Humiliation (BIG IDEASsmall books) by Wayne Koestenbaum

Author:Wayne Koestenbaum
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2011-08-02T04:30:00+00:00

FUGUE #7

CATHETER

(THE QUEEN OF TROY IS QUEEN NO LONGER)

1.

TV is a manure pond of humiliation, contaminating the viewer. Watching American Idol, I’m smeared with the feces of mediocrity, banality, cruelty. I’m befouled by the hurt expressions of the humiliated participants, the wannabes who can’t sing. I’m bombed with E. coli by the smug, brutalizing comments of the sometime judges—Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell, and Randy Jackson. The most sadistic is handsome Simon Cowell, who dishes out criticism so cruel, it makes me want to kick him in the nuts. Here are some of the comments by Simon and company: “You are one of the worst singers I’ve ever heard in my life, and I’m not exaggerating.” “Dude, you shouldn’t ever be singing … that was horrific.” “I would check my hearing if I were you.” “There’s not a song in the world you could sing.” “If I were to say you were mediocre, it would be the biggest compliment you’ve ever been paid.” “You are a terrible, terrible singer.” “Nate, you’re tone-deaf.” “You could do a voice-over for a rat.” “You have no charisma.” Human dignity is degraded by the Cowell/Abdul/Jackson parade of cruel gibes. The show, American Idol, is broadcast to one hundred countries, including Estonia, Finland, Iran, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, and Vietnam. The program teaches its millions of viewers that denigration is a delight, that the road to stardom is paved with shame, that Americans love to make fun of strivers, and that mass entertainment—the supposedly consoling, cheerful sound of a TV playing all day long in the restaurant, the barbershop, the gym, the kitchen, the bedroom—is a Muzak of humiliation, women and men weeping as they learn that their voices are “amazingly dreadful.” American Idol is not alone to blame for propagating humiliation; TV itself—its insistence on ubiquity and universality, its Candid Camera wish to confuse reality and televisuality, its 1984-Big-Brother ambition to erase private space by beaming public space into the home’s bosom, its Oral-Roberts-holy-roller quest to erase religious difference, its quasi-fascistic mandate to coat the brutalization of consciousness with a business-as-usual, duty-obeying face—TV itself, with its newscasters and emcees, its brightness and flatness, seems humiliation’s handmaiden, its spy, its mole, its emissary, its virus.

2.

And yet TV consoled me when I was a kid. I was addicted to I Love Lucy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bewitched, The Addams Family, Dialing for Dollars, Jeopardy! The Newlywed Game, The Dating Game, The Partridge Family, The Monkees, Dragnet, The Mothers-in-Law, The Patty Duke Show, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and Longstreet, which ran but briefly (its hero was a blind detective). But TV, its giddy, tacky, high-pitched, laugh-tracked patter, like a pacifier, or an electric blanket, or a space heater, or any other form of fake bonding, fake comfort, fake nourishment, greeted my desire for comfort with a measly substitute, a formulaic, pap-thin simulacrum. I wanted recognition; I got, instead, Jeopardy! And therefore I make TV my little monster. I demonize TV—I have avoided watching it for thirty-four years—because

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