the maudlin machines
Music: The Miseducation of Lauren Hill Yesterday was a dreadful day, for many reasons, but mostly because of the death of hundreds (thousands?) of people I do not know. This morning I am, however, angry.
Those who routinely read the Rosewater Chronicles know that I have four basic scripts: (1) Freudian readings of popular culture; (2) updates about my mundane adventures in partying; (3) ruminations on my musical proclivities; or (4) bitching about the mass media for its horribly effective role as an Ideological State Apparatus, Althusser's jargon for the way in which the mass media help to "prepare the masses" for domination by lining the contents of consciousness.
This morning after the first hour of "hard news," NBC's Today Show starting airing heart-wrenching segments of "personal" stories of loss. The lead off was Harry Connick Jr. speaking about how "weird" it was to see his city underwater. Connick was flown into New Orleans by NBC as their new "correspondent," and apparently is also a headliner in telethon that NBC will air tomorrow night (Tim McGraw, we are told, will also play). After minutes of Connick looking dumbfounded and then jokingly comparing the horror of being stuck in the Superdome to watching a bad Saints game, the show turned to a montage of various white people crying over maudlin music, calling out to lost parents whom they are waiting to hear from. If I might coin a term, NBC is "Spielburging" this disaster, and I find it disgusting.
Proof enough that the news media do not have to Spielburg their coverage is The News Hour with Jim Leher. Last night the show aired lengthy stories that featured the stranded talking about their experiences: no montage, no John Williams-style music, no telethon advertisements (and therefore, no impending DVD that you can buy in a month at Circuit City). I sobbed watching the interview of a man who spoke of losing his wife, of literally not being able to hold onto her as she floated away. But sobbing, I didn't feel cheap, or that I was watching some sort of unreal movie. I felt like this was truly the kind of hard reporting Andrei Codrescu called for yesterday.
Spielburging coverage of disaster participates, ironically, in a sort of inhumane brand of alienation. It only takes twenty-four hours for the news media to begin generating what Baudrillard terms "the hyperreal" by starting up their maudlin machines. The only aspect of the hyperreal that Baudrillard has not quite got right is that the fuel for these machines is genuine Love.