Let's Get Real



Yes! We're all individuals!!!

Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.

--Oscar Wilde

Normally I try not to expose my existential crises to the world. After all, look where that got Woody Allen. Supporting Frank Sinatra's love child and defending against child molestation allegations. But I'll run that risk tonight to talk about something that increasingly weighs on my mind. I'm having a little trouble clearly articulating this feeling. About the best way I can put it is....

When did everything get so fake?

I can't describe the problem much better than to say...we're suffering from a lack of reality.

Its the difference between Olive Garden and a family-owned trattoria. CVS vs. Nau's Enfield Drug. Its anything where you can literally see the business plan, the pitch meeting, the focus group testing, market research, branding strategy and the like behind it. Its the modern slicked-back, made up, scripted, politician, vs. Harry Truman. Its offend no one, sell shoes to everyone Michael Jordan vs. go in the stands and wallop some idiot fan, crazy Ron Ron Artest.

The result: blandness. Stultifying, pervasive, coma-inspiring blandness. Everywhere you go, things are all the same. Everyone you meet is the same. Everyone does the same things. Reads the same books. Watches the same shows. Goes to the same places. Let someone step out in front and do things differently, and they face an uphill battle in many ways. Its like the lyric from Gigi, "the world is round, but everything in it is flat."

Its everything. Our personalities. Our interests. Our appearance. Get out of line and you're held to ridicule or worse.

Why? Its because we live in a judging society. For all that Americans supposedly are "live and let live," we're anything but that. Every day, hundreds of TV shows, web sites, magazines, and the like revel in exposing celebrities' private lives and thoughts. To ridiculing anyone who's a little different (and, a lot different too...). We even tune in to see horrible "real people," on shows like Judge Judy or the late great Jerry Springer Show, so we can revel in how awful these people are. We love judging all these people. And in the celebrity realm, anyone whose behavior gets slightly out of line has to go on some apology tour before they can regain their public standing. 

Many times the scorn is well deserved (like...Mel Gibson or Chris Brown or Bieber) but often it stems from holding some unpopular belief, or belonging to some disfavored organization, or supporting the wrong political party. Things that are totally legal, but socially disfavored. And often, beliefs that many people also hold but are afraid to express. "Who knew that guy was a REPUBLICAN??!?" Or gay, or Mormon, or into scotchy, scotch, scotch. Or in the commercial world, a company makes the same tired old product because they know that "works." They don't know that the new product will sell. So every store winds up looking like every other store. Every movie made is a sequel, or a permutation of some other successful movie. And so forth.

If you're someone who doesn't necessarily roll with the popular thing, you do the only thing you can. You hide. You conceal anything the least bit offensive or troubling or non-conformist. Its self-preservation. If you can't swim, you stay out of the water. If everyone around you is a raging atheist, you don't tell them you're a believer. And so forth. You go along to get along.

The result: everyone looks the same, sounds the same, acts the same. Whatever may happen to gain the greatest popular approval winds up as the "norm." Anything deviating from that must justify its existence.

This touches everything. Pro athletes must conform to behavior expectations. I'm not talking about asking them to follow the same laws as everyone else. I'm talking about how they can't have opinions on controversial subjects, or have lots of tattoos, or support certain candidates, without damaging their "brand." Movies can't show people smoking, even though in reality, people smoke. TV networks and sponsors comb every show for any remotely politically incorrect phrase or story. School boards and state education agencies sanitize the teaching of history and literature. Huckleberry Finn? Can't read it (contains bad words). And politicians? Every word uttered matches some focus group tested formula. Every appearance is heavily scripted. When did it become required that every speech had to include a racially and gender balanced bunch of "ordinary citizen" extras standing behind the candidate or official, all appearing to "stand behind" the message?

The problem is that we've all become this way. WE have self-censored ourselves. We erect shields and barriers and defenses to prevent ourselves from revealing our innermost, earnestly held thoughts. We hide all the messiness and ickiness about ourselves to project a perfect image, or at least one that conforms with what we think people "expect" of us. We act to further our own personal "brand." We fear that moment where we say anything the slightest bit offensive, lest we lose our jobs or customers or adoring fans. We don't offer opinions on anything even remotely controversial until we gauge the room, or our audience, for fear of offense. We fear job interviews or sales calls not so much because the audience will find our "product" wanting, but because we may let our shield slip ever so slightly and reveal some controversial thought.

So anyone who doesn't live that way risks coming off in one of two ways. Think about your crazy uncle. Maybe he spouts a bunch of borderline racist epithets. Maybe he thinks the Government spies on us every moment. Maybe he thinks bathtubs are dangerous to our health. He might never wear the color green. He thinks the CIA invented ebola. He calls all women "honey." Your crazy uncle comes off as a totally weird guy, because he holds opinions most of us do not hold, or in many cases, that were once considered mainstream but no longer. And doesn't bother to hide it. Or even realize that some people would disagree with him. Or doesn't care. He has no "filter."

If your crazy uncle has no power in the world, if he's the manager of a car wash, let's say, people view him as just an oddball. Or a freak. No one that causes any concern, but no one you'd want to include in your own friend circle, right? But maybe if he has some element of charm or other "redeeming" qualities, you can have great affection for your crazy uncle. Maybe he's a hit at parties. Maybe people consider his bluntness as refreshing.

But when your crazy uncle is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, then, problem! All the sudden, you care about the fact that the Chairman of the Fed thinks that aliens monitor our phone calls. Or that women reporters shouldn't cover football games. Or that no man should have a beard. Then its a real problem.

Its like Crazy Joe Biden is just fine, and kind of entertaining. He can get up and spout all kinds of insane stuff, much of which he probably plagiarized, and no one really cares because its not like Joe Biden matters. None of that affects his ability to break ties in the Senate or attend state funerals so that the President can play golf.

But if its someone who does have power, or control over something important, then they must "get right" or be hounded from our midst. Donald Sterling sounds like a horrible person, for example, but one who broke no laws and was basically a doddering old fool with a too trusting attitude towards his mistress. But because he expressed pretty offensive views, in private, in confidence, which during the span of his lifetime were not that far out of the mainstream (i.e. because society changed and he didn't), he was forced to sell his business. Is that right? How many closet racists work alongside you? How many other freaky things do your co-workers get into in their private time that have absolutely nothing to do with their work or their relationships with co-workers? Should they all lose their jobs?

Admittedly, some of this is just how a society works. If we're all too different, no one has anything in common and its hard to get anyone going in the same direction. Judgments that popular opinion reflects help reinforce social norms. When racism was widely accepted, discrimination could flourish even in the face of laws that prohibited it. But once opinion turned against it (well, mostly against it), then discrimination began to give way. Is it good if people run around spouting racism without some public approbation? Probably not. Think of smoking. Once the popular opinion shifted against smoking, and non-smokers felt empowered to give dirty looks to and criticize smokers to their face, politicians changed course and it became more difficult to engage in unfettered smoking. These innumerable "judgments" against those who deviate from these norms plays an important role in keeping a society somewhat coherent. All this "protect the minority" stuff only gets you so far; if everyone truly goes their own way then its anarchy. A society's very existence depends on the adoption and reinforcement of certain core values. So a society's members have to act within those parameters, even in the United States, or you get the Balkans. And all that implies.

Nonetheless, I think people are yearning for something real. TV invented an entire new genre to tap into that sentiment: "reality TV." These shows purport to depict "real life," when of course as we all now accept, they do anything but that. Because "real life" is messy and often unpleasant. Real life doesn't always turn out happily. You can only count on "happily ever after" in stories, not in real life. Real life has rough edges, disappointments, and disasters. But real life can also bring unrivaled joy, unparalleled beauty, and staggering thoughts. Something you'd never see on the Kardashians.

Anyway, I could be all wrong about this. Its just what I think. Don't hate me!

NEXT-in keeping with this theme, Crazy Things I Believe for No Reason