Political philosophers tell us that one of the great driving forces of human history is the tension between individualism (or liberty) and community (or equality). As we all know, the American experiment has been mostly one of seeing how far we can push individual liberty without exploding into fragments.
But even America has always required some sort of moral glue. The ethos of the Reagan era was one of unbounded liberty, bordering on the libertine, in matters economic. But it came with a self-correcting complement of lock-step conformity, martial patriotism, and private moralism that gave a sort of transcendence to the orgy of profit-taking. It was a Planet Bizarro anti-version of the 1960s, when a communal devotion to social justice and equality was juxtaposed with private hedonism and anti-nationalism.
But through both of those great watersheds in postwar culture there has really been only one great tie that bound the experience of 200 million-plus citizens into something that could be called "American." That was television.
For a while there, television seemed to resolve the great dialectic. It was the ultimate expression of individualism. It brought the world into our nuclear living rooms. It allowed us to partake of the whole range and variety of human experience without actually having to encounter other humans besides the immediate few of our biological family or self-selected circle of friends. But television also provided, for the first time, a shared American culture that was truly national, cutting across lines of ethnicity, class, region, and time zone.
We all experienced the great events together--assassinations, hostage-takings, Super Bowls. But more important than that, on any given weekday morning we all had something to talk about--namely, what was on television last night. Whether we'd watched a particular episode or not, we were all capable of discussing I Love Lucy, Green Acres, All in the Family, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Kojak, etc. They gave us a shared language that we could use around almost anyone and have a reasonable expectation of being more or less understood. That's no small accomplishment in this crazy quilt of a country where the person next to you could come from anywhere in the world and be anything from a snake-handler to a Zen Buddhist.
The key to this grand tubular synthesis lay, inevitably, in a pure-American piece of free-enterprise fascism. You could watch anything you pleased on your own personal television--as long as it was on one of the three networks.
TODAY, EVEN THAT thin photo-optic thread of national continuity has broken down, with the villains being those old twin devils/angels: technological progress and freedom of choice. We all know the story. You get 80-channel cable systems (with multiple sets of options to boot) and a VCR. Add a satellite dish, and you can watch anything, anywhere, anytime. TV watching is now an exercise in cultural disconnection and disembodiment. We're all free aesthetic agents floating in the oh-so-tasteful ether of our own individual "choice-ness."
That's the hype. And there's something to it if you've got the hardware. But when the TV audience fragmented, it split along class lines, and for us poor schleps without cable or a VCR, freedom of choice comes via "prole-TV." That's my own Orwellian handle for those commercial UHF stations (Fox-affiliated and otherwise) that provide us low-rent and low-class types with a steady syndicated stream of Barretta reruns, old movies, professional wrestling, Mort 'n' Geraldo, and (my personal "can't miss") Entertainment Tonight.
As with any television programs (public included), the real content on "prole-TV" is in the commercials. If The Morton Downey Jr. Show is 99 percent misdirected class anger (which it is), then the ads it carries lend the inevitable note of proletarian pathos. They pitch easy credit hustles, weight-loss schemes, stop-smoking gimmicks, and purely for-profit "job training" programs in the "high-tech world of data entry" (i.e. typing) and diesel mechanics.
The message is clear. This shabby little channel is the last refuge of America's lost working class. It's a video leper colony for the untouchables of the '80s who can't qualify for VISA or MasterCard. This is television for the people who can't afford the workouts of the well-to-do but are nonetheless held to a too-rich, too-thin standard of beauty. It's aimed at the low-income and -education demographic that still smokes cigarettes but needs to quit (like it or not) because the bosses are about to make it illegal. And naturally these folks are vulnerable to any appeal that promises to lift them out of the hamburger world of semi-employment and on to the fast-track with the slim, cable-watching, non-smoking, Gold Card-flashing smart set.
These are my people we're talking about here. Once upon a time in America, they were called the salt of the earth. But now they're just losers. Think of them the next time you zap past a SlimFast commercial. And if I catch you laughing, it better be to keep from crying.
Danny Duncan Collum is a Sojourners contributing editor.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!