Reality TV, and by that I mean “all”
TV, are the new soaps.
I come to this conclusion via the
narrative structures of gun owners when prompted to imagine a
scenario by which they (legitimately?) take the life of another
person. The story they concoct says SO much about not only who they
are, but who they see themselves as being. Read that twice – I had
to.
My sample base is small (p < 10) but
some curious patterns emerge. First is the establishing scene – the
activity they see themselves engaged in just prior to murdering
someone is really, really telling. With one exception, everyone is
enjoying some form of leisure “Well, I'm sitting at home watching
TV....”
This is my first trigger phrase. I make
a point to interrupt the thought process and ask: “What time is
it?”
I'm not a detective, but I've watched
enough YouTube interrogation videos to note that one tactic is to
focus on unrelated specifics - “What color was the sky?” “Was
it raining that day?” Then they go back a couple hours later: “Ok,
so earlier you said it was mid day when this occurred, but now it
sounds like its more in the afternoon when it was raining, is that
correct?” The suspect shifts nervously.
 |
| Back-lit male silhouettes are always threatening. |
I already know where they're heading:
night, because, well, that's what TV and movies said. “What time?”
“Late.”
Always late.
Then the script gets more complicated.
“I've got to protect my family.”
Notice this: when prompted for a
specific within their constructed murder fantasy, they switch the
focus of the narrative from “defending myself” to “protecting
others” and I just cannot let that go. What is going on that causes
that change? Why does prompting for increased fictional detail
correlate with this??
I think it has something to do with
setting oneself up as not only capable of but obliged to
commit acts of nobility, or at least have your acts defined as noble.
“I'm a good person!” goes the insulating koan.
The Inherent Value Proposition.
Appeals to the Second Amendment are
cloaked appeals to divinity – it's a way the ego believes its
convictions are perfectly rational.
The DVD collection (there's always
shelves of them collecting dust – another dense psychology
deserving of its own chapter) tends to over-represent a particular
genre with certain thematic elements (the reluctant, noble, last
resort use of horrific violence to restore an understandable order of
things... at any cost.)
So, “daytime TV', by which I mean
almost all television, as almost all of its been sanitized
down to a pornographic representation of the mundane, is predicated
on preserving (by way of claiming to celebrate) a particular set of
social circumstances, i.e., the way they know things to be right now.
But that's just part of the fantasy. It's
not just that the world will continue in a way that is perfectly
understandable to them, but even more important – that their
inherent value is so great their most tedious, secular activities
(the preparing of food, for instance) are deserving of cultural
elevation if not outright reward. Hence, the Facebook post: “I made
dinner for the whole family!”
Check your voicemail – Chef Ramsey
might have called.
