Anna Nicole – Super-Size Me.
Stop the presses! Anna Nicole has been embalmed. Americans obsessed with the wall-to-wall news coverage of the trial that will decide who gets custody of the Texas playmate's body can be content that the object of our unhealthy hunger will be preserved. The story reminds us that we live in a culture where size truly matters, often to the point of the grotesque — whether it is maxi-fries, monster trucks, giant slurpees, or Texas tits.
Americans are psychopathic consumers who are easily fascinated by what media programmers jiggle before us. It is an unfortunate truth that we rarely bother to stop and evaluate what precisely we are ingesting. For several weeks, US television viewers have been able to tune in their cable news channels and watch the spectacle of dueling claims of paternity, trailer-trash testimony and even a weeping judge. Alive or dead, the media fascination with Anna Nicole's body appears to be an apt reflection of the seemingly contagious, diseased psychology that characterizes our television-based culture. News, reality, and reality television have become so jumbled that it is difficult to determine what is, in fact, real; and that's just how some folks want it. The homogenization of news and entertainment on cable TV is designed so viewers will be deliberately distracted from the news - so they will continue to buy products, ignore uncomfortable "realities" and not ask too many questions. Now that cable news has been swarming like maggots around the remains of the grinning, chest waving former model, television news directors can relax once again and ignore the fact that no one is demanding coverage of the coffins that are returning from the war in Iraq on a daily basis.
The public parade of Anna Nicole's life and death is another bizarre episode in our twisted, fast-food media landscape - a sad testament to boredom. We, the gawking public, are madly driven to wolf down super-sized displays of human stupidity and greed, lurid spectacles devoid of meaning. Fed morsel after tasty morsel, we have become addicts, controlled by our own sideshow mentality, desperately in need of fantasies that deal with large quantities of money or the meaningless lives of vapid celebrities. Program directors at television networks know that we can't focus our attention on any one subject for very long and that we hungrily gobble up titilating tales like so many Big Macs. As with OJ Simpson, Scott Peterson, Terry Schivo, Michael Jackson and others before her, Anna Nicole has truly been a cable news programmer's secret sauce.
Anna Nicole Smith or Vickie Lynn Marshall, became famous when she married J. Howard Marshall, a 90 year-old oil magnate bound to a wheel chair. Somehow it is not surprising that the public personna of Ms. Smith was a throwback to another era: a time when America worshiped plastic, peroxide fried goddesses with big boobs and small brains. It didn't seem to bother anyone that Anna Nicole's artificially enhanced physique was about as believable as her public display of righteous indignation against those who dared to claim she had married for money. She was endowed in more ways than one, and she attracted attention, keeping viewers glued to their screens while she wallowed in her manufactured celebrity.
We Americans have harbored distorted fantasies right from the beginning. Spanish and British galleons first came to these shores seeking lost cities of gold; 19th Century prospectors spooned precious metal from the soil and the world rushed in; European and Asian immigrants arrived with visions of money growing on trees. Our presence here has always been a testament to uncontrollable appetite. Over the centuries we learned to un-earth our darkened capacity for greed and we became a nation of gold diggers.
Since several issues surrounding the case of Ms. Smith have yet to be resolved, Americans can look forward to more weeks of its decomposing blond bombshell, assured that Dick Cheney and George Bush are protecting the country from terrorism. Anna may be gone, but we can be certain that the media images, designed to satiate our infantile hunger, will be duly preserved and reborn another day. Lets not be surprised if the teary-eyed judge awards custody of Anna Nicole Smith's body to CNN or Fox News. Perhaps then we may look up from our meal and begin to ask more pointed questions about precisely what we are being fed.
Stop the presses! Anna Nicole has been embalmed. Americans obsessed with the wall-to-wall news coverage of the trial that will decide who gets custody of the Texas playmate's body can be content that the object of our unhealthy hunger will be preserved. The story reminds us that we live in a culture where size truly matters, often to the point of the grotesque — whether it is maxi-fries, monster trucks, giant slurpees, or Texas tits.
Americans are psychopathic consumers who are easily fascinated by what media programmers jiggle before us. It is an unfortunate truth that we rarely bother to stop and evaluate what precisely we are ingesting. For several weeks, US television viewers have been able to tune in their cable news channels and watch the spectacle of dueling claims of paternity, trailer-trash testimony and even a weeping judge. Alive or dead, the media fascination with Anna Nicole's body appears to be an apt reflection of the seemingly contagious, diseased psychology that characterizes our television-based culture. News, reality, and reality television have become so jumbled that it is difficult to determine what is, in fact, real; and that's just how some folks want it. The homogenization of news and entertainment on cable TV is designed so viewers will be deliberately distracted from the news - so they will continue to buy products, ignore uncomfortable "realities" and not ask too many questions. Now that cable news has been swarming like maggots around the remains of the grinning, chest waving former model, television news directors can relax once again and ignore the fact that no one is demanding coverage of the coffins that are returning from the war in Iraq on a daily basis.
The public parade of Anna Nicole's life and death is another bizarre episode in our twisted, fast-food media landscape - a sad testament to boredom. We, the gawking public, are madly driven to wolf down super-sized displays of human stupidity and greed, lurid spectacles devoid of meaning. Fed morsel after tasty morsel, we have become addicts, controlled by our own sideshow mentality, desperately in need of fantasies that deal with large quantities of money or the meaningless lives of vapid celebrities. Program directors at television networks know that we can't focus our attention on any one subject for very long and that we hungrily gobble up titilating tales like so many Big Macs. As with OJ Simpson, Scott Peterson, Terry Schivo, Michael Jackson and others before her, Anna Nicole has truly been a cable news programmer's secret sauce.
Anna Nicole Smith or Vickie Lynn Marshall, became famous when she married J. Howard Marshall, a 90 year-old oil magnate bound to a wheel chair. Somehow it is not surprising that the public personna of Ms. Smith was a throwback to another era: a time when America worshiped plastic, peroxide fried goddesses with big boobs and small brains. It didn't seem to bother anyone that Anna Nicole's artificially enhanced physique was about as believable as her public display of righteous indignation against those who dared to claim she had married for money. She was endowed in more ways than one, and she attracted attention, keeping viewers glued to their screens while she wallowed in her manufactured celebrity.
We Americans have harbored distorted fantasies right from the beginning. Spanish and British galleons first came to these shores seeking lost cities of gold; 19th Century prospectors spooned precious metal from the soil and the world rushed in; European and Asian immigrants arrived with visions of money growing on trees. Our presence here has always been a testament to uncontrollable appetite. Over the centuries we learned to un-earth our darkened capacity for greed and we became a nation of gold diggers.
Since several issues surrounding the case of Ms. Smith have yet to be resolved, Americans can look forward to more weeks of its decomposing blond bombshell, assured that Dick Cheney and George Bush are protecting the country from terrorism. Anna may be gone, but we can be certain that the media images, designed to satiate our infantile hunger, will be duly preserved and reborn another day. Lets not be surprised if the teary-eyed judge awards custody of Anna Nicole Smith's body to CNN or Fox News. Perhaps then we may look up from our meal and begin to ask more pointed questions about precisely what we are being fed.
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