Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993 TAG: 9302070054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NINA J. EASTON LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE, IT'S HIP TO BE CRUEL
"PSYCHOLOGICAL VIOLENCE" is what social scientists call it. As policitians urge sacrifice and caring, staples of mainstream entertainment are crudeness and cutting remarks. Many worry that, ultimately, meaner jokes will produce meaner people.
"OK guys, you ready?" All 5 feet, 10 inches of Marki Costello bounces up and down the aisles of a studio audience. With every cheerleader jump, another chunk of dark hair slides out of a barrette and down the back of Costello's black vintage dress. "Now," she yells, "what do you say when the contestants say something about sex?" "Oooo!" her audience roars back. "And what do you say when the husband says something chauvinistic?" A round of staccato "yo-yo-yo's" from the men pours forth, easily drowning out the higher-pitched female "boos."
This spirited crowd is here today to watch the taping of "That's Amore," a new nationally syndicated game show that features bedroom brawls between married couples. It's the job of the audience to egg on the contestants as they fight, to provoke more heated arguments with their "boos" and "woos" and, ultimately, to pick the winner.
Ray, a British man in his 40s who sports a shag haircut, leads off with a complaint that Norma, his American wife, and Belinda, his former wife, compare notes about his sexuality. Norma doesn't disagree, but launches into her own tirade about her husband's torn jeans, his penchant for wearing no underwear and his large sexual appetite, all of which are linked in her mind. The audience goes wild. When host Luca Barbareschi calls for a midway poll and a station break, they reward Norma with 68 percent of their votes.
Ray later counterattacks with - what else? - a story about his wife's girth. "My wife, I'm so proud of her. She's lost 80 pounds. But she walks into the supermarket since we started eating normal again, and she takes hot dogs off the shelf and stuffs them in her mouth." ("Ugh!" from the audience.) "When we finally get to the check stand," he continues, "there's no food to pay for, just packages with tags." ("Boooo!") "I've seen it," concurs Ray's friend Tibor. "It's so embarrassing."
Barbareschi calls time and polls the audience. Ray wins, at 77 percent. Norma and Ray wrap their arms around each other and beam: For their performance, they earn a second "honeymoon" in Mexico.
If you think this is sick stuff, you're woefully behind the pop-culture curve. In the 1990s, "dissin"' is fast becoming a national pastime. Cutting insults, crude put-downs and vulgar and vicious personal lampoons are dominating mainstream entertainment - even while political leaders urge us to put people first. More than ever, comedy draws the most laughs when it's at the expense of someone else. "Humor has devolved to allow more extreme forms of brutality and insults that are normally perceived of as abhorrent," says Jennings Bryant, director of the University of Alabama's Institute for Communication Research. "It is pushing the bounds of propriety."
On Fox's popular "Married . . . With Children," a running gag of intrafamily ridicule, Al Bundy wonders why his wife Peg didn't marry a man more like her father: "Or weren't there any chronically unemployed social parasites the month you were in your prime?" The satirical variety show "In Living Color" is more reckless, taking aim at black women, gays and even, in an off-color skit about a spastic handyman, the handicapped.
Over on ABC, "Roseanne" chuckles that she's done her job when her kids say they hate her, or fantasizes about trading her brood for a new dishwasher.
Radio shock-jock Howard Stern's obscenities are what draw the ire of the Federal Communications Commission and the press, but biting cruelty is also his stock in trade.
Stern's popularity is skyrocketing: He now airs in 10 cities, and he has launched a TV talk show. Radio-industry officials note that other radio talk-show hosts around the country now are borrowing Stern's style.
Even while some commentators complain that PC-ism, Politically Correct-ness, is choking free expression, American popular culture is rich with examples of misogyny, racism and homophobia. In rap and heavy metal music, especially, women are routinely referred to as bitches and "ho's" (short for whores); gays are faggots. Need some anti-Semitism? The syndicated TV series "Uptown Comedy Club" recently featured a skit about the law firm of "Judacy," where Hasidic lawyers sing, "I really want to sue you. I really want to overcharge you."
Rush Limbaugh throws rough punches on his radio show, such as this tirade against AIDS and abortion activists: "Get out of our schools. Get out of our churches. Take your deadly, sickly behavior and keep it to yourselves."
Whatever form this invective takes, media researchers call it "psychological violence," and they are concerned that just as hundreds of studies link TV to a more violent society, the decline in civility in popular culture will alter our behavior toward each other. "It's worrisome," says Alvin Poussaint, associate dean at the Harvard Medical School and former consultant to the now-defunct "Cosby Show." "I don't think this is just reflecting reality. It's also part of encouraging reality. For a lot of vulnerable people, especially children, this is putting suggestions in their heads, or at least lowering their defenses against impulses they might have." Poussaint also worries that trends in popular culture contribute to an increased difficulty among many young people in discerning right from wrong.
At its most destructive, American culture's mean streak holds out the potential to promote even more violence in a society where cutting off someone in the fast lane can mean a bullet to the head. Social graces are not just the stuff of snobbery, notes Judith Martin, author of the syndicated "Miss Manners" column. Holding our tongues, setting internal limits on the views we express to each other, smooths the bumps in a conflict-ridden society. In our zeal to promote "open communication" at any cost - or for any laughs - we've forgotten that, Martin contends. "The total expression of every thought is not desirable," she says. "People are killing each other in the streets over insults and dissin.' "
But studies on the influence of popular culture suggest that cruel humor serves as more than a release in modern society. The ubiquitous media pick up on our baser nature, exaggerate it to entertain, and, by spitting it back at us, encourage us to push the boundaries even further. As a result, says Johns Hopkins' Miller, "We're gradually eroding the kinds of social forms and inhibitions that kept [aggressive] compulsions contained."
Before the cycle escalates further, we might do well to consider the advice of Roman statesman and orator Cicero, who wrote at the peak of the Roman empire: "If we are forced, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate among us of all respect for humanity."