Scare Tactics
So there's this new show on SciFi called Scare Tactics. It's basically Candid Camera using slack-jawed morons. I have a moral dilemma when I watch it, because I can't decide whether I love the show or hate it.
If you don't get cable, or if you're a Canuckistanian terrorist and just don't watch TV at all, here's the elevator pitch: Take a victim who considers the National Enquirer to be Pulitzer-winning journalism. Put him or her in a situation that they've read about on the pages of that or the Weekly World News a hundred times before. Scare the shit out of them. Record it for posterity using hidden video cameras. Rinse. Repeat.
Most of these situations involves taking people out of their native element and bringing them to remote locations: Bringing kids with no camping experience out to the woods and convince them they're being attacked by a sasquatch. Taking a couple of city kids out the desert and convince them they're about to be eaten by a seven foot tall alien. (Real skits, folks). Someone that's with them is usually in on the gag just to add to the reality -- or the unreality -- enough to grab them hook, line and sinker.
One scenario had this guy firing a mock laser gun at targets until he "accidentally" set another guy on fire. Another showed a girl applying for a job as a personal assistant for the host of the show, who is then abducted by mysterious thugs. Another guy who picked up $50 to be the subject of a medical experiment watches as another subject next to him hooked up to an EKG flatlines and can't be resuscitated.
Now, sure, you can say Scare Tactics is exploitative and sadistic, and it is, absolutely. But there's something so delicious about watching people take advantage of morons, I can't help myself but chuckle, a bit. And, at the very least, it's harmless fun -- not like watching people try to suppress their gag reflexes choking down a mouthful of bloodworms on Fear Factor, or stringing a few gullible bachelorettes looking on for a month or two.
The skits Scare Tactics creates are a bit extreme, and the victims are a bit more daft than most, but I can relate to them, just the tiniest bit.
Back when I was a teenager, I used to hang out with this group of kids after school. We'd get high in my basement as often as we could, and one afternoon we were silly and baked and horsing around in the living room when my buddy Jim looked at me and said, "Hey, check this out. Stand up."
He went to the kitchen and grabbed the biggest butcher knife he could find, and came at me with it. One hand was on the hilt of the knift and the other was cupping the point so the sharp part was concealed. I backed up and he said, "Come on, man, you trust me. I'm covering the point with my hand. Don't worry, come on, just check this out."
It took him a minute or two but he finally settled me down, pinning me up against the wall. I could see his hand on the hilt of the knife and felt the other hand pressing into my belly, just the tiniest bit of pressure telling me the knife was still there. Calm, soothing tones. "You trust me, right? You trust me. We're friends. You got nothing to worry about, right? You TRUAAAAAA!!!"
And just then he pulled back with the hilt, but pushed the other hand that had been holding the point straight into my abdomen. The motion, the sound, the sensation of pressure: I could swear I'd just been stabbed, and started screaming like a girl. Then I noticed that my other two friends were laughing their asses off, and so was Jim.
I'd pissed myself in utter, abject terror.
Any lie told convincingly enough will hook you.
Comments
I read this thing a while back about Howard Stern, just as he was hitting as a force of nature and kind of "at his peak". Now, on the one hand I think Howard Stern is a bad person. I think he preys on the weak and I think his jokes are cheap, sexist, vulgar and sink below a basic level of human dignity. He creates a shitty little world and busts his ass trying to pull others into it. On the other hand, when I hear some of his jokes, I crack up. They make me chuckle. You can see why I had this weird conflict over it.
About that thing I was reading. This columnist was describing Stern and what he does with a bit of distaste but at the end she said this thing that stuck with me: There's an old Portuguese saying, "Everyone laughs when the jackass farts". That sort of explained it for me. Just because it makes you laugh doesn't mean that redeems it or justifies it. Just because you laugh involuntarily doesn't mean it's got a value.
So when I read about the show you're talking of, I think "sure, you can get glued to the TV watching it, but is that an indicator that you have tossed aside your basic human values of compassion and dignity by being sucked in?" Of course not. It means that you're just falling under the spell that the producers are expending everything in their power to weave. Nothing more. It doesn't mean you're trash or that you believe this stuff is good.The next step, however, is to muster the strength to turn it off.
Posted by: Corey | April 5, 2003 09:46 AM
This is actually one of those "I blame my wife" moments, because I swear to God, if it wasn't for Bonnie, I wouldn't own a TV. I was a sveltve vegetarian at the time I met her and now look at me: Obese and obsessed with pr0k.
But it's there. And I watch it. Because I lack will power. It's the same reason i'll eat chips and cookies if they're in the cupboard.
I'm a bad, bad man.
Oh yeah, and it's her fault!
Posted by: Peter Cohen | April 5, 2003 12:30 PM
I have the exact same problem. I eat junk, watch trash and let my body go down the dumper... and I also blame Bonnie.
Posted by: Corey | April 5, 2003 07:32 PM