Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 27, 1994 TAG: 9401280005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Tom Shales
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
One always hears about therapists being shipped in to the sites of disasters and tragedies so as to help survivors cope. Maybe there should be a new breed of therapists to help TV viewers who are subjected to massive doses of calamity and strife. Not that merely observing a disaster is anywhere near as bad as living through it, of course. But still, spending hours riveted to TV coverage of a crisis can take its own emotional toll.
Thus no one should scoff at reporters who try to dig up ``brighter side'' stories during such events - tales of heroism or miraculous survival, people being pulled from wreckage or neighbors banding together to help douse a house afire.
A viewer needs some hope after vicariously experiencing all that pain and horror.
Where, though, to find the brighter side of the other big story of the day - John and Lorena Bobbitt, the couple split asunder in more ways than one? When we weren't watching stories on the quake, some of us fixated on Court TV or CNN for live coverage of Lorena Bobbitt's trial on charges of ``malicious wounding,'' a phrase that seems awfully genteel for the damage she inflicted.
Many have debated the significance of the case and whether, indeed, it has any significance. Erik Sorenson, executive producer of ``The CBS Evening News,'' thought the story so unimportant that he banished running accounts of the trial from the newscast. Blundering decisions like that probably help explain why CBS is the lowest-rated of the three network newscasts.
As a television event, Lorena Bobbitt's trial was more than real-life soap opera. What unfolded was a story of two ordinary or maybe sub-ordinary people whose miserable life together became through the magnifying eye of television a story of nearly monumental sadness.
Ignoring for a moment the sensational nature of the crime that brought Bobbitt to that Manassas, Va., courthouse, the tale she told on the witness stand of a seemingly loveless, brutalizing marriage was both heart-rending and grimly instructive. Meek and nervous, weeping as she testified, Bobbitt seemed to be there representing countless unseen prisoners of countless unseen private hells.
Watching this, a person had to wonder how many other John and Lorenas are out there, how far other people are being pushed, how much emotional damage is being inflicted.
Some viewers were obviously drawn to the Bobbitt trial by the same kind of voyeuristic impulse that brings people to the daytime talk shows and their never-ending domestic disputes: My father is dating my girlfriend, my cousin is dating my uncle, my brother is dating a German shepherd, whatever. It's Keyhole Television, coarse and embarrassing.
But the experience of watching Bobbitt's trial day after day went much deeper than that. This wasn't ``entertainment.'' This was a cold confrontation with ugly truths about human nature. Beneath the obvious act of bloody revenge and whatever symbolism people want to attach to that, the Bobbitt affair sends out other, subtler messages about subtler forms of abuse.
Naturally there was a circus atmosphere outside the courthouse where the trial was held. Unfortunately, Court TV sometimes had a circus atmosphere, too. Planting a camera in a courtroom so that the general public can see the legal system in action is one thing; commenting on the case with play-by-play analysis as if this were an episode of ``American Gladiators'' is something else.
Some of Court TV's commentators appeared to be having a lip-smacking good time as they described legal strategies, analyzed testimony and critiqued performances in the courtroom. It's amazing one of them didn't pull out John Madden's Telestrator to diagram a few plays. Somehow David Letterman doing a tasteless Bobbitt joke isn't half as offensive as Court TV treating human tragedy like pro wrestling.
The proceedings themselves, however, were refreshingly uncircusy, despite the frequent explicit language. Here at last was a case in which justice appeared to move swiftly and efficiently, a case of the system working.
That's about as bright as the brighter side of this story gets.
\ Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB