I never want to hear the phrases ‘It was just like a TV show,’ or ‘It was just like a movie,’ or any variation on those in word choice or arrangement, ever again.
A few nights ago on the 10 o’clock news—which I never watch and shouldn’t have—the lede for a story about a local bail bondsman who (1) was kidnapped, (2) was tortured, and (3) escaped, was the following: “If you were a TV writer for a show like LAW & ORDER, you’d probably come up with a story like this.” That was the anchorman’s introduction, after which the show went to an eyewitness who said essentially the same thing: “It was just like a TV show.” Must we revel in our detachment?
The bondsman was tortured for days and that’s how his story’s introduced. No focus on the pain/suffering. Focus rather on his story’s similarity to an episode of your favorite cop/lawyer show, which by the way has stories “ripped from the headlines.” TV reflects reality, reality is compared to the TV show and then turned into a TV show—and so on and so on until we can’t live through any sort of life-drama without seeing ourselves as fictional figures at the center of a television show that must, therefore, have some epiphanic moment, or closure, and end with a song by Los Lobos.
I wouldn’t level the same complaint at those who—of 9/11—said, “It was just like a movie.” That was an incapacity to describe a tragedy whose magnitude we’d never witnessed except in films and so is forgivable. What happened to this bail bondsman goes on every day, though. We are capable of a fitting description. By reducing his story to the level of an L&O plotline, we’re reducing what he suffered through and the achievement of his escape. We aren’t doing his story justice.
Neither would I complain the same of someone who says, “I feel like a character in a novel,” because the long forms of fiction and non-fiction writing allow for a fuller approximation of reality. Television shows and movies are, by necessity, boom-boom-boom, from set piece to set piece, from one emotional drama to the next. Every scene/shot is essential. Meanwhile, novels can afford to include sections that reveal only character, that focus on the events of everyday life. So, novel readers are allowed this, thanks.
I hate this even more: “Everyone tells me I should have my own reality show, because blah blah blah…” Such statements are always followed by the most boring stories you’ve ever heard.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Another example (you can see more every night) of the pitiful state of “broadcast journalism”. I also love the so-called special reports that have a show or movie as a lead-in–tonight’s episode of L&O featuring a pedophile followed by the top news story about sex offenders in your hometown. Not that the story isn’t newsworthy, but the connection between fiction and non-fiction gets increasingly blurry. Take the “CSI effect” wherein perfectly rational (one supposes) people on actual juries expect the kind of concrete forensic evidence they “know” is available because they have seen it on numerous television shows. This begs the question, is all television “reality t.v.”? Conversely, if it isn’t on t.v., is it really real? Are people losing the ability to distinguish between reality and make-believe?