John Whitehead's Commentary
Survivor TV and Ol' Sparky--Mainstreaming Brutality
These days, however, the sounds of crackling electricity, rising smoke and tortured cries are providing stiff competition for the carousel, as family members cheer the execution of their children and loved ones in the electric chair.
Around since 1996, an amusement park ride called "Original Shocker" is now beginning to make the news. This new form of entertainment zaps and vibrates its victims in a contraption that looks just like the real electric chair. For about a dollar, moms and dads can fry their children in Ol' Sparky's oak throne. Brothers and sisters can even the score with a real vengeance, complete with leather restraints, steel electrodes and a vibration system that simulates the 31,200 volts advertised on the machine's side.
In one amusement arcade on the East Coast, more than 2,000 people took a simulated death ride during the Fourth of July weekend, while family members and friends stood by to watch the "executions." One father, enjoying the experience along with his family, reported, "The first time I saw it, I was shocked. It is weird, and that's what makes it cool."
As it turns out, this was just the beginning of reality entertainment. Some 23 million Americans are now making the television show Survivor the biggest TV success since Regis Philbin's wannabe Millionaire show. In its premier episode, Survivor participant Richard, acting more like a caveman than the corporate trainer and consultant that he is, pulled a rat out of a trap and killed the animal for dinner.
A more recent episode featured the participants clubbing rats to death and chuckling over their fondness for the rats' roasted flesh. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has protested the pointless brutality, calling CBS television executives "bird brains" for encouraging the show's viewers to cheer the needless slaughter of birds and other animals.
But PETA may be on to something bigger, pointing out that "Cruelty to animals is known by FBI profilers and psychologists to be a precursor of violence toward humans. The recent rash of deadly school shootings all had one thing in common--the young shooters first 'practiced' on animals."
Entertainment such as Survivor and Ol' Sparky are making prime-time fare of cruel and backward human behavior. Instead of an outcry from our religious and political leaders, it seems that we can only look forward to programming that is even more extreme and bizarre.
I am not suggesting that adult viewers are unable to distinguish reality from voyeuristic television, or "VTV," as some call it. These shows may be, as some suggest, only a way of "playing out" some of our fears and fantasies in a way that is perhaps less harmful than the old standbys of drugs and alcohol. Yet, there is something unsettling about exposing young minds to a steady diet of VTV and games such as Ol' Sparky.
Entertainment is, by its nature, voyeuristic in the sense that the triumph and tragedy in other people's lives has a unique pull on the humanity in each of us. We can be encouraged or inspired--or just moved--by the experiences of others.
But the big question is--should we allow any form of entertainment to dehumanize, degrade and otherwise drag us down to the lowest level of humanity? How far will we go in the name of entertainment?
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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