Here's an interesting analysis of Ms. Palin.
Palin phenomenon is reality-TV run amok
JOHN DOYLE
theglobeandmail.com
September 4, 2008
As I write this, the whole world is waiting for Sarah Palin, the self-styled hockey mom from Alaska, to make a defining speech at the Republican National Convention and "fire back" at the media that have caused a frenzy of speculation about Palin's life, politics and family.
That frenzy has generated the impression that the Republicans, in choosing Palin and pushing her family forward into the media glare, have chosen a bunch of Alaskan hillbillies to save the Republican ticket. It's true, really. And I'll tell you what has been wrought here - it's reality-TV run amok.
This is So You Think You Can Be Vice-President? A sequel to the Alaska-only reality TV show So You Think You Can Govern? See, the reality-TV genre can be defined loosely as "shows featuring ordinary people instead of professional actors." Here we've got ordinary people instead of professional politicians.
What's happening with the Palin story is what has happened over and over again on U.S. TV over the past 20 years. Ordinary, working-class people, sometimes startlingly inarticulate and with messy personal lives, are thrown into the TV spotlight and, by being ordinary - bartenders, truck drivers, hairdressers and janitors on Survivor or Big Brother - they are a good bet for being compelling on TV. The women have names such as Misty and the guys are called Ace, or similar.
Look at the Palin clan - a moose-hunting, snowmobiling couple with a bunch of kids who have soap-opera names: Track, Willow, Bristol, Piper and Trig. There's the knocked-up teenager daughter, the gun-totin' mom and even if it seems the teenagers are at it like rabbits, there's the declaration of deep conservatism and the assertion - later withdrawn in a sort-of manner - that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools. They're straight out of Survivor, Big Brother, Wife Swap, Love Cruise, Temptation Island, Married by America and Are You Hot?
A few years ago, CBS gave serious consideration to a reality series called The Real Beverly Hillbillies. The idea was to "transplant genuine Appalachian natives into the world of Los Angeles glitz and glamour." It never happened. But now it has, with a twist - Alaskan hillbillies have been transplanted into the world of Washington politics.
The torque that has driven so much of reality TV is the reasonable belief that ordinary people, with all their messy baggage and lack of sophistication, are more authentically American than the fictional doctors, lawyers and detectives being portrayed on network dramas. Either that, or the broadcaster bets on the audience being transfixed with horror by the trashy lumpen proles turning up on TV. In choosing Sarah Palin and pushing her family and life into prime time, the Republican Party is being driven by exactly the same marketing impulse.
Over the past few days, it has been striking to see so many pundits try to explain the Palin phenomenon in the context of TV. In The New York Times, Maureen Dowd saw the Palin story as a TV movie on the female-centric Lifetime channel - a Cinderella-story movie about a sassy Alaskan mom triumphing over old-guy politics. Dowd also used the phrase "Sarah's spunky, relentlessly quirky Northern Exposure story" and made reference to three other TV shows.
In The Guardian yesterday, former Washington correspondent Jonathan Freedland described the U.S. presidential competition: "A race that began as the West Wing now looks alarmingly like Desperate Housewives." Looking at the revelations about Palin and her family, he wrote, "Would even America's trashiest daytime soaps dare squeeze that much action into just the first four days of a new storyline?"
In this column, I joked that with John McCain and Palin, the Republicans were now running Mr. Burns and Marge Simpson for president and vice-president.
I was wrong. Everybody was wrong. This is the ultimate ascension of reality-TV culture in the United States. |
