Television as Pleasure and Punishment
A university student suggests the following broadcast to a television channel: Don’t miss tonight’s premiere of… Susy! The beautiful and stunning girl who was strangled by her lover, who later committed suicide by blowing his brains out with a guillotine! Watch it, you’ll like it!
The proposal is neither impertinent nor delirious. In three lines it condenses the philosophy of “marketing” that embraces TV, not only in Venezuela but throughout Latin America. If this type of message — with such crudeness — reaches viewers, it is because this means of communication, which is governed by minimal guidelines, knows how to deal with the public without subtlety, that is, it is capable of using “expressive and striking” language because it knows its subject matter like a fish knows water. Punish me, you make me enjoy.
Given that TV is the most successful and penetrating means of communication in the psyche of the viewer, it is hard to admit that even if the message involves deliberate harm to the audience it is intended for, the latter, for its part, receives it happily, enjoying it.
How can it even be conceived that viewers feel seduced by such damaging shows? And yet, it is known that there are quite a few people who do not need to be loved but hated, not appreciated but despised, not valued but humiliated.
When hatred, contempt and humiliation are sharper and more penetrating techniques than love, appreciation and appreciation of one’s neighbor, it follows that people recognize themselves more fluidly in violence than in peace, in noise than in calm. Therefore, confirming the above, there is only one way: to provide viewers with the food they need.
Furthermore, the sadistic message serves two functions: it reminds the receiver of his tragedy, complex or problem and reaffirms in him the impossibility of things changing. A good example is in soap operas: when faced with any misfortune of one of the characters, a third person says in a philosophical tone: life is a calamity. The little happiness that one has must be paid for with suffering. That is to say, not only is life a calamity, as many viewers see it, but they reaffirm with the second part of the sentence, their belief that the little happiness sooner or later will be paid for with suffering.
Humiliate me, you dignify me
The only thing that can be characterized as a sadomasochistic binomial is the one made up of the heroines and the gallants of the soap opera, and the suffering spectators who turn on the device with a sigh that could well be translated as: “let me see how they show me again that in my condition as a woman my life is a ruin, something that is not worth living.”
The soap opera confirms the woman’s status as an object. She relearns that the sufferings of everyday life are reserved for her to a greater extent than for her husband or partner. She will learn for the umpteenth time that it is the male who is destined to climb the heights of abstract thought, who is “naturally” more equipped for intellectual tasks. Women will find on TV the image that they accept and that the structure of domination seeks to perpetuate.
Humiliation no longer causes pain or life is only pain and, therefore, pain has no proper name, as Paul Nizan said forty years ago. If one’s own stench is shown in a mirror that reflects it back to us in a recriminating way, there will come a time when we will no longer be ashamed of the possibility of being disgusting and of being singled out as such.
When the humiliated person has gone through that stage, when he cannot even rethink from what perspective others think of his tastes, his smells, it means that he has been colonized. Another has perpetuated the conquest and the subjugated will willingly accept the proposals of his invader, to improve what he thinks needs to be improved.
The sender has turned his receiver into a domestic and faithful animal. A typical example is the advertising spaces in which cosmetics, smells, odors and sweats have a solution imposed by the market: a little perfumed alcohol. And if you do not use it, another advertising space will convince you by telling you: “So pretty and smelling like a man.” In the case of the man, he will be flattered or his machismo will be stimulated by hearing a woman hug him and say in an advertising space: “This is my man’s cologne.”
Deterioration of the human image
An exhaustive investigation of TV programs agreed in pointing out that the emphasis of the sadistic attitude is, above all, on the deterioration of the human image, in the repeated display of the degradation of the personal condition.
Comedy shows, for example, accept as a legitimate resource to make the viewer laugh the mere indication that someone is inferior and/or physically handicapped:
a. A dwarf is hit on the head with a cane and the subsequent laughter record increases its volume; it is a joke.
b. A toothless individual shows his open mouth in front of the camera and smiles, as if assuming his evident enmity with beauty.
c. A mentally handicapped person rejected by his father makes one mess after another in his house. It is a 40-year-old actor dressed as a baby: a sad spectacle. For each manifestation of mental retardation of the “child”, his father applies a degrading nickname to him, at which point, the laughter record increases its volume; it is a joke.
d. In a parody of the Wild West, a cowboy kills another with numerous revolver shots. Already dead, the corpse continues to receive bullets from the murderer, who ostensibly enjoys the scene. Once again, canned laughter: you have to laugh, it’s a joke.
Stupidity, illness, physical or mental inferiority, natural conditions not chosen, are themselves ironized. The sender controls the feelings of his receiver and indicates in each case when he should laugh. He does so by establishing guidelines that, through time and insistence, become unquestionable norms.
