Bread and circuses

By Rob Kirkner
Collegian Staff
January 24, 2007

All through fifth grade, I watched, fascinated, as Sally Jessy Raphael hauled “Out of Control Teens!” off to boot camp. I couldn’t get enough of their misbehavior, tuning in day after day to marvel at the middle fingers they waved at the audience, the raised voices they used against their parents and the disrespect they spewed at Sally and her red-framed eyeglasses. They were a spectacle for me, their frustrations and difficulties my entertainment. It was like a circus, really. Sally as ringleader would hype up their tempers and maladjustments: “Beware folks, for what you are about to see has, until now, been known only to certain native peoples of Suburbia, and, removed from its habitat of shopping malls and tanning salons, is very irritable!” Then the captured beast would barrel down the stairway chute on stage left, gnashing profanities and salivating belligerence.

And I liked it. A lot of people liked it. Every afternoon for years, thousands tuned in to gawk at the behavioral problems of America’s bratty teens. Why did we do it? I wasn’t sure myself until one day my mother confronted me with that question, after walking in on me at four o’ clock with the television turned to CBS. “Well, I’m not sure… I guess I’m just happy I’m not them.” And that was the truth. Talk shows are a tepid pool in the wasteland of television: a never-ending parade of others’ misfortunes, shortcomings and dysfunctions for us to watch and think, “My, that’s terrible! Thank God it’s not me.” And who can blame us?

While the viewers’ participation in a talk show is circus-like, the guests’ are decidedly not, making their contribution baffling. A bear dons a fez cap and rides a unicycle for the spectators because he has to: he is kept and bred to do that, while talk show guests volunteer. This means the man who wants to leave his wife for her sister, or the woman who has eight possible fathers for her child, have to be willing to parade around their domestic disasters. It’s unbelievable that anyone would choose to air his or her dirty laundry on national television, which is a choice to let the person’s kids’ school teachers, bosses, family, friends, neighbors and enemies know his or her darkest secrets.

But maybe these people do have a reason. Maybe they feel a rare, admirable obligation. After years, decades even, of watching talk shows that expose and share people’s embarrassing, shameful, taboo stories, they felt that it was their turn to contribute. Like the middle-aged man who’s listened to WXPN for 30 years without becoming a member, their conscience can’t allow them to mooch any longer. After all, the pool of talk show guests isn’t endless, it needs to be fed. We should take a lesson from these selfless souls and realize talk shows are public institutions that we all must uphold with service. It’s going to take each and every one of us. Get out there, and enlist in Jerry Springer’s cause. Entertainment isn’t free.

kirknerr1@lasalle.edu