This week I have read about developments in our world that because they are so absurd defy our ability to believe them, and I think herein lies the danger. These are events, which, because they appear trivial and unreal, go unnoticed by most of us, until one day we turn around and the world has changed.
Allow me to present three short sketches of developments I think we need to monitor, question and denounce. By the time something immoral gains enough support to become legal or commonplace it is because the attitudes these new ways propose have already gained wide acceptance in a culture. Our watchfulness must begin now. So, I want to take these events seriously and envision for us what this would look like if it continues to gain legitimacy.
The first sketch comes from Rome and a story in the Chicago Tribune (July 12) recounting how some of the major landmarks of antiquity are looking very different these days. Where a passerby at the Spanish Steps used to look up and see a 16th century church, now she is greeted by a gigantic advertisement for beauty products. And not only there, but all around Rome, buildings and plazas that speak of the city's past, religious and civil, are being covered by ads for motorcycles, coffee and shampoo. The reason given is that the buildings are in need of renovation, and the fees paid by the gigantic ads help to defray the costs of repairs.
So, now I want to imagine this becoming common practice in Rome, in San Francisco, or in L.A. Can you see our churches, our landmarks, our communal history draped over by advertisements whose sole purpose is to sell us products we don't need. What if the advertisers like this too much? Imagine the powerful impact of a car ad draped down all four sides of L.A.'s City Hall or the Golden Gate Bridge. Could we not move swiftly to a day when buildings and bridges will only be built once they have been sold to an advertiser? Instead of spires, towers, windows and casements, will we be looking at underwear, and oversized beer bottles? And can we not further imagine that marginal neighborhoods, with run-down buildings will be forced to become nothing more than backgrounds for the ads that will face the freeways that loop around them? When the only thing that matters is selling, it seems we are becoming capable of selling anything.
The second sketch comes from television, where a new "reality" television program has debuted. Twelve "high maintenance" beautiful and scantily clad women, ranging in age from 21 to 30 are surprised to find themselves parachuted into the wilderness. There it is their task to survive difficult "ordeals" (such as breaking a nail, or living with insects) while trying to outdo and undo each other to win the affection of the one athletic and handsome man accompanying them.
First, will we no longer live real life as it is, but rather have to continually remake life to resemble the contrived and ridiculous stunts of (un) reality shows? Second, will, the hard-won gains of women over the last century to have access to education and a variety of vocations, and be persons with full dignity and voice all be undone? Will women's worth only be measured by their usefulness as objects of ridicule (which is the meaning of "high maintenance")? Will "love" which this TV program claims to "test" lose all meaning to the point where it will become synonymous with "use"? Are we returning to a time when among the things we are willing to buy and sell are human beings?
And finally, the third sketch comes from journalism. In the venerable New York Times, which was once an example of journalistic integrity, the Sunday Arts section (July 18) contained a large cover article titled "You Can't Do That on Television!" The article's apparent aim was to discuss the decency debate. Its real content was quite different. The story by Scott Robson was so transparently on the side of "the artistic community" and roundly against the side of "decency" that he actually printed the following quote from a network television producer without flinching. Here is the quote, "While you can't say 'god---- it' on network TV," he says, some expletives are fine: "You can't say 'Jesus Christ' as an exclamation, but you can refer to him as someone who made wine out of water. Where is the line? I wish I knew." I think most 10 year olds know where the line is, they can tell the difference between a debasing expression, which takes the name of God in vain, and the actual naming of the person of Jesus Christ. Apparently, this one producer and one journalist are incapable of such sophisticated thinking.
The article included no interviews with concerned parents, teacher associations, or media watch groups. It was rather devoted to a series of titillating plot summaries of some of the raciest and raunchiest things being proposed for television and an argument that the ability to show and say these very things makes them "art."
Can we not see a time when debate will all but disappear and those with the power to buy space will be the only voices in the landscape? A democracy built on governance by the people needs to be able to sort through issues that have a degree of complexity. Could we not be heading to a time, as it has happened in human history, when we will hand over our freedom to the group that best controls and manipulates what we know?
The prophetic role of the church is to speak up at times like these, let us take it very seriously.
Cecilia González-Andrieu is completing a doctorate in Art & Religion at The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.
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