Decoding a Media Spectacle: 'June 17th, 1994'

I just got sucked into a terrific documentary on ESPN. "June 17th, 1994" chronicles a very strange day in sports. The New York Rangers celebrated winning the Stanley Cup in Manhattan, Arnold Palmer played his last round of golf, the World Cup kicked off, there was game 5 of the NBA Finals, and OJ Simpson led LA police on a chase. The lack of voice-over commentary lets us judge the events for ourselves, though the editing and the music offer some commentary.

What do I find so compelling about this documentary?

The moment that most intrigues me is when the news (Tom Brokaw, specifically) reports on the crowd that develops to cheer on OJ as he flees police. The crowd was created by the news media (crowd members learned of the car chase via television) and then the news media was bearing witness to the amoral attention seekers it created.

Everything happened in real time. As we watch the news broadcast of OJ driving down the freeway, we hear a psychologist describe what he is going through. That psychoanalysis was not added after the fact; it was done while OJ was fleeing. Crowds convene on overpasses, cheering for him. At this point, its not clear whether those people offered their support, if you can call it that, because they thought he was innocent, because they thought he was guilty but didn't want to see him kill himself (which he was threatening to do), or because they wanted to be part of some pop culture event as it unfolded, regardless of whether or not it had to do with murder or sports.

What is so striking about this moment is that it revealed this scary power of live television that lies dormant most of the time, a power that may have been inherited by twitter. Television binds millions of people together. Live television gives people the impression that they can quickly and radically change something. It is true that large numbers of people are capable of such feats, but like any organism, a crowd would not be very effective in altering its environment if it didn't have any sort of sensory feedback about the consequences of its actions. Live television (and now twitter) can act as that sensory feedback mechanism. Telethons work on this principle, but there's something inert about their orderliness. The OJ incident felt alive. Even though I was watching it 16 years after it happened, I got the feeling that the whole culture was in a state of flux.

This documentary reveals something about how people interact with one another and how media plays some role in enabling the tendencies of people to congregate, to gawk, to seek attention and to see a bit of themselves in the groups (sports teams) or individuals (OJ) they support.

Crowds gather for all sorts of reasons. While the distinction between supporting a murderer and supporting a sports team may seem obvious in retrospect, its possible that this distinction doesn't feel as important when you're part of a big group. There are well-known conformist tendencies that overrule our individual senses of morality. In addition to that, I think members of crowds engaged in unsavory behavior can distribute the guilt so that even if they are guilty of some sin (supporting a murderer, standing up for a tyrannical government), you're somehow less guilty than if they were committing the act as individuals. Television extends the crowd. Live television allows the crowd to see itself, to be impressed or repulsed by its spontaneous, amoral power.

The style of the documentary - free from talking heads telling us what to think about everything we're seeing - provoked me to ask this question: are sports trivial? Many non-sports fans I know believe they are, and in a way, I agree with them. That is what's pure about sports: the outcome of the game does not directly link to the election of an official or the fate of an economy. Of course, sports can indirectly affect politics, economies, and pretty much everything else, but that's only because of the value we assign the games.

As we see the juxtaposition of deadly serious police press conferences with tickertape parades and a round of golf, we might ask: How can the New York Rangers fans talk about winning the Stanley Cup in terms of life and death? How can announcers wax poetic over the retirement of an over-privileged geezer in bad pants hitting a ball with the stick? How can people talk about these things like they are that important? Surely, this is the sign of a warped culture. At the same time, the serious countpoint - the OJ murders - isn't especially remarkable without its connection to sports. People are murdered everyday. These murders mattered because they involved a well regarded professional athlete. To ignore a huge news story in favor of watching an especially competitive game 5 of the NBA Finals seems callous or crazy, but the story was only huge because of other (ostensibly trivial) games played years ago, games in which OJ Simpson ran faster than the men who were chasing him. None of it really mattered in the macro-economic sense. Or rather, it mattered, but only in an indirect way (again, billions of dollars were made: this was one of the highest rated television spectacles of all time). Like all sports, it only matters because of the meaning we assigned to it.

Losing The Passive Companionship of TV

For the past month, I have felt as though I've been part of one of the experiments I would like to conduct on media choice and decision making. Ever since I moved into my house, I've received free cable, as often happens with Comcast who isn't very vigilant when it comes to who gets their signal and who doesn't. After the digital transition, they've begun gradually whittling away at my channels. I lost about 3 or 4 channels out of 40 a few weeks ago, and this past Friday I lost about 20, pretty much everything besides the networks, public television, and the Michigan research channel. When I lost AMC, I had to consider what watching my favorite show, Mad Men, meant to me, and whether I could replace the experience with something as pleasurable until it came out on DVD. I decided that I could live without it, that it certainly wasn't worth paying the extra $40(!) a month for cable television, that I'll either wait for the DVDs or buy the remaining eps on ITunes. Then they took ESPN, my bread and butter, and that has caused a great deal of reflection on my part as to what the value of TV is for me.

At first, I missed the up-to-date-ness of TV. I can go online and get all the information that is dispensed though ESPN (and then some), but it doesn't feel the same. I think my attachment to TV has something to do with the fact that I live by myself. When I turn on ESPN, there's something about the direct address format and the jocular tone of SportsCenter, not to mention the always-on nature of the news coverage (similar things could be said about cable news). It feels like companionship in a way that cold, lifeless DVDs and the internet does not. If I was looking for replacement experiences, I could just spend more time actually talking to people, but part of the pleasure of the companionship offered by ESPN and TV in general is that its passive. Also, my use of ESPN is dictated by my moods and schedule, not someone else's. I don't give a fuck whether or not Chris Berman or Scott Van Pelt are in the mood to be funny; that's their job. Not so with people I know.

Are there any possible substitutes for this feeling? Like ESPN, NPR is always on and roughly appeals to my interests, but to be honest, i just don't like the content as much. Its possible that some applications on the internet - social media like Facebook and maybe Twitter - could fill this need for passive companionship. Using FB does feel a little bit like that kind of passive companionship that I crave, though sometimes its almost too personal. I like the level of detachment that I get from watching sports or news. Perhaps this will motivate me to give Twitter a try.

This experience makes me believe that television, just like radio before it, needs to move away from pre-recorded drama and towards shows that address the viewer as part of a crowd, either through a host or telecaster or anchor, or merely by presenting a show that is performed in front of a crowd (like American Idol). Its possible that reality TV offers something in the way of passive companionship, although maybe its pleasures are more about social surviellance. Similarly, comedy might provide some additional pleasure if watched in groups, so maybe it does need to be watch simultaneously by many viewers. In any case, DVD and the internet seem to take care of drama exhibition and information about the world.