Who Are We?

In today's commercial America, television represents the democratization of discourse; it is the majoritarian medium that not only echoes, but in a real sense is a voice of the masses. Television "became us. It is who we are." ⁷⁵ So, who are we?

        ZAP!

We are the folk who stun ourselves with an outrageous orgy of local crime news rather than focus on the complex and less sensational social causes underlying violent behavior. ⁷⁶ We would rather indulge in M*A*S*H* reruns than ponder the sometimes weighty talk on Ted Koppel's Nightline. ⁷⁷ A disillusioned television journalist, Bill Moyers, complains: "[O]ur public discourse has become the verbal equivalent of mud wrestling." ⁷⁸

        ZAP!

We are the mass of viewers who yawned when the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas on his constitutional philosophy, but came alive when the television discourse turned to lurid tales of "Long Dong Silver." ⁷⁹

        ZAP!

We are the producers of The CBS Evening News who, concerned about the phenomenon of shrinking "sound bites" in presidential campaign news accounts, ⁸⁰ issued a policy that all such televised statements must be thirty seconds or longer. ⁸¹ In the end, however, this half­minute proved interminable and the policy intolerable. ⁸²

        ZAP!

We are the press and the people who relish the increasingly disappearing line between news and nonsense, ⁸³ as both print and television journalists often devalue substance in favor of attention­grabbing shticks. ⁸⁴ In fact, for the 1992 Democratic National Convention, we enjoyed coverage on MTV and on Comedy Central. ⁸⁵

        ZAP!

We are the audience so charmed by the Carnival that we prefer to evaluate presidential candidates by their performances on TV talk­shows. ⁸⁶ As political cartoonist Jim Borgman put it, "We can watch Clinton on MTV, Bush on 'Letterman,' Perot on 'Arsenio' ... or Madonna on 'Meet the Press."' ⁸⁷ Talk­show host Phil Donahue finds reason in this to rejoice: "The political scientists should relax and celebrate the First Amendment as it is ...." ⁸⁸

For Twitchell's world, most aspects of mass expression­whether journalistic, literary, dramatic, or televisual­are carnivalized. As in a hall of mirrors, anything, including high culture, can be distorted in the name of pleasure and profit. But in the carnival culture, unlike in the hall of mirrors, there is no concept of distortion. Even Bertolt Brecht's and Kurt Weill's biting musical attack on capitalist culture, The Threepenny Opera, ⁸⁹ becomes a parody of itself, first in Bobby Darin's smash 1959 hit, Mack the Knife, ⁹⁰ and later in the pricey 1989 production starring rock singer Sting as Macheath. ⁹¹ Thus, in the carnivalesque "high theater," a largely apolitical audience pays exorbitant sums to consume­but not to comprehend­a once­subversive critique of its consumer culture.

So, with our Macheath standing on the gallows surrounded by the common mass, we pause to consider that, in our Carnival culture, it is "to this point we have come." ⁹²