SPRINGBOARD TO THE DARK SIDE
what does The Jerry Springer Show say about America?
"Television's illuminating light will go far, we hope, to drive out the ghosts that haunt the dark corners of our minds — ignorance, bigotry, fear. It will be able to inform, educate and entertain an entire nation with a magical speed and vividness. . ."
Paul Porter, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission, 1945
Jerry Springer drove a nail in the coffin of Porter's utopic prediction a few months ago when his titillating talk show ousted Oprah Winfrey from her long-time reign at the top of of the daytime voyeurism department.
For the last decade, Winfrey had ruled the talk heap with her kinder, gentler angle on the whole "spilt guts for fun and profit" genre. Oprah's intrinsic understanding of the non-white guy mentality galvanized her as a celebrity Mother Superior among her fans. Compassionate and in control, Oprah's presence continues to set the perfect stage for exhuming the deepest, most shame-ridden secrets from her guests.
With its relatively low production costs, the confessional format is enormously profitable. And — as these shows induce a state of emotional turmoil in their viewers — they're particularly appealing to advertisers. Note that pain killers, vacation companies, insurance providers, convenience foods, and credit services make up the bulk of daytime advertising, and it's pretty clear how the promise of relief is marketed to an agitated audience.
Indeed, television in recent years has become a joyous spectacle of Darwinian evolution. Thanks to the Reagan-era deregulation, the ratings battle knows no bounds. After over two centuries of Puritanical indoctrination, a couple decades of pop psychology, and an unrelenting stream of mixed messages throughout media, it's not surprising that America is dumping its collective baggage into the airwaves. It's particularly ironic that talk shows exist expressly to expose the "dark corners of our minds," and that this may not be such an evil, after all. After almost sixty years of inviting the box into our collective psyche, it's only natural that it take over the role of spiritual, psychological, and moral advisor sooner or later.
All talk television — from the feel good cheer-me-up stylings of Oprah and Montel to the interpersonal skidmarks of Ricki Lake or Springer — are updated versions of the traditional religious and legal institutions that once knit our social fabric together. Real-world courtrooms and confessional booths hardly make for thrilling television, but throw in a little inspiration from All Star Wrestling or a charismatic host, and you've got yourself a gold mine.
Take Springer, for instance. Like all talk shows, Springer's promises instant relief of a myriad of surreal personal dilemmas. Yet, rather than bring out matronly (yet camera-friendly) advisors as do Oprah or Sally Jesse Raphael, guests on the Springer Show are not only invited but encouraged to slug it out — cameras rolling — as the studio audience leers and jeers with the action.
With topics like "My Daughter Is a Teen Prostitute," "I'm Pregnant by My Brother," and "I'm in a Bizarre Love Triangle," Springer's show eliminates the middle man. No judge. No jury. No priest, rabbi, or legal counsel. Just pure eye-for-an-eye mob rule, edited of course, with bouncers and intermittent ad breaks. Again the irony — the only real winners are Springer himself and Barry Diller — the head of USA Networks Inc., which produces and distributes the show. The rest of the schlubs on the show get to hang their stage passes on their bedposts and resume the search for their next fifteen minutes of "fame."
In the spectre of history, the recent ratings conquest of The Jerry Springer Show could hardly be considered an anomaly. The product of shrewd marketing, The Diller/Springer empire taps into the same public thirst for the spectacle of visceral injury that has captured the imagination since the bloody gladiatorial matches of ancient Rome.
Still, in an era when schoolyard shootings and presidential penises are de facto news items, shows like Springer's become the primary suspects. Coaching people to behave like barbarians — no matter how scripted the show may be — is probably NOT the best way to model conflict resolution.
Oprah, in contrast, peppers her confessional ooze with a commitment to raising public awareness of social issues like crime, homelessness, single motherhood, education, welfare and other societal ills. Last fall, she unveiled her Angel Network in a rousing speech that challenged viewers to volunteer their time and money for assorted causes in their communities.
And, not surprisingly — given Oprah's unparalleled charisma/ego — it's working.
Regardless of her many foibles, Oprah's ability to motivate normal everyday Joes to help out less fortunate Joes is unique in commercial television. Rather than using the aura of the spotlight to seduce people into acting like morons, she's appealing to them to channel their energies into constructive projects. For decades, daytime television viewers have been subjected to pitches for every pain remedy known to man EXCEPT charity. Whether it's advertising or the vicarious thrills of game shows or soap operas, daytime television has been a hotbed of passive, isolating mindfucks: Stay at home. Watch others go through life transforming events. Buy medicine and laundry starch. Tune in tomorrow!
Not that Oprah is any paragon of sainthood herself. According to a news story on a CBS affiliate (Oprah airs on ABC), a group of University of Wisconsin students joined forces with professional homebuilders through Habitat for Humanity to build a house for a single mother and her eight kids. The story also reported that while Oprah gives the project plenty of publicity, she has offered no financial donation.
But however self-righteous she may be, however flawed such altruistic ideals turn out in practice, however hypocritical her vision of herself really is, Oprah's charitable undercurrent is a sharp contrast to Springer's gleeful daily romp through the landmines of human dysfunction. As America continues to exhume it's collective dustbunnies, it'll be interesting to see what happens to those ghosts that still haunt the dark corners of our minds.
J. Betty Ray is an antlered writer who revels in the incestuous relationship between the teeming mass of media to itself and to the world at large. She sharpens her rack as editor of Fucker Dot Com and resident empath for the The Chankstore. A cathode junkie to the core, Ray spends most of her time basking in the soft warm glow of monitor and TV screen simultaneously, in pursuit of that ever-elusive state of mind that can only be described as, "You're soaking in it."
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