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On the Arts: Taking risks and breaking the rules, American style
Sunday, February 11, 2001 By Tim Vincent
A glance at a current movie marquee or a trip with a remote around the cable channels reveals, before long, something important about Americans: We love transgression. Even if (and probably because) we don't actually break the rules ourselves very often, we spend lots of time watching and talking about others who do.
Tim Vincent is chairman of the Senior School English Department at Shady Side Academy.
Transgression has always had its charms, of course, as writers from Sophocles onward have understood. Aristotle talked about the twin pleasures we derive from vicarious participation in defiant, delinquent or deviant behavior and relief in escaping the consequences embraced by the tragic or foolish characters on stage.
In our current appetite for misconduct, this observation seems truer than ever, with the growing number of TV programs, movies, stand-up routines and music CDs whose reason for being is to reproduce representations of transgression. Jerry Springer, Howard Stern, Tom Green, MTV's "Jackass," Comedy Central's "South Park" and "The Man Show," rappers Eminem and Puff Daddy and many others can be seen as fitting a rather simple transgressive formula. But what complicates most of these (and is perhaps the saving grace of some of them) is the sense of irony that accompanies them. Transgression itself -- of taste, of appropriateness, of political correctness -- becomes their true subject.
Viewed with this in mind, even a program as blatantly exploitative as "The Jerry Springer Show" is a more ambiguous mix of cultural messages as the audience at home watches the studio audience watch Jerry, who in turn watches the transgression play itself out on the stage.
Is the true "subject" of the program the misbehavior of Jerry's guests? Or is it the authority displayed by the studio audience in its disgust and disapproval? Perhaps it is Jerry's own air of superiority and detachment, which seems to confer authority on himself and the audience at home. And what about those guests, anyway, who appear to be fully aware of the kind of behavior expected of them? In order to transgress successfully enough to outrage and entertain their audience, they need to understand the authority from which they are deviating. Guests act up and the audience disapproves within a framework of societal prejudices and stereotypes of which both are aware and which neither questions.
True transgression attacks the basis for the rules themselves. Transgression as entertainment merely breaks them.
This distinction might lead to the conclusion that transgression as entertainment is relatively harmless, since no one really takes it seriously. After all, even the crudely racist and misogynous "Howard Stern Show" often hosts serious-minded public figures such as Rudolph Giuliani and female role-model athletes such as Gabrielle Reece. Besides, Stern's co-host, Robin Quivers, an African-American woman, laughs right along with him and the program's other male co-hosts. Doesn't this send a signal that the views expressed by the hosts aren't necessarily their own?
As Friedrich Nietzsche was fond of saying, the answer to this is yes and no. Yes because the Stern program, like the Springer program and others, exaggerates prejudices and stereotypes, allowing for an ironic reading of the program' s intent. No, because in failing to include alternative representations of the program's most frequent targets, it fails as parody because there is little to distinguish it as such.
That other famous bigot, Archie Bunker from "All in the Family," had son-in-law Meathead and daughter Gloria, among others, to offset his retrograde opinions. Instead, Stern stacks the deck with a bogus authoritative cover, setting up a power differential between him and his most vulnerable guests that is insurmountable. Viewers are encouraged to join in on the fun, not create a sense of critical distance between their own societal views and the unquestioned assumptions of Stern, his co-hosts and his guests.
All this is not to say there isn't a place for plenty of unrepentant naughtiness. Risk-taking imparts dynamism to the culture. Media critic bell hooks (who transgresses grammatical rules by choosing not to capitalize her name) points out that determining how much and what kind of risk is being taken is the key ingredient in establishing a sense of critical distance, which can mean the difference between accepting the same tired old formulas and realizing the arrival of something truly new and surprising. Usually this is not a clear choice, but a complex blend of both.
With this year's Academy Award nominations just two days away, let's reflect on last year's Best Picture winner, "American Beauty." The film, a haunting but mixed bag of cultural messages, combined a bold look at autoeroticism, homosexuality, voyeurism and pedophilia with a rather conventional, even reactionary, tale of patriarchal family values.
In "Beauty's" most advertised scene, ineffectual husband and father Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) takes back the reins of family leadership by smashing a plate of asparagus against a wall to get the attention of his seriously bratty wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) and daughter Janie (Thora Birch). This is followed by some authoritative there'll-be-a-few-changes-around-here type of statements, indicating who will be wearing the pants in the family from now on.
This is just the kind of dad Janie has been asking for since the first scene of the film, but Carolyn takes longer to come around. She doesn't allow herself the luxury of self-pity and tells Janie, "You can't count on anyone but yourself."
Transgression time. Lester calls Carolyn a "bloodless, money grubbing freak," tells their daughter that Carolyn is a bitch, accuses her of frigidity, reacts with hurt and self-pity when she interrupts his drunken sexual advances to prevent him from spilling beer on a $4,000 couch and has trouble understanding why she is making such a big deal over the fact that he quits his job, buys bags of marijuana from the kid next door and wants to sleep with his daughter's girlfriend.
But, sin of all sins, Lester catches Carolyn in an affair with her real-estate colleague and success object, Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher). How does it all end? As it must in this patriarchal cautionary tale, with Carolyn sobbing brokenly as she clutches Lester's shirts hanging in the closet. In a fitting symbol of her return to her true gender role, she buries the gun that has become the symbol of her new sense of personal power in the clothes hamper.
For many, the beauty of America is that even when we break the rules, the core values remain intact. Sometimes, however, the core values need to change. This is when things get a little tougher.
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