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O. Sexton, Review of Neal Gabler's "Life: the Movie"
Neal Gabler writes in his book, "Life the movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality", about the main themes of popular culture and how they are affected by people’s pursuit of what he calls the Life Movie. Gabler not only discusses the main themes in popular culture, but also gives a thorough examination of how the entertainment industry came to be, and perhaps more importantly, how entertainment in American culture became such a powerful force. It is unique to American culture that entertainment of all forms has such a significant degree of influence on everyday life. Although this phenomenon has spread to include much of Europe and, indeed, much of the world at present, Gabler presents entertainment in America as the foundation of its power. If the social context had not been just so as America began as a nation, it is argued that the need for, and the pursuit of, entertainment would not have manifest itself as a driving force in American culture. What follows is an in depth analysis of Gabler’s book and how it, in particular, is relevant to the study of social constructionism and social deviance.
Gabler begins his first chapter by discussing and examining the question, “Why was America the Republic of Entertainment?” (Gabler, 1998:22) In this analysis he develops the themes of class differences and religious dogma and presents them as overcome impediments on up-in-coming entertainment. “Neither of these obstacles – religion or aristocratic control – impeded popular culture”. (ibid:23). Gabler sees the early American period as a time when hostilities for power and opportunity were very high partly because of the class distinction. This is significant to entertainment for entertainment became the vehicle that enabled the lower and middle classes to subject their power over the high class or, at the very least, entertainment became a method by which the lower classes could counteract the power that was subjected upon them by the upper class. Gabler writes, “The middle class promoting its values by modifying the popular, the lower classes trying to undermine the middle class by reenergizing the popular, and what remained of the elites declaring a pox on both their houses.” (ibid:44).
The historical relevance of the first chapter sets out how entertainment became the driving force in culture. The struggle for entertainment in the name of power began with Andrew Jackson and the “contest between the aristocracy and democracy in America” (ibid:28). Jacksonian equalitarianism is what Gabler refers to as the lower class seeing themselves as disassociated from the upper classes and, as such, did not feel they were rightly represented by exclusively upper class folk. Thus, there began what Gabler calls the “common man dominated culture – entertainment” (ibid:30); because, entertainment has the power. What came from this common man dominated culture was now, “ordinary playgoers sought horse play, belly laughter, pretty girls, ingenious scenery […], flippancy and fol-de-rol” (ibid:39), rather than the more traditional and high class operas and ballets.
Gabler then discusses the movies, in particular, and how the medium was devoid of European tradition and influence. The movies were all American and all new (ibid:47). “The movies catered to the working class as a cultural weapon” (ibid:47). Now the power of the masses was a power that could not only entertain, but attract, and was also a medium that could influence thousands of people, the masses. Gabler ends this chapter by illustrating how intertwined the political, the religious, the moral and the social all are with entertainment. “Entertainment pushed to an extreme becomes the main form of business and politics” (ibid:179). Gabler sets up chapter one as a historical account of the introduction and formation of entertainment, particularly in the form of the movies, into early American culture.
Chapter two reviews what Boorstin has coined the “Graphic Revolution”. “The glut of images directed us to the here and now, to something immediately useful; the ideal directs us to something above and beyond, to something the utility of which is not readily apparent. In Boorstin’s view, then, the Graphic Revolution was a moral revolution too because it replaced aspiration with gratification” (ibid:54). Socially, this revolution was not just the advancement of media technology; indeed, the revolution was a change in social, power structures.
Then Gabler furthers his discussion by including a section on the newspapers influence in early America. There is a parallel worth noting between the press of early America and the tabloids of the 1990’s, although it is not examined as such by Gabler himself. Excitement and sensationalism drove the news back in the day and, indeed, are essential ingredients for modern written and visual tabloids. There seems to be a process to which Gabler is eluding, though it is not explicitly stated. First there was theatre, then newspapers, then the movies and most recently, although not that new, television. All of these mediums represent a time in the history of entertainment when the lower classes, and eventually everyone, were exposed to the rhetoric embodied in these entertainment forms. Escapism was the value of entertainment, and entertainment the value of [everyone’s] life (ibid:208).
Later in chapter two, Gabler discusses television and written news as “personalities contracted to play out their lives for the amusement of the readers” (ibid:78). This became the “tabloid of life” (ibid:80). Life events, as Gabler calls them, began being made by the media for the sake of entertainment. The example Gabler gives is of the internationally publicized fall of the Berlin Wall (ibid:90), and how the huge media story that was made of the event was unnecessary but attracted much attention – the name of the game for the media. This section of Gabler’s book is quite relevant to social constructionism. Like the media made an international story out of a relatively mundane political decision, too moral entrepreneurs make huge deals out of what some have called over-reactions to social change or social events. When an event is fabricated to be something that it is not in reality, then it is constructed as an illusion. Both the media and moral panic initiators have the same goal in mind. They both want to cause a stir; they want to attract attention to their cause or event so that something will be done or so that they can sell papers, magazines or advertising space. Though the intention may vary the method is the same. The media and moral entrepreneurs are one in the same, methodologically speaking.
In chapter three, Gabler deals with “pseudo-events”. He writes, “The secondary and ultimately more significant effect [of entertainment] was to force nearly everything to turn itself into entertainment in order to attract media attention” (ibid:96). This is true of moral panics as well. Issues are turned into or constructed as moral disasters that are threatening to destroy society and then the media pick up the story and people pay attention. It was stated in Gabler’s book that “the Gulf War was formulated” (ibid:113) in order to present the correct images that were needed for the first Bush administration. Whether the desired effect be to create panic about the threat on oil supplies or to create an American hatred of Saddam Hussein so that the US could, like it did during the days of containment, take down Hussein and replace his dictatorship with America friendly democracy, the idea that a war could be fabricated lends support to the idea that media is a form of entertainment (ibid:98), one that is used to control or inform, or excite the public at large. This is exactly the procedure taken by moral entrepreneurs.
To counter Gabler’s point about the news primarily trying to create events to attract an audience, there is the idea that making news or facts more accessible to everyone is the main accomplishment of the mass media of present. For the first time everyone is exposed to every event that goes on in the world at large and, in so doing, they are able to react to what may have been kept from them in the past. An example of this is, of course, the reaction to the Vietnam War. There was protest and outrage when people were presented with reality and not necessarily for entertainment value alone. Gabler’s underlying premise may beg the question: he assumes entertainment value (as sensationalism and escapism) is the purpose of media and he is trying to prove the same.
Further in chapter three, Gabler discusses politics and media, “the media weren’t really covering politics at all. They were covering themselves covering politics” (ibid:105). He then discusses sports and media, “who needs the sporting events when the athletes themselves are walking inspirational soap operas?” (ibid:119); religion and media, and finally, literature and media: authors as celebrities. “Just as thoroughly as any fictional character he created in his novels, Hemingway created a persona for himself and authored a life movie in which he could star in the screens of the media” (ibid:124). The impact that media has had on authors and celebrity, more generally, can also be seen in such productions as the Biography channel and the increase in recent years of the number of biographical and autobiographical literature consumed by the public.
From there Gabler’s discussion filtered into an analysis of personalities and celebrity. He spoke of personality creation or construction and gave examples such as Andy Warhol and Picasso to illustrate how one not only creates works of art or literature, but they also create a personality of their own that, like Hemingway, they can perform on the media’s stage. It is because these people are celebrities, and thus, in the public eye, that they are constructed, ever so vaguely, as our heroes.
Chapter four is essentially an expansion of Gabler’s last topic in chapter three. Here Gabler gives an extensive look at the concept of celebrity and its impact on American culture. Gabler coins fame as celebrity; “traditionally fame had been tied, however loosely, to ability or accomplishment or office. Celebrity, on the other hand, seemed less a function of what one did than of how much one was perceived” (ibid:144). Gabler also take a moment to examine Boorstin’s definition of celebrity: “The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness” (ibid:144).
The rest of chapter four is a discussion of the topic of celebrity using such well known cases as Madonna, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Elizabeth Taylor and OJ. For Gabler celebrity creates popular culture (ibid:169). Celebrities, according to Gabler, create their life stories by living their lives in the public eye. They live their desires and their fantasies as their reality. And by doing this they are perceived as exciting and thus removed from the anonymous masses and placed in an elite celebrity status.
Gabler goes on to briefly draw a parallel between celebrity and religion. “In imposing the same mythic matrix on celebrity, the entertainment culture was also providing a system of belief. […] Religion has become entertainment, entertainment was now becoming religion” (ibid:174).
The key to this chapter is that people, regular people, try to avoid anonymity because they see the rewards reeked upon celebrities. The paradox, of course, is “if everyone were on TV all the time, we’d be better people. But if everybody were on TV all the time, there’d be nobody to watch – unless it is life, not TV, that is the medium” (ibid:189).
Finally, chapter five develops ideas surrounding advertisement as a form of entertainment and personality’s impact in the life movie. “Puritan culture emphasized values like hard work, integrity, and courage. The new culture of personality emphasized charm, fascination and likeability. The performing self” (ibid:197). Furthermore, “in a culture of personality, playing one was just as good as being one, which threatened to make us a faux society of authors without books, artists without art, musicians without music, politicians without politics, scholars without scholarship” (ibid:198). Thus, the reality as we know it is not reality at all. What is constructed for us to believe is what we consider reality and that may or may not have a basis in factuality. This can be said of constructions made in the sociology of deviance as well. When a claims maker presents an issue of concern for the public’s attention they are not necessarily based on fact. These presumptions are likely to be exaggerated or constructed to fit the underlying reason for the claims makers’ efforts.
Gabler presents the idea that “want is engineered by advertisers” (ibid:203). And from there he seems to take his thesis too far. He states, “Almost everything produced, from automobiles to toothpaste, was a prop in, or a set dressing for, the life movie being enacted by tens of millions of Americans each day” (ibid:205). But, when manufacturers create a car do they make it for entertainment’s sake or do they advertise it for business sake? I presume the latter. It seems pretentious to assume that everything anyone does at the business or personal level is for entertainment’s sake.
Another point of contention is that Gabler potentially confuses obsession with appearance and entertainment. The link between the two concepts is weak if, not missing entirely. He states that clothing, interior design, exercise, plastic surgery and architecture are all elements of obsession to improve the life movie (ibid:210). Could it be the case that people are simply obsessed with what they look like as a proponent of a superficial society and not necessarily obsessed with their appearance in order to create a better, more interesting life story? Or, perhaps, the reason modern western American society is superficial is because they are all wrapped up in the production of these life movies which they want to resemble the celebrity-producing cinematic movies. Gabler ends this section of his book proclaiming, “where we had once measured the movies by life, we now measured life by how well it satisfied the narrative expectation created by the movies” (ibid:233). All this seems to lead to a change in the structure of culture.
Before I conclude this paper I would like to mention a few further connections between "Life the Movie" and the sociology of deviance. Gabler writes, “the reformers found a link between the darkness of the theatre and illicit sex, between the depiction of crimes in movies and juvenile delinquency, between the amount of attention one devoted to the screen and the inattention one devoted to education” (ibid:49). These sorts of thoughts and parallels still continue presently in sociology. Many theories, namely Strain, Bond, Power control, all try and link what a person does or how they were raised with corresponding consequences which inevitably brought them to the criminal world. Furthermore, Gabler reminds his reader that crime has always made the news (ibid:74). It is the sensationalistic character of crime and deviance that elicits the public’s attention. When the FBI proclaimed that there was a serial killer prying on locals, they grasped the public’s attention. Had the FBI claimed there was a threat of environmental degradation, the public would not have had the sensationalist thrill and probably would not have paid much attention. Finally, American culture makes celebrities out of criminals. Gabler illustrates many instances of this ranging from Tim McVeigh to Oswald to Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon. Claims makers could use these extreme examples to help their case. Gun control is a perfect example. Had Chapman not been able to get a gun how could he have killed Lennon? The answer is much more complicated then that, but for argument sake a claims maker could argue that he would not have killed Lennon. The sensationalist value of the topic is enough to draw the masses' attention to the problem, in this case gun control.
Essentially then, Gabler’s "Life the Movie" has created an interpretation of American culture that places entertainment at the pinnacle of societal power. By doing so, he sees life as a movie, one that takes grooming and sculpting every step of the way. The significance of this point of view to the sociology of deviance, and social constructionism in particular, is that just as reality is constructed by entertainment and the media for Gabler, so too social problems are constructed by moral entrepreneurs. These realities are not based on factual evidence; rather they are made up of fears (of anonymity or change), trends, stigmas and other like social phenomena. Because these events in both Gabler’s life movie and claims made by concerned citizens are illusions rather than explicit reality it brings into mind an ancient distinction made by Plato. Plato called those things in life that were mere appearance of what someone wanted a ‘knack’, and he called the reality of something a ‘craft’. If life is but an appearance of the way we want it to be, if people are simply creating their lives like a producer creating a movie, are we not ultimately playing with knacks and missing out on the craft of life?
references available, email me.
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