John Lazarus 2013-05-21T03:49:41-04:00 John Lazarus http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=john-lazarus Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for John Lazarus Good old fashioned elbow grease. So You Think You Can Be President: The U.S. Election as a Talent Search Show tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1978932 2012-10-18T16:53:04-04:00 2012-12-18T05:12:02-05:00 John Lazarus http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lazarus/ Everybody wants to get into the act. -- Frequent catch-phrase of U.S. entertainer Jimmy Durante (1893-1980)

There has been an inversion in the shape of television variety entertainment over the last quarter-century. The shows used to feature professional entertainers offering the product, and the studio and home audiences consuming it. Then, in 2001 , with English music producer Simon Fuller's Pop Idol, the first "talent search show," the game was turned inside-out.

Now, our screens are full of variety programs that consist of nothing but auditions, where the audience is invited in on the backstage process. We sit in as the hopefuls prepare, we stand with them as they perform, we are in the wings for the debriefing afterwards.

This inversion of the narrative -- backstage strategizing, put forward as onscreen entertainment -- has now worked its way into coverage of the current U.S. presidential election. Of course, major political events have always been subject to extensive morning-after analysis. And the recent increase in the sheer amount of discussion is a product of the 24-hour news cycle: after all, they have to fill all that time with something.

But this year, it's gone a little nuts. Both parties' conventions, and all the debates -- the epic tournament for the Republican leadership (in its ruthless attrition so reminiscent of the Idol shows), and then the one-on-ones between the candidates -- have been surrounded with assessments by teams of experts who sound like, and in many cases are, personal advisers to the performers. There are predictions and discussions of strategy before the events, and astonishingly detailed parsings of the competitors' performances afterwards.

The endless analysis this year has been providing a disorienting feeling of the tail wagging both donkey and elephant. All of the viewing and tweeting public is involved in an extended critique of the most minute details of each bit of carefully-scripted improv. Each candidate's every slip of the tongue is deconstructed with an intensity seldom seen outside of Biblical or Shakespearean exegesis. And it is central to the narrative that all this performance is aimed at a tiny, prestigious audience called the Undecided Voter.

In this election, the undecided vote is estimated at between 5 percent and 7 percent of the electorate (it was 20 percent in 2008). Matt Latimer, in The Daily Beast on Oct. 16, argued that the Undecided Voter doesn't actually exist, and the ones who showed up onscreen in that evening's Town Hall debate were fakes:

I don't know how you were picked for this forum, but there's no way on earth you truly do not know who you are voting for in November. ... maybe you just wanted to get on TV and mimic that "oh so concerned" look ... Usually we can tell from your question if you are secretly for Obama or Romney. You are not fooling anyone.


It does seem strange that any American citizen capable of voting could not know by now which of these two to vote for. This is an extraordinarily divisive election. Also, unlike the first televised presidential debate, in 1960, when most viewers had never before seen a moving image of John F. Kennedy, these debates feature two men whose moves, gestures and voices, their policies and their rhetoric, their missteps, misstatements and mistakes, are all too well known to us. The night of the Town Hall debate, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show gave a new title to his coverage of the election: "For the Love of God, Make it Stop."

But let's say Matt Latimer and I are wrong, and there are undecided voters, comprising 5 to 7 percent of the electorate. Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center has predicted a voter turnout of about 60 percent. So the undecided voters make up between 3 percent and 4.2 percent of all eligible voters. That's still more than the tiny difference in popularity between the two candidates, which is what gives them the power to sway the election, and makes it look as though 95.8 percent of eligible voters are busy advising on how to sway that precious 4.2 percent.

Everybody is in on the act, and it seems to be more and more about performance. In their first debate, Romney put on a lively show while Obama appeared weary, and the world decided Romney had won. In the second debate, Obama bounced back and Romney stumbled, and we all informed each other that it was Obama's election again. And meanwhile, those mysterious undecided voters -- who either have not been following the election, and are therefore unworthy of the power being conferred upon them, or who have, and are therefore aware of how they are being manipulated -- continue to hold all those undecided cards.]]> The Mass Appeal of the Secret Life tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1777558 2012-08-16T15:02:38-04:00 2012-10-16T05:12:28-04:00 John Lazarus http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lazarus/
You have doubtless recognized at least some of these TV shows: they are, respectively, Dexter (Showtime, about to begin the seventh of its allotted eight seasons), Breaking Bad (AMC / Sony, currently in its fifth and final season), Big Love (HBO, 2006-2011), The R1ȼhes (FX, 2007-2008), and Weeds (Showtime, 2007-2008).

Obviously, they have in common protagonists who live the American dream in its most respectable form, while maintaining a secret, criminal identity, sometimes with the collusion of their families. However, there are other features that these shows share.

One is sunlight. All five shows are set in the South: Florida, New Mexico, Utah, Louisiana and California, respectively. Besides the prettiness of the settings, the convenience of filming in and around L.A., and both the conservatism and hedonism of the present-day South, these locations also provide the visual theme of the all-revealing sun, always threatening to expose the protagonists' secrets. Everybody else seems to lead a life cheerfully open to public view, while our heroes keep their secrets hidden away -- often literally, in panels behind walls, ventilator shafts, attics, basements, and, in Dexter's case, the ocean floor.

Another theme is, predictably, moral ambiguity. Dexter does the same thing his colleagues do: brings bad guys to justice. Walter White's brother-in-law Hank, a DEA agent, is also a drug manufacturer, legally making beer in his garage. Bill Henrickson alienates some potential business partners with his abstemiousness, but then wins them over by introducing his wives. Grifter Wayne Malloy successfully impersonates a banker because their ethics and methodologies are so similar. And Nancy Botwin lives in a world where virtually everyone smokes weed.

Another recurring theme is the doubling of stress. Most of these characters lead lives that would be difficult enough without the secret criminal side. Many an episode of all these programs features our heroes trying to manage a packed schedule of domestic and professional duties on top of their illegal responsibilities.

The drama and comedy of the secret life is, of course, nothing new. From ancient Greek and Roman comedy, through Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, to Batman and Spiderman, we seem to have an unending fascination with the concept. However, this new spate of cable-TV dramatic programs, featuring characters whose entire lives are a lie, suggests something currently happening in our society. Clearly these programs strike a chord. Their popularity suggests that many, perhaps all, of us perceive ourselves, at one time or another, to be faking it.

People in power speak of the "impostor syndrome," in which one feels like a fraud, about to be exposed at any moment. The banking collapse of 2008 appears to have been based on our attempts to live beyond our means. The entire advertising industry is about helping us look better off than we are, even (or especially) if we have to go into debt to prove it. The recent documentary film The Queen of Versailles, hailed as an allegory for our society, traces the downfall of one family fortune, built on the shifting sands of time-shares and subprime loans. And we've all become used to scandal stories exposing priests, politicians and plutocrats.

Perhaps the current popularity of characters leading double lives simply reflects a pervasive consciousness that we are all involved in a spiraling project whose purpose is to con each other. We all want to appear more successful, sexier, richer, more powerful and more virtuous than we are, and we probably all conceal a nervous, wormy certainty that we're not getting away with it. This may be the source of the pleasure we feel watching killers, drug dealers, polygamists and con artists barely managing to sustain their own false images.

In one recurring gag that shows up on most or all of these shows, the protagonist -- frustrated, exhausted or merely feeling experimental -- suddenly blurts the awful truth -- and someone else laughs heartily at his joke. We may have come to feel, in this mendacious age, that honesty can be the worst policy, and that if we're getting away with our lies, then those we're deceiving would not believe the truth anyway.]]> Hardly the Mysterious Hand of God, Your Holiness tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1614071 2012-06-21T12:28:25-04:00 2012-08-21T05:12:05-04:00 John Lazarus http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lazarus/ told Irish Catholics that it is a "mystery" to him why priests and other church officials have been abusing children entrusted to their care for at least the past several decades.

In a pre-recorded video message for an outdoor mass in Ireland's largest sports stadium, attended by 75,000 Irish Catholics including the Prime Minister and president of Ireland, the Pope asked, "How are we to explain the fact that people who regularly received the Lord's body and confessed their sins in the sacrament of Penance have offended in this way? ... It remains a mystery."

To me, the mystery here is the fact that he finds it such a mystery. If he's being truthful, then one must assume that he doesn't want to know. After all, this is a man who -- along with millions of believers of Catholicism and many other religions as well -- enjoys the comfort of believing that he holds the solution to much greater mysteries than this, such as the origins of existence, our purpose in living, and what happens to us after we die.

In addition, he has presumably spent much of his life in the study of moral issues; he is leader of the very institution in which this abuse has been taking place; and, uniquely, he is believed by millions to have, under certain conditions, infallible judgment on matters of faith and morals. And yet he is stymied by this comparatively transparent sociological phenomenon. Though I am not a Catholic, a clergyman, a child abuser or a victim of one, I may be able to help clear up the mystery.

First, you raise several generations of boys and young men in sexist, sexually repressive and homophobic societies, with little or no sex education besides the teaching that all sexual feeling is sinful and shameful and to be stifled. (Of course, this does not apply to all Catholics and is not exclusive to Catholics. I am merely speculating on the probable backgrounds of some of the people whose behaviour so baffles the Pope.) A special word should be said about homosexuals among these men, who are taught that their feelings are even more iniquitous than those of their fellows.

Then, at an age when these kids are dealing with sexual feelings at their strongest and most troublesome, you offer them a career in which sexual celibacy is a respectable component rather than a sign of failure to maintain a relationship. Indeed, you teach them that not only is abstention respectable, it is absolutely required, and accords with the will of God.

Then you give these guys extraordinary status -- "holy fathers," directly consecrated, believed to be acting in the person of Christ Himself -- and put them in charge of large numbers of children who have been taught that these young men are God's representatives and must be obeyed in all matters. As mentioned above, you have given these men so little in the way of sex education that they might not draw as strong a distinction as some of us, between normal, adult sex and the abuse of children: after all, it's all sinful outside of marriage, even including masturbation, porn and contraception.

Finally, you let them know, by example, that if they get caught, they belong to a global organization of enormous wealth and power that will not turn them over to the secular authorities, but is likely to cover up their crimes and quietly transfer them to another diocese, with a fresh supply of children.

Of course, I am certainly not the first or only observer to make such comments. Barbara Dorris, an official with Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), says, in the same news story, "The pontiff's wrong: there's little mystery here," and points to priests' "sometimes almost absolute power, over devout and defenseless kids."

In any case, mystery solved, Your Holiness.]]> Taking a Trip with Maurice Sendak tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1502706 2012-05-09T09:29:53-04:00 2012-07-09T05:12:04-04:00 John Lazarus http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lazarus/
My friend, an education student, said, "Here, tell me what you think of this," and handed me a children's book called Where the Wild Things Are.

If you're an adult reading this post, you have probably already read Where the Wild Things Are, and this essay has no intention of promoting the use of illegal and powerful psychotropic drugs. However, the fact is that there may be less rewarding ways of being introduced to Maurice Sendak's masterpiece than as an adult on acid.

The book was instantly entrancing on many levels. Of course, it still is. There are the immediately recognizable Wild Things, with their uncanny resemblance to scary old people perceived through the eyes of childhood (Sendak based them on his Jewish relatives).

There is the complicated identity of Max as a wild thing himself, and his subsequent confrontation with the Wild Things within him. There is the ingenious formatting of the book, with its subtly expanding pictures, beginning within sedate margins beside polite words, and gradually growing to take over two-page spreads as the celebratory rumpus of King Max and the Wild Things casts its loud, silent, wordless spell.

There is the strange conflation of time, in which Max travels for years to the land of the Wild Things and back, to find his supper waiting for him, still hot. And there is the heroic myth at the heart of the story: the epic journey, the courageous confrontation, and the ultimate renunciation of power in favour of the love waiting at home.

Where the Wild Things Are was enormously controversial when it was first published. As Sendak said to James Still in an interview published in Theatre for Young Audiences: 20 Great Plays for Children,
"It was a very rocky time for me...Wild Things seemed to just rock the boat so dangerously...I was afraid I'd gone too far out on a limb. I'd been a 'good boy' until then. I'd done books that the librarians applauded... Where the Wild Things Are was way out of line, and the establishment -- and I'm speaking generally, many librarians and colleagues applauded my effort but many did not -- they felt that they had been betrayed by me... I had betrayed them with this ugly book."
But as the years went by, and the children responded, Where the Wild Things Are gradually took on the status of a classic.

The book is now required reading in my university course in Theatre for Young Audiences. Many of my students have intense stories of their own first encounters with it in childhood. We also discuss Sendak's many other accomplishments. His Outside Over There looks like a book by Mozart, if Mozart had drawn and written children's books. His In the Night Kitchen created its own controversy with its proud, explicitly naked baby hero. His sets for operas and ballets have revolutionised the art of theatre design. His smaller books, and illustrations for other writers' books, have introduced a delightful, mysterious style in which pictures, dialogue and narration can travel along in parallel lines, often telling three stories at once.

But perhaps his greatest achievement was virtually to transform the art of children's literature, sweeping away the sentimentality and falsehood that clutter so many books for kids, and returning to the truthfulness and bracing power of ancient fairy tales.

The controversial psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote, in the introduction to his The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, "The child must be helped to make some coherent sense out of the turmoil of his feelings...The child finds this kind of meaning through fairy tales."

In Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak created a modern fairy tale that has made sense of the inner world of recent generations of children.]]>