TV as Creaturely Motives

Finally I’ve had a chance to catch up with television.

I was surprised at the naivete of the denial. Every channel advertises fertility (more life) and escape from death.  The ads are virtually all about food or pharmacy that builds you up (“Show more of you”) or that saves you from the Reaper. The magic pills or elixir are all washed down with sex or at least inexhaustible desire.

Humans are all sunny seductive smiles. Or they’re monsters.  Nature programs mostly feature the predatory shark or the predatory croc or the sneaky snake. Thrillers and police dramas feature predatory outlaws.  Heroes always rescue innocents from the gun,  jaws, or some other tool of the Reaper.

Politics of course also dramatizes a contest between fertility vs. death-anxiety.  The president promises to bring back utopia.  Like Zeus, he is secretly envied for his masterful sexuality: he delicately brags about getting his way with any swan he chooses.  In fact he can do anything he wants.  He commands indomitable vitality.  As the comparison shows, this is a desire to be god.  And by the way, immortal..

Naturally the Reaper is a scapegoat—at the moment, specifically immigrants who supposedly rape and kill,.  or opponents who threaten to attack you and scorn you to social death.

No wonder people are confused.  This politics isn’t about ideas or policies. It’s about survival, and it’s especially hard to deal with because of denial. If you talk about hunger for life and death-anxiety, nobody seems to know what you’re talking about.

 

The Tacit Muse

The Tacit Muse expands my blog for Psychology Today, Aswim in DaNile.  After six years I had to quit writing for the magazine because advertising pressure was pressuring the editors to censor content.

My last essay for them weighed in on the #Me too controversy. I suggested that the workplace is more authoritarian these days because business has crushed unions and made it harder for working folks to have a voice.  And without a voice, it’s not easy to say No.

Since the editors’ job was, among other things, to sell ads, and since business generally has been hostile to organized labor, an essay urging a stronger voice for working folks would have presented problems.  In the Internet world, where things can suddenly go viral, the editors I dealt with didn’t risk being quoted. So they refused to answer questions, explain policy, etc.  A totally de-professionalized situation.

In six years if writing for Psychology Today, I had roughly 250,000 reads.  Such figures, I take it, are marginal—trivial—for online business.  So let’s try to create a space for ideas here.