Box of Nothing
by Ian Grey
page 2
The Entertainment State: "One of us!" ?
One might wonder why we never heard about this incendiary tale of décolletage, blood, and judicial malfeasance, a real-life version of The Crucible. One might also understandably think this contradicts what I just said about 'outsiders' being okey-doke and assimilable market-segments. But Sarah is not a 'segment', she's not part of anyone's focus-group. She's just unusual. And vocal.
Still, the reasons for her censure are simple, quite possibly Evil, and a threat to all artists on Earth. Even Sheryl Crow.
You did not hear about the Incredible Sarah Story because news is almost entirely a media creation, and self-generated. Radio, network and cable TV, movies, newspapers—all are under the aegis of five corporations (Disney/CapCities, Viacom, Sony, News Corp, TimeWarner, and with MicroSoft and Seagrams trying to angle in as the sixth and seventh.)
Only in such an incestuous environment could Marilyn Manson punching out a few Spin editors (why is this a problem?) be considered 'news,' to say nothing of our President's penis issues. Look at Sarah from the point-of-view of your average corporate movie industry VP:
"Okay, she's a babe, but give her five seconds and she's saying more fucked-up shit about all of Christendom than Anton LeVey managed in a lifetime. Religious conflict doesn't sell. And what the fuck is a 'pagan'? Does she eat babies? Forget this broad."
Worse, she writes about her problems with the Christian program, her enjoyment of arcane rituals, and, worst of all, her need to be understood by people who might be interested in doing so. She does this every month. She goes on TV and talks more. She was even on Ricki Lake, for God's sake.
Sarah, in another Miller coinage, simply is not a viable member of "The Entertainment State." Despite the tabloid aspects of her story, Sarah does not fit into the rigid structures of what culture critic David J. Skal calls "the monster show."
From Todd Browning to Diane Arbus, America has secretly adored "freaks." But it is a culturally forbidden love, and can only be addressed via a rigorously-enforced set of laws. Recent examples include the freak shows seen on Jerry Springer, Oprah, or the Independent Council's investigation of our President.
The basic theatrical form for engagement in the monster show is one where the monster or freak in question—whether a transsexual Muslim hunger artist or whatever—is engaged to act out a very traditional American morality play with the "host."
Shuttled before the country's leering eyes, he (and/or she) tells, in detail, of his or her terrible deviation from The Program. The audience oohs and ahs in horror/delight. The host chastises—gently—the poor, and usually, none-to-articulate creep, and then said creep is shuttled off into the big nowhere, never to be heard from again. We are assured that he or she is not, in the immortal Browning freak declaration of validity, "One of us!" It is also essential that, while the freak titillates on an Arbus level, he or she must not be "attractive" enough to spawn more freaks (of course, if enough viewers are converted to create a new market segment, as in, say, the case of an Anne Rice, then we enter another freak-show also known as mass entertainment).
Sarah, dressed not unlike a darker Holly Golightly for her media appearances, is articulate, charming, and unrelenting in her caustic view of American/Christian verities. But even her critiques and occasional on-camera blood-drinking are done with a disarming Southern charm thing that I trust has won her many converts (except Ricki Lake, who I'm told hated Sarah because she could easily slip into a size 4).
Perhaps not surprisingly, there are few willing to sponsor Sarah's 'zine, even in the questionably trangressive world of trust-fund rebels who think they're, like, trangressive. The lack of sponsorship points out the real problem here, which is a sort of ambient fear, an unspoken understanding of exactly when one has crossed the line from media freak to something uncatagorizable.
In short, if Sarah wants to keep her kids, she will have to recant. Streamline her ideological ass. Switch her beverage preference to Jagermeister and hope for the best.
Or she may have to stop writing, close the 'zine, and delete her website. So the world doesn't know who she really is. So she can keep her kids.
And that about sums up the relationship between the artist and The World in post-corporate America.
Paranoid Much?
If the above seems like a wee bit paranoid, keep in mind that:
1. Disney/CapCities owns, or co-owns, or has a really big interest in, among others:
Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Films, Touchstone Pictures, ABC Online (with AOL), A&E (co-owned with Hearst and GE), The Disney Channel, Disney Television, ESPN (80%), ABC Radio (21 stations), TV Stations in 10 major markets, 8 radio Stations, ABC Network News, Fairchild Publications (trade), 11 secondary market daily newspapers, the California Angels, The Mighty Ducks, and bits of State Farm Insurance. There are also planned or already-extant Disney "communities" (tiny townlets) such as Celebration, near—surprise—Orlando.
Just in passing: It has recently been estimated that Disney CEO Michael Eisner, in 1998, raked in $750,000 in salary, plus approximately $565 million in cashed-in stock options. Yet, when workers for his company went on strike in the fall of 1998 because Disney would not reveal the details of their new health plan, the Mouse just hired new, non-union employees. It has been estimated that Eisner could pay for the entire health-plan for about $3 mil—in other words, petty change. [Disney Strike story filed on CNN Online, November 2, 1998.] [Eisner info from E!Online, January 7, 1999.]
Lest it seem I have some sort of thing against Disney in particular, scan the (partial) corporate set-up for Viacom:
Paramount Pictures, the Cinamerica theater chain (50% with Time Warner), Blockbuster Video, Comedy Central (50% with TimeWarner), MTV, VH-1, Showtime, publishers Fireside, MTV Books, Pocket Books, Scribner, Simon & Schuster, The Free Press, Washington Square Press, 11 TV stations, ten radio stations, half of the UPN Network and assorted theme parks.