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Davidson Loehr
17 September 2000
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PUPPET SHOW
A. (Head hung down, looking sad)
B. What’s wrong?
A. I’m lonesome
B. Lonesome? I can help you! You know what you need?
A. A friend?
B. You need Crest Toothpaste!
A. Toothpaste? I need a friend!
B. Well, the reason you don’t have a friend might be because your breath stinks! If you buy this Crest toothpaste and brush your teeth with it, your breath won’t stink and maybe you’ll get some friends. Here, give me a dollar.
A. (Gives a dollar to B, who gives toothpaste to A. Both disappear.)
A. (Head hung down, looking sad when A. reappears.)
C.What’s wrong?
A. I’m lonesome.
C. Hey, that’s because you need some new Nike tennis shoes!
A. Tennis Shoes? I’m lonesome, not barefoot!
C. Well, you’re lonesome because you don’t have cool Nike tennis shoes, that’s why? Here, just give me a hundred bucks and I’ll give you some cool Nike tennis shoes, then you’ll be set!
A. (A gives C money, C gives A shoes. Both disappear.)
A. (Head hung down, looking sad when A. reappears.)
D. What’s wrong?
A. Oh, I don’t want to talk about it.
D. You know what you need?
A. Go away.
D. You need fifty bucks’ worth of Pokemon toys!
A. Yeah, right. (A gives fifty dollars to D, who hands A the toys. Both disappear.)
A. (Head hung down, looking sad when A. reappears.)
E. You look lonesome.
A. I need a friend.
E. Me too.
A. (Brightens up) You want to be friends?
E. Oh, yes! (They hug.)
A. This is what I’ve needed!
E. Me too! You wouldn’t believe all the junk I’ve bought when what I’ve really wanted was just a friend!
A. Tell me about it!
Exit.
‘THE VOICES’
A. (A sweet feminine voice.) Looking good isn’t a matter of luck. It’s a decision. Call us, we can save you. Smith and Roberts, Austin’s most caring plastic surgeons.
B. (A gruff, macho male voice) Get it. Today. Pit Stop. Tough enough for famous race drivers. Because it doesn’t matter how smart you are, how good looking, even how successful. If you stink, you stink. So listen to me. We can save you. Get it today. Pit Stop. Famous race drivers’ favorite deodorant.
A. (Woman’s voice) Oh no, Jane’s great date turned into a disaster ‘ again! She’ll never find anyone to love her as long as she has those yellow teeth! If only she would buy SparklyWhite Toothpaste and Bleach. Then she could find a man who would love her, buy her things, and she’d be saved. Otherwise, she’ll probably just be alone forever.
B. (Gruff macho voice). Hey Jack! Yeah, you ‘ the loser in that dinky little compact car. When are you gonna get it? The kind of woman you’re looking for doesn’t like guys in dinky little cars. Size matters, Jack. Wanna be saved from more years as a loser? See this Ford F-150 V-8 pick-up truck? It can save ya, Jack. Buy it today, before we run out of ’em.
A. (This is a ‘straight-from-the-heart’ kind of pitch. She’s selling, but trying to seem genuine, like the listener’s friend. If it were TV, she’d be looking directly into the camera, acting sincere.) You want to be saved? We’ve got your salvation right here. But it isn’t free, you’ve got to buy it. And there’s a lot to buy, if you want to look good, smell good, feel good, and impress your friends and boss with how cool you are. The right clothes, shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant, perfume, diamonds to get and keep the lady, beauty and sexiness to keep the guy. There’s a lot to buy. You’ll probably be in debt forever, at 21% interest rates on your VISA card. And there’s always more to buy. It never ends. (Minister gets up and walks to podium.) But if you really want to be saved, we can save you. We can ‘ hey, who’s the guy up there in the robe?
B. He’s the preacher.
A. What’s he doing? He messed up my pitch.
B. He’s going to try to get them to ignore us.
A. Fat chance!
B. Shhhh! It’s his turn now.
SERMON: Salvation, American Style
Those voices are everywhere. They are the priests and priestesses of the religion of salvation, American style. I want to convince you this morning that it really is a religion, that it’s a very bad religion, and that the alternatives are not hard to find.
Now you’re a very bright group, and I doubt that any of you are convinced yet. You think I’m exagerrating for effect, or to set up something in a few minutes. You don’t think I really mean that commercials represent a real religion in America. But I do. And by the end of the morning, you may too.
I’m not just picking on television programs, though most of them are silly, too full of sex, violence and vacuousness. But picking on sit-coms is too easy. I want to argue that all of television exists primarily to serve The Voices that are selling us this religion of salvation, American style. I even want to argue that news programs aren’t really about news that matters, or that we need to know for any reason. Instead, they are entertainment shows, and their primary purpose is to attract an audience through their sensationalist stories of blood, violence, sex and gossip, so The Voices can make their pitch to this crowd. I want to argue that television programs, and television news, both exist almost entirely to serve the real God behind the television industry. And that God’s name is Our Sponsor, Who Art in Heaven.
Why are there so many news programs on? Thirty years ago, there was only about fifteen minutes of national news a night, and it seemed to be enough. Why is there now an entire CNN network with news 24 hours a day? Is there that much that we need to know, or about which our knowledge could make any difference at all?
We could spend hours dissecting news programs, as many authors have. The best known of these media critics, and the best writer among them, is probably Neil Postman. I’ve read several of his books, including one called Amusing Ourselves to Death and How to Watch TV News.
Basically, the problem is controlled by economics, as so much else is. It costs about half as much to produce a news show as to produce a comedy or drama. And people who watch the news are good attentive audiences. That’s attractive to advertisers, and during the past twenty years or so, news programs have eliminated most of their in-depth investigative journalism and concentrated instead on more exciting and titillating stories that can be produced more quickly ‘ as newspapers also have. Violence, sex, intrigue, gossip and blood dominate the news programs because, like car crashes, they attract audiences. And the job of news producers is to keep putting new and exciting stories in front of us every day, then dropping them when something more titillating comes along tomorrow. The news casters are like carnival barkers, and their main purpose is not to educate us, but to draw us into the tent so the sponsors can make their pitches to us.
Perhaps you won’t agree. Perhaps you think that at least the national news must be important, must be relevant to our lives, must be something we need to know. If you believe this, if you think the news is important, rather than just a carnival barker’s show to get you inside the tent so you can see the commercials, I have some questions to consider. How much of the news from two weeks ago can you still remember? If it was important, if it was worth all the shouting and hype the news producers wrapped it in two weeks ago, why isn’t it still news? Have all the problems of last month’s news been solved? And if they were important but haven’t been solved, why aren’t we still being told about them? How many people are starving in Biafra or Rwanda today? Where are they getting their food? What has changed since the news stories of a few years ago got the whole country excited about these terrible human tragedies?
Questions like these ‘ and you can think of dozens more ‘ help show us what should be obvious: The news isn’t important. We’re really not supposed to care about it. At least not for long. It isn’t put on to educate us, it’s put on to draw us into the tents on the carnival midway so the snake-oil sellers can preach their story of salvation, American style.
Whenever I get into this subject, whenever I spend much time reading or talking about it, I am reminded of that great American philosopher Lily Tomlin, who once observed that ‘No matter how cynical I get, I just can’t keep up!’
But none of this is news to advertising firms or television executives. They know that the purpose of all television programs is to draw a crowd for the commercials to play to. That, plus the highly competitive market, are the reasons the news has become dominated by car-crash journalism, why there is so much violence, sex, terror and blood on the news.
Some years ago the media critic Marshall MacLuhan was asked if there was any good news on television. Yes, he said, the commercials are the good news. The commercials take your mind off the bad things happening, and show you in just thirty seconds how you can improve yourself, become lovable, popular, and successful.
The phrase ‘Good News’ is a religious phrase. That’s what churches are supposed to be offering: the Good News that can save us. And like religious teachings, most commercials take the form of parables, teaching viewers what the Good Life looks like and what we need in order to have it.
Let’s do a commercial to show this. You’ll recognize it as being like most other commercials you’ve seen. Like most commercials, it’s a thirty-second drama done in three acts.
Act One shows a man and woman saying goodnight at her door after an evening out. She closes her eyes and tilts her head back, expecting a kiss. He steps back in a state of polite revulsion and says ‘Well Joan, it was nice meeting you. I’ll call sometime soon.’ That ends Act One, which took ten seconds.
Act Two shows Joan whining to her roommate. ‘This happens to me every time, Betty! What’s wrong with me?’ ‘Your problem,’ Betty says, ‘is your mouthwash. It’s all mediciny and it doesn’t protect you from bad breath. You should try Minty Fresh.’ Then Betty holds out a new bottle of Minty Fresh, very nicely lit. That ends Act Two, also ten seconds.
The final scene, Act Three, shows Joan and her formerly-revolted date getting off the plane in Hawaii for their honeymoon. Joan is deliriously happy, he adores her. Minty Fresh mouthwash has done it again!
You have seen tens of thousands of commercials with this plot. It is the plot of salvation, American style.
But now let’s go back to that commercial and make a slight change, to make it a little more real, to make it sell a different kind of religion.
Act One is the same. But in Act Two, when Joan asks her roommate what’s wrong with her, Betty says: ‘What wrong with you? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you. You are boring! You are dull, dull, dull. You haven’t read a book in years, couldn’t tell Beethoven from the Beastie Boys, and have no idea what’s going on in the world outside of your boring little life! It’s a wonder any man wants to spend more than ten minutes with you!’
‘You are right,’ says Joan, ‘but what can I do?’
‘Read a book! See a movie! Listen to some good music! Take up a hobby that excites you!’ screams Betty. Joan looks forlorn: ‘But that will take forever: months, maybe even years!’ ‘That’s right,’ replies Betty, ‘so you better get started!’ The commercial ends with Betty handing dull Joan a copy of Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West. Joan looks sad, but begins to finger the pages.
Now this is also a parable. And its message is more like the messages of real life, where there no problems as simple as the answers provided by The Voices speaking in commercials. But you’re never likely to see this parable on television. It could break the spell that commercials need in order to work, the illusion that all our problems can be solved by a chemical.
The advertisers know something that enables them to ignore criticisms like this. They know that the average television viewer will see about 30,000 commercials in the next twelve months. They know our kids will spend about 19,000 hours in front of a television set by the time they graduate from high school, compared with only 13,000 hours in school. They know those children will see, in that time, about 650,000 commercials. And they know that repetition is an effective teaching method, and that eventually, most of us learn what we are taught.
Whether you call commercials religious, anti-religious or something else, they are the most constant source of value propaganda in our culture. Don’t underestimate them. Commercials are never about anything trivial. They address our deepest needs and fears. Mouthwash commercials are not about bad breath, and commercials for clothing and hair products aren’t about clothes or shampoo. They are about the need for social acceptance, the need to feel attractive, to be lovable and loved. Automobile commercials are about our need for autonomy or social status. Behind every successful commercial there is a very real human need and fear, the same kind of needs for which other religions give very different prescriptions.
Boredom, anxiety, rejection, fear, envy, sloth and the rest ‘ in TV commercials there are easy remedies for each of these. The remedies are things like Scope, Comet, Toyota, Bufferin, Alka-Seltzer, and Budweiser. In the religion of salvation, American style, they take the place of good works, restraint, piety, awe, humility, character, and transcendence. On TV commercials, The Voices try to convince us that moral deficiencies as we usually think of them do not really exist. A commercial for Alka-Seltzer does not teach you to avoid overeating. Gluttony is perfectly acceptable ‘ maybe even cool. Your gluttony is no problem: Alka-Seltzer will handle it.
The Seven Deadly Sins, in other words, are superficial problems to be solved through chemistry and technology. Make no mistake. Commercials are trying to convert us to a new religion, and the religion is almost always the same one. My academic training was in religion, and I know one when I see one. Here are some of the parts of the religion of salvation, American style. See if you don’t recognize them too:
1. We begin in a state of Original Sin. And our original sin is that we are ignorant of the products that we need to buy in order to be saved.
2. The Priests and Priestesses of the American salvation story are The Voices who come at us through the ether, to show us what our problem is and tell us the products we must buy in order to solve our problem. They serve the God of this salvation scheme, Our Sponsor, Who Art in Heaven. And their mission is to make it on earth, as it is in the commercials.
3. Like great religious teachers, the Priests and Priestesses teach us primarily through stories and parables. Almost every commercial is a story or parable, showing us what’s wrong with us, what awful things might happen unless we get saved, then showing us the product that can save us, and giving us a glimpse of heaven ‘ like the Hawaiian honeymoon.
4. But just as in religious fundamentalism, we must believe in order to be saved. A voice from above has given us the facts we need, and we must believe. Unless we believe, we are among the unsaved, the damned. We won’t have friends, no one will ever love us, no one will think we are cool, we’ll spend our lives alone and being laughed at.
5. One of the great advantages of this American salvation scheme is that it is so very easy. Think of all the things that are not parts of this religion. There is no introspection, no soul-searching. We don’t need to be good people, to care about anybody but ourselves, there are no good deeds involved, no notion of needing to develop a full and healthy character, no concerns for our character at all. We just simply watch, listen, obey and buy, and we will be saved. Then it will be on earth as it is in the commercials, and we will be honeymooning in Hawaii because once we started using the right mouth wash we were cleansed of our sin, we were lovable, and we will spend the rest of our lives in a heaven on earth, happy beyond our wildest desires ‘ all because of Minty Fresh mouthwash.
The picture painted by the American salvation story is a lot like the portrait of Dorian Gray. You probably know this story, written a century ago by Oscar Wilde and made into a powerful movie. Dorian Gray was an attractive, even seductive, young man. He was also cold and selfish, and often quite nasty. He wished he might never change, that he might forever look like the portrait which has just been painted of him. In a bizarre kind of devil’s bargain, he got his wish. He never aged, never looked a day older or a bit different. He remained attractive and seductive ‘ and cold and selfish and often quite nasty. But while neither time nor the effects of his nasty character ever showed up in Dorian Gray, they all showed up in his portrait. Hung in a secret place in the attic, the portrait showed a man becoming older, uglier, and more vile.
Our lives, and our illusions, aren’t this dramatic. But it’s a reminder that when something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Andbehind the pretty, wrinkle-free, stain-free, forever-young images with which commercials bombard us, there are some ugly truths, some details of the aging portrait in the attic. Like the fact that credit card debt and personal bankruptcy filings are at an all-time high. All commercials act like the last problem we would have is coming up with the money to buy the products they want to sell us. And both politicians and newscasters talk incessantly about our strong economy. But we can’t afford to buy our way to salvation. And behind the high employment figures is the fact that unemployment is low because couples can’t make it on one salary.
Most of the new jobs the politicians and newscasters are bragging about are low-paying, without insurance or other benefits. Job insecurity keeps workers from fighting for living wages, as well as competition from lower-wage workers abroad. In nearly 30% of American families, both husband and wife now work. But the actual earnings of these families are now 12% less than they were in 1973 in constant dollars. The men’s paychecks have fallen by 30% during the past 27 years, and even with women working, the family income ‘ now with two workers ‘ is still 12% less than it was in 1973. Also since 1973, the number of workers with at least a four-year college degree has doubled, as their pay has shrunk by about 16%.
The money has been systematically diverted from the workers to those who own and control the capital. I heard Al Gore brag this week that our economy is the strongest in this country’s history. That is cynically misleading. The gap between the richest and the poorest in our society is the greatest it has been in this country’s history ‘ some have written that it is the greatest gap between rich and poor in the past thousand years of Western history.
It’s hard to get our minds around a gap this big, but here are a few figures that might help. Bill Gates’ personal wealth is now about double the Gross National Product of Central America. While the top 1 percent of American households doubled their share of national wealth since the 1970s, the percentage of American children living in extreme poverty has also doubled. If the poorest member of the Forbes 400 list gives away a million dollars to charity, that’s equivalent to the median American household ‘ which makes about $35,500 a year ‘ giving less than $75. That’s not the strongest economy in our nation’s history.
Nor is it true that ‘a rising tide floats all ships.’ The average incomes of families with children in the bottom 20 percent of the U.S. income distribution fell by 21% between 1980 and 1996 (from $11,759 in 1978-80 to $9,254 in 1994-96). The top 20 percent, by contrast, rose by over 23% during the same period (from $94,158 to $116,200). During the period of 1977-1994, the bottom 20 percent of families in our country lost 16 percent of their after-tax income; the top 20 percent of families gained 25 percent and the top 1 percent saw their after-tax income go up 72 percent. A rising tide floats the yachts, while many of those who can’t afford boats are paddling for their lives.
These are among the features on the portrait in the attic of the American salvation story. And so salvation, American style is a lot like the story of the portrait of Dorian Gray.
It’s also like a puppet show. When we back off and admire the manipulative genius of the advertising industry, it’s easy to marvel at the brilliance with which they have learned to pull our strings. I use Crest toothpaste, Scope mouthwash, and Right Guard deodorant, and I don’t know why. But the advertising industry probably does. Over the past generation or two, the very best research into human motivation and understanding why we do the things we do has been done by, or used by, the advertising industry. These folks are very, very smart. In some ways, they know more about us than we know about ourselves.
We walk through a world of strings held by invisible puppeteers, voices from somewhere above us, pulling us this way and that, promising salvation so sweet, cool and sexy we jump like fish toward baited hooks, or like puppets pulled by strings we can’t even see.
The strings are there, and they are real. But they are not the only strings connected to us. There are also other strings, of a better kind, that might help fill the emptiness so abundant in our culture, and that hardly cost a thing:
We have strings tying us to our families, and our friends. People who love us for who we are instead of for what they can get out of us. Those are also strings to which we could respond.
We have strings ‘ no, whole webs ‘ that could connect us with neighbors, our community, our world and the future if only we would attend to them. They take energy and compassion and time, but no VISA charges.
And we have our heart-strings, to tie us to what we really love. We have those tugs from the angels of our better nature, pulling us toward deeper affections and more meaningful allegiances in place of the passing fancies, passing before us in thirty-second commercials, more than thirty thousand of them a year for most of us.
Life has a lot of strings attached. What a tragedy it will be if we settle for shallow bit parts in someone else’s designs on us, and lose ourselves in the process. It was Jesus who asked ‘What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?’ ‘ the question’s still relevant.
It is our show, our life. We are children of God, precious bits of the universe, made entirely of stardust. We don’t need to buy our salvation. We are already worthy, and real. In all the ways that matter, that’s enough, if only we could see and believe that good news. And that good news comes without any strings attached.
‘THE VOICES’
A. (As minister sits down.) Well I didn’t like that at all!
B. It was unAmerican.
A. I didn’t like that silly puppet show, either!
B. It was unAmerican.
A. If anybody actually listened to stuff like that, we’d be in serious trouble!
B. Don’t worry.
A. Don’t worry? Why not?
B. He only gets an hour. The rest of the week, they’re ours.
A. Ah! Then it’s ok!
B. It’s time to leave.
A. Yes, let’s get out of here. This place gives me the willies!
