Feedback Loop

Recently I mentioned in some of my classes that, psychologically, we are the stars of our own movies.  By this I meant that we first of all see ourselves as the protagonists of a story, the main characters, the ones we imagine must win or succeed in the end.  This is a function of ego, entirely to be expected.  With that, however, come a few cautionary notes. . . .

First, in a metaphor like this one—and we must remember it to be metaphor—everyone else, the “not-I” characters, must be extras, co-stars at best.  In this sense, our ego often works to convince us of our own right behavior and that others are supporters of us or obstacles, villains in the play.  We invent ourselves to live a story or a series of them.

Clearly, however, these villains—if they are of healthy mind (or perhaps not)—also see themselves as the hero-protagonists.  And of such convergences are conflicts wrought.

Kenneth Burke called it a dramaturgical framework, logological.  By this he meant that language (logos = the word and reason) creates for us the structure of dramatic thinking, of thinking in terms of story.

• We enjoy the history of the American Revolution if it’s told as a story of people, not as lists of facts and dates.
• We want to know “what happens next” in our Gray’s Anatomys and CSIs.
• We always wait for the punch line of a joke or the story from a weekend party.

But here we arrive at our second caution, the fine line between story as fiction and story as a prejudiced or distorted reality.  If we’re not careful, we end up casting ourselves into the drama we wish to live instead of the relationships in our lives we are dealt.

This is harmless, perhaps, if these are brief escapist fantasies of online role play or daydreaming. (Perhaps a little over-the-top is the Society for Creative Anachronism which has divided the US into duchies and baronies in a sort of medieval replication of the planet.) It becomes much more complicated when we re-write our lives to create new drama or rewrite the lives of others to do the same.

Enter the reality show.  I had the misfortune of watching an episode of one of the latest, Estate of Panic. In it a half dozen or so contestants are placed in various spooky settings to grab money while confronted by electrical wires, snakes, or falling ceilings.  The show makes no pretense of actually being reality, of course, unlike Big Brother or Ghost Hunters. But in it contestants openly participate with a corny host in a fantasy setting, almost as if they have no idea that it’s staged.

 

 

 

Much harder to distinguish for some is Ghost Hunters, Cops, or the WWE.  Frustratingly, as the plots are wound and crafted, the suspense is built to reach climaxes before commercial breaks, and all the while the actors are trained to seemingly “break script” and the story appears to us to be . . . all the more real. (More than a few students have told me in the past few years that there is nothing fictional about these programs.)

This intentional blurring of fact and fiction caters specifically to our own belief that we can live these fantasies ourselves (witness backyard wrestling, Jackass wannabes, and amateur ghost-busting groups). It is entertaining.  It makes money.  It builds allegiances and ratings.

No wonder President-Elect Obama has done well: he—or his party—has written a mythological reality story, complete with the historical drama of Grant Park climaxes, Lincoln-style challenges, and utopic endings. Today the Detroit Free Press spent an entire page urging Michelle Obama to wear a “regal” gown as it compared her to Jackie Kennedy.

Again, no surprises here, nothing that has not been done to countless decades of celebrities and politicians.  But now will the millions of allies, followers, and devotees who found themselves mesmerized by the “Obama story” expect the “happily ever after?”

History is not story, though we cast and write it so.  I worry that we will spend our media time writing Obama as a hero or villain to suit our own dramatistic whims rather than confront the problems before us as they really are.  Real.