It’s high time to address two of our biggest distractions as voters.

When Obama remarked that Sarah Palin “is a great story,” he accomplished two, somewhat contradictory things. On one hand, he dismissed the legitimacy of McCain’s running mate by recasting Palin’s allure as totally insubstantial (i.e., Sarah Palin is nothing more than a “great story”) and, on the other hand, he surreptitiously recognized that the only ingredient which seems to matter in public elections (or in any public deliberation) is the narrative embodied by the person (or subject).

In the September 13 issue of Newsweek, Sharon Begley brings attention to this exchange and the role narratives play in powering the political machine of each presidential candidate.

She astutely determines that a candidate’s personal narrative becomes his or her definition to the voting public – and that this definition is the basic pendulum on which voters’ opinions swing:

“A candidate’s personal story, whether captured in snapshots (Jack Kennedy, PT boat captain; Teddy Roosevelt, Rough Rider) or in a biography spanning decades (Bill Clinton, “The Man From Hope, per the 1992 video), and whether fully accurate or not, comes to define him or her.” [1]

Begley also discusses the power of narrative with historian Michael Beschloss, who notes that “voters are drawn to someone they can relate to, and the way to make that happen is by offering them stories” [1]. This attraction to stories, Begley clarifies through an anecdotal illustration, occurs because “the human brain is wired so that we can follow a chain of events that have people doing things in a chronological order more easily than we can follow abstractions” [1].

And yet, despite our innate attraction to narratives remaining static, their power over us is growing as communicative technologies congenial to narrative burgeons in both quantity and efficacy. Television, of course, is a perfect example of this. Bechloss observes that “television has made voters expect to, and think they can, ‘see into people’s souls to take their measure” [1]. The putative point of access, of course, is an individual’s narrative. Viewers witness a video summarizing McCain’s life, or Obama’s life, and feel that they know this person a little better, a little more intimately.

Begley paints a compelling portrait of narrative in our current political system, but mistakes herself, however, in suggesting that, although the power of narratives has been growing in strength over recent decades, “what’s new is that the circumstances of this election have conspired to push people away from the reason- and knowledge-based system of decision-making and more down the competing emotion-based one [of narrative]” [1]. She is correct in maintaining that our environment encourages more emotion-based decisions, but she’s wrong in suggesting that this is in any way a recent development. In fact, this has been “developing” for centuries.

In 1999, G. Thomas Goodnight, a celebrated Professor of Rhetoric and Argumentation, wrote an essay entitled “The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument. Although this essay has been tragically overlooked, it is riddled with apercus which remain as true today as when he wrote them nine years ago. In fact, his essay, published almost a decade before Begley’s, largely anticipates Begley’s entire premise and then goes even further:

“As arguments grounded in personal experience seem to have greatest currency, political speakers present not options but personalities, perpetuating government policy by substituting debate for an aura of false intimacy.” [2]

Furthermore, he affirms that

“Many forms of social persuasion are festooned with the trappings of deliberation, even while they are designed to succeed by means inimical to knowledgeable choice and active participation.” [2]

So while Begley seems content to draw your attention to narratives and snarkily quip that we should prepare ourselves for (the passive consumption of) “seven more weeks of story-telling,” Goodnight senses that something is terribly wrong – not just with our political system, but with the social structure supporting it and supported by it. Ultimately, his observation suggests that our “public life” isn’t necessarily in good health.

In 1930, Charles and William Beard wrote The Republic in the Machine Age, opining, with haunting accuracy, about the transformations American democracy would undergo in subsequent decades. They noted that “modern technology introduced greater specialization, interdepdence, and complexity” [2]. Beard and Beard thought that our government’s response to these changes were transmogrifying the face of our society altogether, that “the nature of government was being inexorably transformed to ‘an economic and technical business on a large scale’” [2]. Where few others would, Beard and Beard saw the startling implications of this change. Goodnight summarizes the crux of their concern by asking:

“If it is the case that specialization is necessary to make knowledgeable decisions, then what value is the participation of common citizens?”

So here we have it: our rapidly changing society is encouraging a sense that greater specialization is required to lead our country, but the bludgeoning power of narrative on our critical faculties is diminishing our ability to see and address this change taking place right before our very eyes, on television screens across America.

As voters, we must assess the reality of our political (and social) system. Is specialization necessary to make credible decisions? Should it be? How is our system currently oriented toward specialization? Are we distracted from this issue? If so, how do we get back on track and prevent future generations from losing sight of this as well?

If specialization is requisite to office, we must ask ourselves: specialization in what? In a specific area of politics (foreign policy, fiscal management, national security)? Or in specific skills (deliberation, communication, team-building)? Beard and Beard seem to think that our government was increasingly requiring its participants to specialize not in specific skills, but in specific areas of politics. If that is the case (or even the ideal), then we should be electing only overly-qualified uber-politicians and evaluating candidates by that rubric. But a caution: if specialization in a specific area of politics is requisite to credible decision-making, then how can we – the layperson – presume to evaluate one politician as better than another? Wouldn’t it be best to leave that sort of evaluation to other politicians who can leverage their expertise in discriminating between good or bad? If this is the case, are we not just creating an elite group of politicians who ultimately self-regulate – without full regard for what we, the governed, think and feel? Are you feeling chills, yet?

On the other hand, if we view specialization in a specific area of government to be unnecessary, then we should be electing general practitioners of political science with finely-honed leadership skills, such as communication, direction-setting, deliberation, and diplomacy, whose values resonate with us.

But what of our current system? Which does it support? Well, both and neither – and our knee-jerk reaction might be to blame our government, to say that it has become corrupt or decrepit. Or next reaction might be to blame the media, because they have the power to direct our attention wherever they choose, to focus on a candidate’s story, which may be more a reflection of his/her public relations skills than of his/her politics. And a candidate’s story, of course, includes how he/she bills his/her experience; not how it is objectively evaluated.

But is the government or the media truly to blame? Are we its victims or its arbiters? A cold, critical look would reveal that it could only be the latter, that we have been our own worst crippling influence.

While we are constantly fed narrative and less ‘technical’ substance, as Begley would suggest, that’s what we want, what we crave, what we settle for. How many of us push ourselves past the flash and flair of our current political system and sit down to set the candidates’ credentials side-by-side. Perhaps most telling of all, ask yourself: Why must candidates campaign for a year and a half prior to getting their office? Shouldn’t their preceding careers be enough? Would you rather judge someone’s fitness to lead our country by 35 years, or by one-and-a-half? And don’t be so quick to presume that you can keep them separate in your mind – as Begley and a host of researchers are beginning to show us, our emotions control more of our reasoning than we would like to admit.

So what’s to be done? Demand a reform of our media? Require it to show us technical substance, as much or more than narrative flair? Or perhaps a reform of our education, emphasizing more than ever before the need to be critical consumers of technical information, so that we can intelligently and purposefully move our country forward, toward our collective desire for it?

The simple truth of our system today is that it focuses on narrative more than it should. Narrative isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the degree to which we depend on it certainly is. Our system divorces us from the chance to encounter technical material and make technical decisions. Being divorced from technical decision making as we develop intellectually gives rise to the strength of narrative by increasing our dependency on it. This will become a bigger issue than ever before as the millennial generation, or the “me” generation, grows older. This generation, more than any one before it, relates through narratives, because narratives encourage a sense of identification (which explains their fascination to social-networking sites).

The next time you encounter a political message, ask yourself: “Is this pure narrative, or something technical?” If it appears to be something technical, then you must decide: “Is this technical material relevant to the choice I must make?”

The answers you arrive at will be revealing and impactful – for yourself, and for all of us.

References

[1] – Begley, Sharon. “Heard Any Good Stories Lately?” Newsweek. September 13, 2008. (Link)

[2] – Goodnight, G. Thomas. “The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory, ed. John Louis Lucaites, Celeste Michelle Condit, and Sally Caudill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999). (Link)

[3] – Beard, Charles Austin and William. The American Leviathan: The Republic in the Machine Age. (New York: Macmillian, 1931).

According to Jerald Block, Internet Addiction is

“a compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder that involves online and/or offline computer usage and consists of at least three subtypes: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging. All of the variants share the following four components:

1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives,

2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible,

3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and

4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue.”

If any of these symptoms apply to you or someone you know (and that’s very, very likely), perhaps you should read on.

As this announcement comes forward, he United States is just beginning to detect and investigate Internet Addiction. Other countries, however, have acknowledged and been treating it for several years. In March 2007, Harper’s Magazine published an intensely written, compelling essay by McKenzie Funk on the subject. In “I Was a Chinese Internet Addict,” Funk highlights the disorder in great detail and performs a type of journalistic ethnography; entering himself as a patient in a clinic designated to treat those unfortunate souls diagnosed with Internet Addiction. Funk is bound to astound you by his excellent reporting as he describes in graphic detail his interactions with several Chinese Netizens (which he informs us is the “preferred translation of the term wangmin, literally ‘network citizens.’), his clinic experience, and the overall state of digital affairs in China

Frankly, while you read, you are sure to begin developing at least a minute sense of fear. You’ll begin to wonder: could the current state of affairs in China simply be a premenition of what the United States is careening towards? When Funk was in China last year, statistics suggested that 12.5% of Chinese youths (that’s one in every eight) are Internet Addicts. According to Block’s article from this year, that number has only increased – and now stands at 13.7% (or 10 million youths). Undoubtedly this is tied to the unfortunate news published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which determined that “80% of college and university dropouts had failed due to Internet Addiction” (the study was presumably restricted to Chinese institutions only). On the heels of these disturbing revelations, China’s government has begun to get involved by passing laws which now discourage more than three hours of computer gaming on a daily basis [3]. Of course, measures like that can no longer help some individuals, such as the young Shanghai man who, after six years of online gaming, has become forever stuck in a sitting position, his back becoming “fused at a 90-degree angle;” his doctors admitting “there was nothing they could do” [2].

Funk would likely say that we’re right to fear that this vignette might soon appear within our own borders. After all, he identifies Internet Addiction clinics, certain laws, “safe-surfing” programs, and an anti-Internet Addiction sitcom as Chinese counter-measures “by a people who were certain they saw a danger that the West, in its more incremental steps to modernity it, largely hadn’t” [2]. Funk observes that “it is normal for humans to become lost, to drop out of society, and perhaps just as normal for them to lose themselves but tell themselves they’re fine. It is rarer, [he thinks], when we dare name the culprit” [2]. We can certainly ignore it no longer. As the most recent figures from comScore indicate, more than 69% of the world’s internet users access a social networking site at least once a month.

I recognize, of course, the irony in reporting this information via the same medium it seems to inveigh against. And yet, I maintain that the Internet is not inherently “bad”. Just like alcohol, cigarettes, food, and so many other vices common in our society, the Internet is simply an innocent tool. It is, as it must be, our use of this tool which defines whether it is healthy or unhealthy. Unfortunately, as a society known for its excessive use of all the aforementioned vices, I’m not yet confident we possess the self-control necessary to avoid becoming a country full of addicts.

—-

References

[1] Jerald Block, “Issues for DSM-V: Internet Addiction,” The American Journal of Psychiatry, March 2008. Link.

[2] McKenzie Funk, “I Was a Chinese Internet Addict,” Harper’s Magazine, March 2007. Link. (Well worth buying the article, as you probably must).

[3] – “The more they play, the more they lose,” People’s Daily Online, April 10, 2007. Link.

A Blacklick, Ohio church has updated the sign on their property to read: “I kissed a girl and I liked it. Then I went to hell.” (Read about it here). An interesting adaptation to Katy Perry’s song, which ruled the charts this summer (personally, I’m not a big fan).

A breakdown of my feelings:

Amusement: I think this is hilarious.

Pride: I’m proud that a church is making an effort to “get with the times” by integrating music into its message.

Dismay: I’m appalled by the harsh viewpoint this espouses and by the fact that the pastor responsible for the sign, Rev. Dave Allison, says “the sign is intended as a loving warning to teens.” Call me the odd-ball out, but I fail to see how threats of hell can in any fashion be categorized as “loving.”

The ants go marching on…

Religion is losing its hold on our lives. This realization is inescapable, given the marked decline in the number of people attending church services. In 1996 the Barna Research Group released a report which illustrated church attendance was declining steadily and that churches were losing “entire segments of the population: men, singles, empty nesters…” In 2006, Keith Barltrop wagged a cautionary finger towards a 2004 ecumenical survey which showed that 73% of those surveyed believed that the “clergy failed to prepare congregations for the challenges to their faith that the culture of our times throws up.” In that same year AgapePress covered a study which concluded that only about 20% of Americans go to a church on Sunday, which is a much lower figure than previously anticipated. More recently, Rebecca Ryan of the Carolina Reporter quoted a poll which “suggests that 30% of Americans are either changing their religion or abandoning it [sic] all together.”

Based on these striking figures, the obvious question is: why are pews emptying? Are people losing faith in their god(s)? In their priests? In their fellow humans? Or could it be that congregations’ demands are becoming more sophisticated, and that churches simply are not measuring up to these advancing standards. As I explain below, my perspective leads me to believe that there is a direct correlation between the leadership provided through the church and the level of interest congregations display in attending services.

For full disclosure, I am historically a non-religious person (in a way, a product of the trends I illustrated previously). I have never attended a church for any sustained period of time, and before this year could probably count my visits on both hands. Nevertheless I have been, rather non-traditionally, spiritual. I have been especially eager to find the right answers, or even the right questions, to some of life’s more esoteric issues. Some people find solace in reason, some in religion. With several significant changes in my life recently, I chose to investigate the church as a possible way to enrich my intellectual and spiritual sides. To this end, I have been visiting a different church, of a different denomination, each week. This experience has been interesting and educational. I recommend it highly to anyone.

But back to the issue at hand: my survey of churches led me to consider why the services I attended always felt so (physically) empty. I began asking members of each congregation: is the church always this empty on a Sunday, or is it just an off week? Invariably the responses I received suggested that every year, the church loses another family, or two, or three. In my personal experience, the vast majority of attendees are those who are elderly or terminally ill. And, of course, as parents or those who are near to becoming parents stop attending church, it follows that their children will be less likely start of their own accord.

In the recent weeks, my consideration of why people were abandoning the religious ship intersected with my passion for the study of leadership. Assuming that people are not losing their faith wholesale at the same rate that church attendance is dropping, the obvious reason why congregations are diminishing is because people are not getting something they need out of their church experience – there is an x-factor that is simply missing. So what is that x-factor? I suggested that the answer, the x-factor, is leadership.

In this process of surveying churches and religions, I have observed some church practices which do not make sense to me. The attendees arrive, are directed to sing far too many songs (few of them of intellectual or musical worth), listen to uncredentialed individuals pray, hear a short sermon by a usually lackluster priest, sing another half-dozen songs and then depart for an after-church service or for home. Pardon my broad-brush strokes here, which I have probably overloaded with hyperbole. Nevertheless, the point I am getting at is that very rarely (in fact, not at all in the past two months for me), do church services seem to provide much in the way of guidance for attendees. Instead, it seems that the point of today’s sermons are to paraphrase a biblical tale, maybe show how a parallel event is occurring in today’s society, and to praise the lord.

In absolute seriousness, I think the last thing any god would want for his or her worshippers is to stand around and, inanely, offer an interminable amount of praise each week. Isn’t praising your god something you can do privately? Can’t you allow your actions speak your praise for you, rather than empty words? The answer is, of course, yes. And I think more and more people – especially those who belong to the millennial generation – feel this way.

So what does this mean for the church? It means that the church must live up to its proclaimed role as “spiritual leaders.” What is the fundamental reason people go to church? It is not to learn about the bible. That can be done on one’s own, or through Sunday school. It is to find inspiration and instruction for our lives.

How are churches to provide this leadership, this inspiration and instruction? Really, it is simply a question of leadership. The presiding spiritual leader must be our twenty-first century shepherd. This is accomplished by

• The preacher (obviously) being a role-model; showing others how life is to be lived through example.
• The preacher constructing sermons which are not sustained hero-worship (what hero wants to be worshiped, and what worship-hungry hero is worthy of it?). Rather, sermons must explore existential issues which we struggle with and offer instruction, inspiration, or open a path of spiritual exploration with the aim of individuals resolving or coming to terms with these issues. The best sermons will focus on the individual and challenge them, will be opportunities for the individual to learn about him/herself. Of course, these sermons will rely on adeptly chosen scriptural material in order to highlight a particularly valuable apercu or to present something for the individual to reconcile with.
• The preacher treating him or herself like leader of a business. Don’t have a new or worthwhile sermon? Why in god’s name would you have your congregation meet to hear something less than stellar? So that they can become more disinterested? So that you damage your ethos as a preacher? This simply isn’t a good idea. Preachers must evaluate themselves and their church regularly and adapt. Perhaps some churches will only meet once every two weeks. Perhaps some will gather for a religious service once every two weeks and in the off weeks meet for fellowship, community service, or some other activity where the congregation puts its money where its mouth is. This sort of adaptation is not bad, but can constitute a positive and value-add change. Sure the congregation will not have as much “face time” with their god, but they are more likely to remain worshippers for a longer period when they feel their time is invested well and that they are making an impact in their community.

Although I realize the irony in quoting such a figure, in the end the state of the world is much as Oscar Wilde described it:

“The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion – these are the two things that govern us. ”

People’s souls are starving  and churches are not providing the leadership they hunger for. Too many churches falter when it comes to creativity and seek to fill an hour’s worship with jingles, repetitious prayer, and empty sermons. If the pews are to be filled, religious leaders must begin to focus on the true needs of their flock: the need to know themselves, the need to belong, the need to develop one’s individual faith. In short, they must make their services matter to the individual which, as statistics shows, they simply don’t.

_____

See

Barna Research Group, “Church Attendance,” 1996. [Click here.]

Keith Barltrop, “Why are Fewer People Going to Church?” The Universe Newspaper, April 6, 2006. [Click here].

Fred Jackson and Jody Brown, “Fewer Americans Than Thought Going to Church, Says Study,” AgapePress, 2006. [Click here].

Kirk Hadaway and Penny Marler, “Did you Really Go To Church This Week?” The Christian Century, May 6, 1998, pages 472-475. [Click here].

Rebecca Ryan, “Fewer People Filling Up Pews,” The Carolina Reporter, August 10, 2008. [Click here].

]]> http://ashleywollam.com/archives/147/feed 0 http://ashleywollam.com/archives/59 http://ashleywollam.com/archives/59#comments Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:26:47 +0000 Ashley Wollam http://ashleywollam.com/?p=59 There are two groups of people: those who affirm the Internet’s efficacy in the lives of individuals interacting in a Web 2.0 society, and those who refute it. I have found myself on either side of this coin throughout the years. Today, though, even the most stubborn skeptic will find it difficult to put the latest from Ellen Lee, staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, in a less alarming (and revealing) light.

In her August 5, 2008 “Web Chips Away at China’s Grip on Information,” she describes the recent trials of David Wang. An innocent bystander, David Wang created a “mock newscast criticizing Taiwanese officials” and subsequently uploaded the clip to Tudou, a social-networking site (SNS) in China which is centered around the dissemination of videos (a la YouTube). Days later Wang’s video disappeared.

Lee is fascinated not by the fact that the video disappeared – that seemed a foregone conclusion for such an inflammatory artifact – but by the fact that it remained online for several days. Lee cites this as evidence that China’s status quo may not be so static after all. In fact, in the picture she paints, Lee suggests that all the components of Web 2.0 – blogs and the many flavors of SNS – seem to be challenging normal hierarchies as well as traditional value systems. The result in China, she notes, “is the chipping away of what’s referred to as the Great Firewall of China, by which the government tries to control online content.”

In a fashion hauntingly similar to “big brother” portrayals of the past, such as Orwell’s 1984, Lee reports that one Shanghai IT employee found contradicting accounts of what happened during China’s Cultural Revolution and World War II. Imagining his position, and the feelings which he then experienced, is a powerful exercise. He describes his initial shock at realizing that the history he had always believed to be true was a mere fiction, and then describes anger upon understanding the deception to which he had fallen prey. How did he discover the truth? Through online forums and peer-to-peer services in which users’ greatest tool is not necessarily the Internet, but their cunning use of it (read more on this in Lee’s article).

Two aspects of this scenario attest to how palpably the Internet can be felt in our day-to-day, physical lives. First, this Shanghai man spoke only on condition of anonymity for “fear of retaliation.” Second, the Internet had been used to completely restructure the past for this man and countless others. Who could imagine how much a small historical revision and an Internet landscape with which to back a preferred narrative could change a young person’s development into an adult, much less alter the entire course of their life?

We’d be fools to think that this sort of revolution is just occuring in nations “new” to Web 2.0. As I remarked on July 31, consumers are beginning to be targeted by marketers primarily online, as that is where a lionshare of consumers reside comfortably. (In fact, marketing gurus – more certain than ever that their hunting ground is the Internet – are tirelessly refining their online efforts by seeking to better understand ours. For more on this, read Karlene Lukovitz’s latest on how online marketers are beginning to eschew email in favor of other online avenues.)

Despite all this, we need not feel afraid or uncomfortable, but rather simply aware and ready to answer pressing questions, such as this one: Are consumers the ones revolting, demanding through praxis that merchants follow them online or be ruined, or are the merchants in control, hunting us ruthlessly? Who is the cat and who the mouse in this developing chase?

_________________

See

• Ellen Lee, “Web Chips Away at China’s Grip on Information,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 2008.  [Click Here]
• Karlene Lukovitz, “Social Networking, Texting, Cell Phones Impact Email Effectiveness,” MarketingDaily, August 5, 2008. [Click here]

Although he affirms that having a personal webpage remains more of a leisure activity — something unessential to wading through society — he also issues a warning: the status quo will not be static much longer. He foresees a near future in which creating a personal webpage is as crucial to our professional and personal lives as other technological commodities: TVs, mobile phones, email, et cetera. It isn’t hard to imagine this future, as individuals we interact with increasingly will refer you to their home on the web for pictures, contact information, or as a place where they conduct business.

Two themes in Fry’s article interested me more than the rest: name-brands and narratives. He quotes a Slashdot conversation, in which one poster exclaims, “Your name is essentially your very own brand; might as well try to paint it in a decent light.” This mentality congeals nicely with the best practices academia is instilling in recent graduates: business educations everywhere are reminding pupils that they ought to treat their name as a brand and consider their past achievements as their best reference. My leadership professors at the McDonough Center echoed this, instructing us to construct a professional portfolio which would communicate my brand, “the brand of I.”

On a similar note, Fry observes that “A personal Web page is an opportunity to tell your story and balance out other narratives that you can’t control.” While Walter Fisher is probably tickled that his narrative paradigm is living the high life online, what I interpret from this is that the web is evolving into a place of conflict, where narratives are being wielded for some sort of victory; maybe one for power, or influence, or control – or maybe it just plain ol’ authenticity. I’m wondering now if this trend towards conflict should concern us and how transitioning narrative conflict to the web will impact us interpersonally at home or in the office?

View his speech here.

Alternately, if you’re just interested in hearing a briefer introduction to his argument, view this clip, entitled “FedEx vs Federal Bureaucracy.”

I like to visualize the people whose work I’m reading, so I hopped online and googled “Alex Abramovich.” I don’t recall ever having found a picture of him (if you find one, send me the link!), though I did find a book with his name on it: a compilation of his “best” essays, curiously titled Cinderella Story: Notes on Contemporary Culture. I was attracted to the name – somewhat prescient, I couldn’t help feeling – and started reading up on it. Eventually I had read so many reviews and summaries I figured I could have read the damn book already, so I ordered it on Amazon for the convenient, low, low price of $9.95.

As always, my hope was to be astounded by the brilliance of the author and enriched by his writing, while my expectation was to finish the book weeks after receiving it, grumbling darkly about having felt the need to read the entire book just in case the last few strides redeemed the load of shit that had preceded them.

As it turns out, my expectation was far exceeded and my hope very nearly realized. The collection starts off with Abramovich’s strongest, most poignant piece by far (after which the collection is titled), though it readily, and startlingly, displays his well-practiced fluency with the critical analysis of cultural texts. Readers are not confronted with a neophyte, here, but a full-fledged initiate; someone skilled in the tools of his trade. Very quickly he lives up to the praise that Sam Lipsyte, his one-time editor, lays at his feet in the Preface: “Abramovich is that rare kind of critic who can set himself aside enough to see what he is seeing. Rare too is the grace and energy of his prose and the startling power of his imagery” (Abramovich 9).

This first piece, “Cinderella Story,” runs just 10 pages, but in that incredibly short stretch of paper Abramovich accomplishes so much. He begins simply, holistically reviewing the convention of the romantic comedy as it has emerged and progressed in American cinema. Through his recap he notes that the quality of romantic comedy scripts has steadily declined, that they once “were pure in a way that nothing seems pure anymore.” He wisely judges that the major accomplishment of good romantic comedies was that they allowed audience members to lose themselves in the film, and that current products issued under this genre have largely failed to achieve this distinction with any consistency. Abramovich focuses on intimacy as the major culprit of the romantic comedy’s fall-from-grace, stating that it is “no longer viable as either a cultural or commercial commodity.”

Underlining that sentence, I wondered, and proceeded, becoming more and more convinced that Abramovich’s perspective is clear and well-honed. Intimacy has somehow become less possible in our own culture: “intimacy – the space two people create to ward off the trespasses of the world at large – now runs counter to the interests of the people who shape the tone and tenor of our lives” — media moguls, as I understood it (Abramovich 12). While his vision of the retreat of intimacy is valid and suggestive of some of the greatest issues society faces today and young generations will face with greater urgency in the near future, Abramovich would benefit from considering the many shades of intimacy on a spectrum ranging from “casual,” perhaps, to “authentic.” I wonder if it isn’t that intimacy has lost its importance, but that we have gradually abandoned the best ways of achieving it, and have steadily become less aware of what really satisfies that innate, human need of ours to be intimate with others.

Had he considered the difference between authentic intimacy and other types, he may have been better prepared to slice through the rest of his essay. Still, though, his does admirable work. Using Julia Roberts as his main cultural text and her various romantic comedies as examples (especially Erin Brockovich), Abramovich confidently traipses through the process of building an impressive argument. Essentially, while romantic comedies may no longer offer us the chance to escape within them as a way to sate our need for intimacy, a nascent form of film, the deposition movie, is taking the reigns in that regard. We haven’t stopped looking to film to satisfy our needs: we have just altered what cross-section of celluloid we turn to. Through the deposition film, Abramovich sees us relating to people who suffer (such as those affected by pollution in Erin Brockovich) and coming to depend on their defenders (e.g. Erin Brockovich/Julia Roberts) to deliver us to a catharsis when the wounds we have adopted are addressed (I can’t wait to see if he ever attacks Law and Order). Appropriately, Abramovich proceeds to remark on the place of celebrity in all of this mess: the ways in which people grow to depend on celebrity figures like Julia Roberts to act as our personal saviors. Abramovich warns us away from this approach, and wisely so, finishing his essay with one of the most powerful observations I have ever read:

“How do any of us [sleep at night]? More and more, it seems, we sleep alone, or not at all. As the common ground of geography, community, and family disappears, we’re forced more and more to connect through contexts that are pre-established for us, and find ourselves with less and less to talk about. We spin in a cultural centrifuge, the earth drops from beneath our feet, and all that’s left to look at is the blur of faces spinning next to our own. Ultimately, we all begin to look the same, and to check the same boxes on movie-screening questionnaires. Meanwhile, art – the most direct, intense means we have of connecting to what’s inside another individual’s head, and a last refuge from cultural vertigo – no longer seems to be made by individuals, or for them. Certainly, it isn’t being made about them” (Abramovich 10).

When I came across this passage, a chill ran through my body. I stopped reading, set the book down in my lap, and thought long and hard on the state of the world, as well as on my own place and practices in it. Anyone interested in popular culture, critical theory, film, the ways in which we connect with each other, or just a damn good read will benefit from reading – no, not reading: absorbing – this book. Readers beware, however: Abramovich will likely challenge you to reevaluate assumptions about the world and your place in it. Although powerful, his observations can also be unsettling.

Bravissimo, Alex. I, at the least, am grateful for your work and will be thinking on your words for a long, long time.
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Abramovich, Alex. Cinderella Story: Notes on Contemporary Culture. Cybereditions, 2002.

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Meteor Blades supplied a quick post as commentary on the Fourth of July. He started by declaiming the word hero, noting its egregious and “promiscuous” usage. I’ll admit that it is a word we are often quick to reach for, but promiscuous? I was about to wander on when I saw Frederick Douglass mentioned on the next line. Curious, I read on, and became even more skeptical. Meteor Blades lauds Frederick Douglass as his one archetype of heroism. I’m not sure that I buy that completely; I’ve never really cared for him or his work (his narrative was boring, I’m sorry). However, the piece Meteor Blades selected as evidence was convincing. Apparently Frederick Douglass had once delivered a speech on a Fourth of July (you can almost hear the deep ‘U’ that your imagination demands Douglass must have spoken with, despite being born in Maryland). The speech is good. Very good. I won’t reproduce it here, though those curious should certainly click on the link above to view the speech as Meteor Blades provided it. I will simply offer one observation, a quotation that caught my attention, and be on my merry way.

My observation: I don’t celebrate the Fourth of July. I never have, really. I don’t care for fire works. I never have, really. (You’ve seen them once, you’ve seen them all, y’know? Unless you find someone who can work Gandalf’s particular brand…) I stopped going as soon as I could manage to excuse myself from family affairs, and since that time have spent every Fourth of July contemplating why I detest the way we celebrate this holiday.

I think, just maybe, I’m a little angry that we’re celebrating. I am grateful for this nation, yes, yes, yes. But most days I see too much deviation from the vision we’re supposed to be sharing in, accomplishing, spreading, to feel comfortable sitting back and celebrating what our forbearers had achieved. Celebrating such a holiday seems to suggest that those bacchanalians carousing beneath scintillating, fulsome light displays are complicit in the assertion that all is well; that the Mission has been accomplished.

Maybe I’m a little too harsh here, but when I see that the wrong words in the Declaration of Independence are still adhered to literally in some situations — that every man is created equal — while in others they are casually ignored to permit the discrimination of race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion, I get angry. (Have you ever noticed how the Declaration begins, “When in the course of human events” and then flutters into “man” this and “man” that? That’s substantial enough for me to believe those myths that Jefferson drafted one version with just the word human and then was pressured into changing it. But hey, call me Mr. CSI).

I spend my Fourth of Julys remembering what we fought and died for. I spend them in mild solemnity, not just remembering the path we have taken and missteps we have made, but also reminding myself of the journey we have yet to complete and the long road ahead.

Perhaps I have underestimated Frederick Douglass. His words certainly have a timeless quality about them:

“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms- of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.” — Frederick Douglass, 1852.