The Corporatization of My Favorite Things

Corporations are the faceless entities that tell us what our health insurance will cover and spend their time endlessly buying and selling each other on the world’s stock markets. But these days, we all know how close these mindless drones are to our everyday lives. We pick up dinner at their fast food restaurants and purchase clothing at their retail outlets. Most, if not all, of us work for them. It’s become a cliché to complain about them. After all, what good does it do? They’re everywhere. And believe it or not, we’re the ones who asked for it.

The holy grail of the perfect “free market” economy, the beloved free enterprise system, is what we wanted. Be careful what you wish for. If you dislike being a nameless number in a faceless machine, earning money from the “man” so that you can put it right back into his pocket by purchasing the goods your neighbor helped create, you can thank yourself and the rest of us for the privilege. The dream was that people who were free to buy and sell according to the laws of supply and demand would do so, and that all would be right with the world. The problem with trying to recreate a dream within this imperfect world is that the people involved in it not only aren’t perfect themselves but also will take the quickest, easiest route to get whatever they want.

The first thing anyone in a position of power is going to do is cement that position. The second thing is improve upon that position. Both of those actions are most quickly and easily done by stepping on other people’s heads and taking what other people have. But you have to do it carefully. You have to make it look like you’re doing what’s best for the company you work for or the organization you head up. Easy enough, when you’re at the top.

We can’t really blame them. We’d do the same in their position. It’s the American dream: to rise to the top of the economic structure and then boss everyone else around with one hand in the cookie jar. Deny it if you want to, but you know deep down that you’re no different. That’s simply how we human beings are: flawed, imperfect, and selfish. It’s part of our survival instinct, the most powerful instinct of all.

The problem stems from the fact that we’re all like that, and that we all get a little jealous. Why should one person have all that power and money instead of me? Sometimes, he worked for it. But sometimes, it just seems like he lucked into it. Then we realize that he’s taking more than his fair share of the profits. Instant cause for rebellion. Certainly, no one would argue that anyone should get more than what they’re due. But the market is set up in such a way that there’s no method to tell what is someone’s fair share, and we’re the ones who set it up like that. We wanted the market to be free to do whatever it wanted and make as big a profit as it could. We thought that meant that we would be able to build our own capitalist dreams and live happily ever after. Instead, the big guys got bigger, and we got lost in the shuffle.

Now, some people are yearning for the days of the Mom ‘n’ Pop stores, the days when a new business had a few years to get on its feet before being crushed by the mega-corporations. Such small-town quaintness had its drawbacks, but at least you knew who you were dealing with, and everybody had a chance to give their dream a try. That wouldn’t work today. Small enterprises can’t support themselves. So what do they do? They farm themselves out to the big boys, wholesale or piecemeal. We can’t blame them. They can’t survive any other way since we buy all our food and clothes from the faceless machines that run our world. And we can’t afford to support the little guys since the faceless machines we work for pay us only enough to buy more of their own products.

Eventually, this won’t seem so bad. Eventually, things will get even worse or make a big change, and we’ll all look back on today as the “good old days.” In the meantime, we can watch the corporatization of our favorite things change the face of our world forever. It’s not just the new Walmarts moving into town or one big company buying another, sucking it dry, and reselling it. It’s the little things. The corporate sponsorships of school lunch items, the advertising spaces set aside within movies and video games, the way everything becomes more and more generic as it tries harder and harder to succeed at garnering enough attention to survive. Do we want everything to be the same as everything else? I hope so, because that’s what we’re getting.

No one would begrudge some start-up company the opportunity to make a little profit by partnering with a big corporation on a sales deal. After all, how else are they going to do it these days? But what that means in the long run is that everything becomes just like everything else. When the Dippy store has to buy and sell WeOwnEverything Corporation’s products, what happens to Dippy’s products? What happens to the customer’s options? They both disappear. Eventually Dippy becomes just another piece of the big machine, and the rest of us have to buy from the big boys whether we like it or not.

Humans are creatures of habit, so it’s no surprise that we’re most comfortable in a homogenous society, where everything is the same. There’s nothing to shock us, right? Well, almost nothing. And there’s nothing to confuse us, right? Except maybe that nagging doubt in the back of our minds about our lack of choices in this brave new world. We like to think that our freedom of choice is important to us, but the truth is, we willingly give it up every day. When you choose the same thing over and over, no matter how you rationalize it, you’re guaranteeing that tomorrow there won’t be any other choices.

There’s a lot of talk about the “fat cats” of corporate America, but we built those “cats,” and we built the machines that make them fatter. We did it because “capitalism is the fair way to run an economy” and because “it gives us choices about what to buy and what do with our lives” and because “corporations are efficient.” None of that is true, though. Capitalism is only as fair the people behind it. We’re losing choices and freedoms every day. And corporations are only efficient when it comes to making a profit, but they do so at the expense of everything else, from employee health and happiness to variety and uniqueness of product (not to mention quality). If the world were a game of Monopoly, this would all be a good thing. Profit is always good, right? What if it’s soulless, heartless, faceless, generic profit? Is it still good?

Shades of Gray: The World Is Not Black and White

Some people live in a black and white world. I can see why they would want to. It’s so simple and easy. This is bad, that is good. This is wrong, that is right. Everyone should do this, no one should do that. But the real world isn’t black and white; it’s an infinite number of shades of gray.

It’s easy to take a piece of advice or an old expression and make it an absolute by which to live your life. But one extreme is usually no better than the other, and the world as a whole already knows this. Money is not bad, even if there’s lots of it. A million dollars, sitting by itself, could never hurt anyone. Many people mistake the original saying to be “Money is the root of all evil.” But what it really said was “The love of money is the root of all evil.” It’s people’s reactions to money that make it difficult to deal with. It’s a gray area. Money can help a poor family pull themselves out of debt. It can also make people do crazy, mean, even evil things to get it and keep it. By itself, money is worthless. When you factor in people, it becomes more dangerous. How much depends on the individual person. Shades of gray.

Guns are obviously more dangerous than money. But, once again, it depends on the person holding it. If left to sit on a table, a gun could never hurt anyone. When picked up by a person with no intent to pull the trigger, a gun is unlikely to hurt anyone, especially if left unloaded. When picked up by a person with a willingness, if not an intent, to hurt someone, a gun becomes dangerous. When picked up by a person with a clear intent to hurt someone, a gun becomes frighteningly dangerous. If left to their own devices, without access to guns, people with an obvious intent to harm others would find another way, so the adage “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people” would seem to be true. However, without guns, those people who have only a willingness to use them and those people who do not intend to use them would be unlikely to find another way to hurt anyone. There would be no accidental shootings. Shades of gray.

Alcohol is viewed by some people to be as bad as guns. Indeed, it has had a hand in many deaths. But to say that it is solely responsible for those deaths is to ignore the other factors. By itself, it could harm no one. Only when people choose to drink it, or rather too much of it, does it become a problem. Some people can handle liquor better than others can. For some, one beer is like a glass of water. For others, it’s a ticket to decreased inhibitions and fuzzy thoughts. For those who can handle it, one drink is no more dangerous than that glass of water. It’s the drink after that that causes the vision to blur, the car to swerve, the judgement to fuzz. Does that make the second drink more dangerous or more evil than the first? Does it make the second drink just as dangerous or evil as the first drink taken by a person who can’t handle their liquor? Both people chose to drink what they couldn’t handle. Even if they didn’t know where their threshold was, they knew the dangers and the risks. A glass of wine to commemorate a wedding is considered polite, even honorable. A glass of wine in a lonely apartment with no one to share it with is considered shaky judgement. Shades of gray.

When viewed from the varied perspectives of the entire world, anything can be seen to have both white and black in its moral spectrum. Everything has shades of gray in it. To live in a world of only black and white can lead to misunderstandings, even danger under the right circumstances. To see the world in all its grayness is difficult and frustrating and often confusing. Choices are easier to make when you think there is only a choice between black and white. But overlooking the gray options that are available to you takes something away from the potential of your life and yourself. And it keeps you from fully understanding the world you live in.

Can Today’s News Be Objective?

With accusations of bias flying from both sides of any conflict, the question of whether or not today’s news programs are, or indeed can be, truly objective seems almost moot. Perhaps, there’s a question that might put the entire situation in a different light, namely this: Has any news report, ever, been objective? Or how about, should news be objective?

It is automatically assumed by most people that reported news is “just the facts.” Local evening news programs tell us about next week’s weather, a child who has been kidnapped, or yesterday’s parade. There isn’t much room for bias in such stories. But the bigger the issue, the more subjective the news reports are likely to be. Many people seem to be not only contented with this but also positively jubilant about it. Why else would ultra-conservative or ultra-liberal radio talk shows and television “news programs” be so popular? (Yes, I admit, I’m thinking about Fox News right now.) Is it just that humans in general like to be told what to think? Perhaps, but is there also something else at play?

I worked at a small-town newspaper for eight years, and I’ve had my share of struggles with both co-workers and readers about what constitutes a fair, objective report of a news item. I went into the field of journalism with what I thought was a pretty good idea of what people want from their news sources. I always thought objectivity in the reporting of the straight facts was the most important thing a journalist could strive for. But I soon discovered that one what one person thought of as “objective” was not necessarily the same for everyone else.

How could this be? How could objectivity be subjective like that? The answer is easy: Pure objectivity would be as simple as it sounds in a world of people with objective views, but no one in this world can have a completely objective viewpoint on anything. We bring our own bias to anything we discuss, argue over, or just think about. We can’t help it; we’re only human. Therefore, even a straight report of “just the facts” can actually be much more subjective than you might think. It’s all about the psychology of words and attitudes. Add to that the fact that there are so many things we take for granted, and it becomes nearly impossible to decipher what’s really “hard news” and what’s not.

Imagine you’re listening to your favorite news program, and you hear the following from the reporter: “President Bush visited the troops today to bring cheer to our men and women in uniform.” Sounds innocuous enough, right? But think about how that reporter knew why President Bush was visiting the troops. He was told so, either by someone from the White House or by a press release that came from the White House.

Reporters are not omniscient; they have to take a certain amount of information on faith, as well. For all they know, the President might have been conducting a secret meeting under the guise of a visit to the troops. If so, nobody lied about it; they just left out that particular detail in the report. It may be important for the President to conduct meetings in secret sometimes, but the point is clear: Things may not be as simple as they seem.

Try this one: A newspaper prints a story about the kidnapping of a local child that says, “Police are searching the area thoroughly for any clues.” Sounds promising. But once again, we’re making an assumption. We’re trusting law enforcement to be thorough. The sentence could have read, “Police are searching the area for any clues.” It would have been just as accurate and wouldn’t have made any assumptions about the skill or determination of the individual police officers involved in the search. We want to be optimistic, of course. But optimism can color objectivity as easily as pessimism.

One more: “The township clerk, responsible for the township’s money and equipment, kept the heavy equipment on his own farm. When several neighbors attempted to view the equipment, as the law says they can, they were told by the clerk that they were trespassing and had to leave immediately.” This story paints the township clerk in a rather bad light. Let’s see how it would sound if it were written somewhat differently: “Several neighbors entered the township clerk’s property, and when he observed them, he informed them that they were trespassing and asked them to leave.”

Neither version tells whether the township clerk knew of the residents’ harmless intentions or not, but the second version definitely sounds more like he was simply trying to keep trespassers off of his property. We don’t know whether he would have welcomed them had they explained themselves, and we don’t know whether they bothered trying. But one story seems to accuse the clerk of unfairness, and the other sounds more objective. Even the more objective version could be misunderstood, of course; for instance, someone sympathetic to the clerk might read it and complain to the newspaper, saying that they were trying to implicate him in some sort of cover-up. And that is where the reader’s bias comes into play.

It’s bad enough that the reporter can write something with an unintentional bias to it. Even if they have carefully crafted their words to weed out any potential personal opinions, a reader or viewer may still make assumptions of their own, or they may feel so strongly about a particular issue that they hear bias where there is none. Human beings are virtually incapable of writing, reading, or hearing anything without putting a personal spin on it.

So what’s the point of trying? Should we give up and let personal opinions become the new “news?” One of my former co-workers expressed a view very much like that once. She felt that individual newspapers should have their own viewpoint, as directed by the editor or influenced by the individual writers, and that pure objectivity was a goal so unattainable as to be undesirable. This opinion of hers might have had something to do with the fact that she was editor at the time, but I still wonder how many newspeople out there feel the same way. And I still disagree.

I maintain that just because something is difficult, or even nearly impossible, doesn’t mean that it should be abandoned altogether. I don’t consider the extremist talk shows or opinionated television news programs to be real news. Certainly, you can glean some facts from them, but in some cases, doing this can be harder than getting the facts from a comedy news program like that one with comedian Jon Stewart. And a lot of major news sources today are hardly much better. I doubt that objective news reporting has ever been easy; I’m sure there were people arguing about objectivity when they were signing the Declaration of Independence. As long as people have had opinions and differing viewpoints, they have looked for ways to express them. Remember, reporters are human, too.

A reporter’s job is to inform people. With any luck, and a little hard work, we should be able to inform people of just the facts. It may be the hardest part of the whole job, just to write or speak these facts without bias creeping into the words. Anything worth doing is generally hard to do. But anything worth doing is worth doing well. We may be hard pressed to find a fairly objective report of the news to inform us about the state of our world, but we should still keep trying to find it, or to create it. Even if we only come close, it means we nearly made it, and we may do better tomorrow.

Do Movies Have Hidden Agendas?

Something I wrote a long time ago for another site:

When the movie “Happy Feet” was just starting to build up some hype, I overheard a news report criticizing it as an attempt to push a political agenda regarding the dangers of global warming. Putting aside my personal feelings on the subject, I found the suggestion laughable. Of course, I haven’t seen the movie, and it’s agenda may be more evident than the trailers suggest, but to set one movie aside as more worthy of scrutiny than any other is careless at best, manipulative at worst.

Nearly every movie ever made has had an agenda of some sort, whether political, psychological, or economic. In fact, it may be that every movie ever made has had an agenda, but there are probably many films, if not nearly all of them, in which the agenda was completely unintentional and, for that reason, may well be excused from any accusations of wrong-doing, in my opinion.

An excellent example of political propaganda on the silver screen would be the collection of Sherlock Holmes movies that were made during World War II starring Basil Rathbone. While completely ignoring the state of world affairs at the time would have been considered blasphemy by many (especially since Holmes was brought into the modern era for the series) the films went so far as to involve the famous detective directly in cases of war-time espionage and battles with the evil Axis powers. Suddenly, Holmes was a weapon used by the government, rather than a champion for justice. Certainly, fighting off the forces of Nazi Germany can be considered justice, but there is no denying that these films were designed to encourage patriotism and make a statement. This is an extreme example, of course.

In some cases, particularly in the case of psychological agendas, the statement is not so readily apparent to those who are not looking for it. To most people, fairy tales and the movies based on them are just good bedtime stories for their little ones, wholesome family entertainment. However, any student of psychology will tell you that fairy tales, even those as enchanting as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, serve to teach little girls that they can improve their lot in life only by marrying well and letting their princes sweep them off of their feet.

This is somewhat of an over-generalization. There are fairy tale films with more merit than that; “The Little Mermaid” and “Ella Enchanted” spring to mind, even if the latter isn’t based on an original fairy tale. Did the authors of the original tales intend to make such a statement to the little girls of the world? We will probably never know. But it doesn’t mean that such films should be banned from the family DVD player, just taken in moderation and with a grain of salt.

If you’re looking for examples in film of women being portrayed as weak or otherwise helpless to save themselves or their world, or just examples of men being portrayed as better than women, you don’t have to look far. But if you’re not paying attention or you believe that sometimes a movie is just a movie, you’ll probably miss most of the signs. The same can be said of any other type of psychological agenda. It has been suggested that an unspoken lesson being taught by “Star Trek” and its many incarnations is that the furtherance of technology is good. However, “Jurassic Park” very clearly states that taking technology too far is very, very bad.

If “The Lord of the Rings” is indeed a representation of author Tolkien’s experiences in war, then the stories of Middle-earth are definitely saying that “war is hell,” to borrow a phrase from Sherman. And there is no end to the movies that describe nature in its wild, uncivilized state as undesirable and contemptible, from “Paul Bunyan” to the aforementioned “Jurassic Park.”

Another example of manipulation in the movies is more well-known to fans of the big screen: economic agendas. Any movie studio or producer knows that the best way to make money off of the populace is to release films that promote the most popular opinion of the day, or conversely, the least popular and, therefore, most inflammatory opinion of the day. Economic agendas influence and even direct political and psychological agendas. During war-time, it makes sense to release films that promote patriotism and praise for government and country. In some cases, it may also be advisable to produce a movie or two railing against the current war; people who share the same opinion on the subject will flock to it.

The majority of the typical movie audience may be outraged, but they’ll have to see the film before they will know what to be outraged over. When global warming is a hot-button issue and a topic on everyone’s mind, a lot of money can be made by producing movies that address it and other environmental issues. “Happy Feet” may be an obvious attempt at convincing an audience that global warming is a real threat, but it is certainly not the first movie to capitalize on current events, nor will it be the last.

If the real fear about hidden agendas in movies is that it will control what the audience is thinking, we must not have much faith in our own cognitive abilities. And if the fear is only for our children, perhaps fairy tales should be banned from the family television and each movie screened and judged carefully and individually by a panel of experts hired to tell us what to watch. Otherwise, maybe we should remember that sometimes a movie is just a movie.

I Will Defend to the Death

This may be an unusual topic to start my blog thingy off with, but it was something I read today for the first time.  Today being whatever day I wrote this on, since I am presently preparing this little experiment for publication.  I don’t know if you are familiar with any of the things mentioned in this article:  Why Defend Freedom of Icky Speech.  But Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors, so when I stumbled onto a link to his journal, I was eager to see what the fuss what about.  Some of Gaiman’s work made me think, and some of it made me laugh, but most of it touched me in a way that I think only other authors and creators could understand.  If the extent of your knowledge about Gaiman comes from the recent movie Coraline, I suggest you visit a library and see if you can find the book the movie was based on.  I also recommend the Sandman series; it is art and philosophy in book form.  With a touch of psychology, which happens to be one of my favorite subjects.

Anyway, in this particular piece of journalistic musing, Gaiman takes on freedom of speech and how it affects things like pornography and things of questionable artistic merit.  This is a subject close to home since I spend a lot of time on the First Amendment fence.  On one hand, as an author and former journalist, I believe that Freedom of Speech is our most important freedom.  On the other hand, I think things like lolicon and incest are vile and should be stricken from our literary memory.  However, I am always open to other perspectives and willing to alter my own if someone comes up with something logical and practical for me to consider.  Mr. Gaiman has done so.

Mr. Gaiman makes the quiet yet assertive argument that indefensible and repulsive things MUST be defended under the First Amendment; otherwise, it will be impossible to defend those things which SHOULD be protected.  It’s true, our justice system is a blunt instrument with no precision and no discernment.  It doesn’t care if it is mowing down the Harry Potters with the Lady Chatterly’s.  I still cannot bring myself to call lolicon good, but I think I will have to agree with Mr. Gaiman about why it should be defended.  I suppose it’s ironic that this lesson should come to me from a man born in the UK, and not the US.  And for the record, I have no problem with porn of any kind that involves consenting adults, no matter how explicit it is.  That’s both freedom of expression and freedom of choice at work, there.

I have always been among the first to defend Michaelangelo’s David as art, as well as other studies of the naked human form. Perhaps, this category of artistic merit should include the naked child form, as well. I’m not the one to make that assertion. I suppose there’s a sort of raw energy in the idea, like looking at growth and creation in action. Such a metaphor has been expressed in many other ways, and I certainly think that artists should be allowed to experiment. I also think that children shouldn’t be taught to be ashamed of their own bodies, which is something that seems to be running rampant in society these days. So perhaps, art is the way to show the beauty of the naked child form.

Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen, many people, artists included, cannot differentiate for themselves the difference between beauty and sexualization. That is my “beef” with lolicon and similar forms of art. Certainly, the natural sexuality of children should be explored, BY CHILDREN. Not by adults whose goals and interests are questionable. It’s a difficult line to walk. If all adults could be trusted to be kind, gentle, compassionate, and honestly informative, we could allow free-form expression and exploration of all kinds for both adults and children. But let’s face it, human adults are selfish. They care only about their own feelings and desires. Even the urge to protect one’s own children is a natural instinct given to us by Mother Nature to preserve the gene pool. Maybe someday we’ll get there.

In the meantime, I will err on the side of Free Speech. After all, like Mr. Gaiman says, if we don’t defend the stuff we don’t agree with, there’ll be no help for us when the stuff we want to defend comes under attack. I’ve always said that the ultimate question of whether something can or should be done is whether or not it harms someone. Drawings don’t harm anyone, assuming there are no live models being forced to pose against their will. I know there are plenty of arguments about how rape, incest, and child pornography drawings can influence people’s minds, and I won’t disagree (I’ve made many of them myself). Like I said, psychology is a favorite subject. But people have to learn to have strong minds of their own. If every little naughty or violent piece of artwork makes you want to do what you see, you have problems that go beyond the reach of censorship. And if you’re spending a lot of time looking at these things and thinking about copying them, I suggest you get help. Certainly, anyone with a great deal of influence on a group of people should consider consequences and be careful about the sort of message they send to the people. But forcing them to color within the lines, so to speak, will only make people curious about what’s being hidden. The dichotomy between American desires and the American habit of hiding them has already created a confused culture of “this is bad, but it’s fun.” Perhaps, if sex and related subjects were discussed in an open, educational manner and a nurturing environment, clashes over what is and isn’t pornography would no longer be an issue. Fear comes from the unknown. We fear what MIGHT be bad, without considering whether it actually is. That’s how book burnings got started.

And I don’t know about you, but I like my Harry Potters right where they are. If keeping them there requires standing behind the lolicon artists in solidarity, then I’ll be there. At least until our justice system can be fine-tuned a bit. I suppose that’ll take a few millenia. For now, if you don’t like something, speak against it. But don’t try to bend or goad the law into shutting it down. Today it’s Marquis de Sade, tomorrow it’s Twilight. It really is a fine line, and we’re walking it with galoshes on, swinging a great, big club.