obama was elected, the American scene may be changing. Unfortunately, it is obvious to any astute observer of politics that Obama was voted for more as against Bush rather than for his own ideas. I am not hopeful that there has been a major electoral shift in the nation.

Instead of becoming more informed, by reading books and watching serious political news, such as the classic networks, Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, PBS, or NPR, people choose instead the path of least resistance. They say that "Jersey Shore is just so much fun to watch. There is constant drama and it is exciting, and Snookie has an amazing sense of style I want to emulate!" Entertainment has become a form of numbing, in order to avoid facing the harsh reality that capitalism offers very little in the way of human development in many jobs, and instead is interested in churning out corporate robots that will consistently produce massive profits, even as millions starve, and the breathability of air and drinkability of water on the planet are severely compromised.

There is hope amongst the darkness. And it begins with the entertainment industry as a whole. Movies, plays, art, and books all can play a very influential role in forcing people to think about the system they currently reside in. There are glimpses of this across Hollywood, with movies such as In Time pointing out the destructive and exploitative nature of capitalism, and Avatar envisioning America's insuperable desire for resources being focused on another planet due the squandering of our own. If entertainment were to transform into something that causes us to think, and also captures something about the human experience in a new light, America could become a much more intellectually vibrant country.

The public debate could change from asking what policy would most increase profits, and instead focus on how a universal health care system could be implemented in the United States, and how greenhouse gas emissions could be curbed without bringing the economy to a halt. The morality of the death penalty could also be fiercely debated, and scientific discoveries would be discussed among many Americans with the goal to increase understanding, rather than to deny based on an outdated religious belief or a political agenda harmful to the earth. And no groups would be discriminated against or marginalized, such as the way illegal immigrants and homosexuals currently are.

Before I conclude, I want to point out that I am not arguing against mindless entertainment in all circumstances. Sometimes, watching a sitcom without any major point, or listening to Lady Gaga can be relaxing (if you enjoy her music, that is). My claim is much more focused. I am simply arguing that the constant, lower entertainment that most Americans long for is destructive to society as a whole. When one's entire world becomes a barrage of senseless amusement, and includes no intellectually challenging activities, that is when a problem arises.

Or when attempts at informing oneself causes mass misinformation, democracy will suffer as a result. Fox, instead of actually providing "fair and balanced" coverage, is actually using entertainment and propaganda in order to increase ratings. It is a symptom of a culture in America that is increasingly relying on "infotainment" (I do not like this word, but I haven't thought of an alternative yet) to digest "news." News is about reporting the facts in the most objective way possible, and when Americans realize that they can learn more from NPR and PBS in one hour than they can watching Fox all day, that will be a sign that America is on the road to recovery from her addiction to the every expanding drug of reality-escaping entertainment. In the words of Neal Postman, "Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.” Perhaps Aldous Huxley was right.