Customer Reviews

Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality

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Neal Gabler merely scratches the surface as he describes the integration of media and entertainment into 20th Century culture, particularly 20th Century American culture. Gabler concedes at the outset that the book is diagnostic rather than prescriptive and he leaves few suggestions and little hope for a cure. The most disturbing part of the book is the final chapter, entitled The Mediated Self, in which he illustrates the degree to which many people have come to define their lives in terms of entertainment value.

Parts of the book are priceless. One should read it with a highlighter or a pencil and capture the more descriptive gems for future attribution. As an example, describing the propensity of '80's and `90's middle class Americans to videotape family events:

"Weddings, baby showers, bar mitzvahs . . . even surgeries, all of which had traditionally been undramatic, if occasionally unruly, affairs, were now frequently reconfigured as shows for the video camera complete with narratives and entertaining set pieces throughout. Sometimes a hastily edited version of the tape, complete with musical soundtrack and effects added to boost its entertainment value higher still, would be shown at the climax of the occasion as if the entire purpose of the celebration had really been to tape it."

One senses that Gabler, taking leads from Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Richard Schickel . . . even Andy Warhol, is on to something very big, if not overarching. Gabler deals with the subject in a mere 244 easily read pages, but I was left wanting more and feeling that the subject had been dealt with somewhat superficially. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone who can stand to add to their level of cynicism.

A good, often acid analysis of "entertainment state," Gabler's main thesis is that under the influence of the movies and the concomitant rise of the consumptionism, we have created an entertainment state where everyone is constantly considering how their performance is going -- which amounts to a new kind of discipline as Foucauldians might say. Further, these "roles" require props (material goods), which in turn supports the consumer society and the entertainment state at the expense of nearly everything else. To lay the basis for his theorectical claim, he cites the early 1960s thinking on the phenomenon of celebrity and the changes it has wrought in the American psyche. Here cites Boorstin's "The Image," and Riesman's "The Lonely Crowd." But he's not averse to cites postmodernists to serve his thesis, Umberto Eco, and Baudrillard come in for brief insights, too.

Some might say Gabler overstates his case. Have we really become so infused with "lifies" projected at us on a billion screens that we no longer know where we begin and where we end? Compared to the post-mods who can't resist hyperbole and grand gestures, though, he grounds his case historically, culturally and economically. Moving from a quick periodization of the rise of mass entertainment in the U.S. in conjunction with Jacksonian era during which elitist amusements were challanged and overthrown -- in 1849 29 b'hoys in NYC were killed during a riot where protested the English actor MacCready's reading of Shakepeare as a disparagement of the American style of Edwin Forrest -- he shows how entertainment has always been contested terrain. He also suggests that popular entertainment and diversion are as American as apple pie with supporting examples of the popularity of the political speech, the Great Awakenings, the Lyceum and Chatauqua.

Most chilling is his description of the two Americas: those who live behind the glass (TV) and those who don't, and how those who don't know that because they don't live behind the glass are lesser citizens. That people fight to obtain some type of stardom, or at the minor forms of celebrity, that CEOs now bestride the world like Hollywood stars of old, that brands now have personalities, are cited as evidence of celebritization of the world. The section of the dark side of celebrity-seeking -- e.g. Mark David Chapman, the Unabomber, and Arthur Bremer -- is effective in showing how these individuals' quest for celebrity was rewarded by the media in wall to wall coverage. The slippage of mainstream media into the gutter once occupied by the tabliods is also of related interest, though it cites the usual examples: e.g. Gary Hart, Monica, O.J.

Gabler's larger point is that all these "lifies" take up space in our collective consciousness, that they distract us, circumscribe our lives by setting norms, casting us in roles, and both limit and expand whom we might be and how we might behave: the affable talk show host, the news anchor, the family man, etc. These norms and role models now live behind the screen, he says. There is no "backstage" where we think our private thoughts and a "frontstage" where we interact with the world. It's all "frontstage." Observe an average Californian for awhile, he suggests. Steeped in movie and entertainment culture, they have no "backstage."

Gabler cites evidence that those who have ability to positively delude themselves, to "act" as if they are the center of our own postively scripted, headed- toward-a-happy-ending movie, do better in their lives and occupations. He notes that Prozac's popularity may be connected with this phenomenon. All in all a good, solid, and dare it be said, "entertaining" book.

This book is simply incredible. A more stimulating book I couldn't imagine! It's not that it told me so much I didn't know intuitively, but seeing it written so distinctly in black and white really hit home. This is one to read if you really want to get a sense of just how dramatically the world has changed. Neal Gabler, tells it like he sees it and has a lot of research to back up his views. I love that he doesn't make judgements or try to press an opinion on the reader. It's left up to you to decide how you feel about it all. I find myself thinking of points he brought up throught the day and seeing just what he meant by experiencing it in "real" life. The only reason I didn't give it a 5 is because I wish it was a bit MORE in-depth. It's so engaging that I can imagine an entire college course being made from this book. It is a book that's as entertaining as it is informative, and that's the whole point.

This is an absolutely fascinating look at the notion of entertainment, as it evolved as a form of popular culture into a political and even life compulsion. From the beginning, I was rivetted by Gabler's wonderful writing and unusual ideas. You can read this many times to great profit.

Gabler begins with a definition of what entertainment is: as opposed to the high art tradition, which requires elite education and effort to "get" it (e.g. to "properly appreciate" Opera), entertainment emerged as a democratic impulse soon after the beginning of the 19th century. Rather than high brow fare for esthetes, entertainment brought an immediate sensation of pleasure to the masses and a sense of losing oneself in a story without preparation. WIth the development of technology, Gabler continues, entertainment entered the news, particularly as images, but also as exciting stories, first in the penny press and then in film and finally TV. The penny press brought news to the masses at a price it could afford, largely replacing the elitist partisan editorials that cost 5 times as much in Jefferson's day. The trick was finding the right hook for less educated audiences, to get them into a narrative with which they could identify personally. This history is told in splendid detail, in a well spring of ideas that makes the reader (or at least me) want to research a lot more into this.

From popular culture, Gabler then argues that the need for entertainment created a kind of bizarre feedback loop, according to which it must be manufactured, even when it does not exist. That means that reality is made to fit the story, not the other way round. This leads not only directly to celebrity - those who are famous for being famous more than for having accomplished anything, e.g. Zsa Zsa Gabor as a "personality of glamour" - but also to a transmogrification of the news and even politics, particularly with Ronald Reagan. Rather than pondering complex issues, Gabler believes, the public now wants flashy stories, mood, and outsized personality. As such, he posits, Reagan could say it was "morning in America" while ignoring pressing issues, keeping the public lulled - diverting them - by spin and PR. This Gabler sees as a significant problem in our body politic and I would agree: who doesn't feel disgusted with the way the news media examines politics as a horse race rather than help to analyse the problems that politics should solve? As Gabler says, what reporters tend to report on is how campaign tactics get people to react. It is a bore.

In another example, Gabler tells the story of when doing a story on Christie Brinkley's lifestyle in her new Long Island house, House Beautiful journalists arrived to discover that she had not yet moved in or even decorated it. No problem! Without her approval, they hired an interioir decorator to "do it" for the interview photographs, and Brinkley liked it so much that she kept it. That is what readers, in Gabler's view, would take for a reality to model their own lives on!!

Or alternatively, we get celebrities "writing" books (with a little help from expert word smiths) that get attention because they are who they are rather than what they have to say. You even find public intellectuals taking outrageous positions because it will get them attention, as Gabler argues Camille Paglia has done with her attacks on feminism. In my reading, this is what gets thinkers like Steven Pinker to argue that parents have no impact WHATSOEVER on their children's personalities, whom he argues both learn more from their peers and whose behavior is primarily genetically determined. That argument is outrageous to parents, but it gets him ample media attention. The issues, even the truth, are secondary to entertainment value in this view.

To conclude, Gabler argues that we are all now seeking to create lives that are entertaining, drawing our own narrative in a kind of "mediated self"; the sources of these, he says, are film, celebrity journalism, and over-hyped "news". Reality, in his view, matters less than the idea one can make and maintain of one's life story; while this flatly contradicts Frued's "reality principle", perhaps it is possible now for people who live in a bubble of affluence.

Of couse, my description cannot do justice to the subtlty and elegance of Gabler's argument. This is extremely heady intellectual stuff. While I believe that he takes the argument too far as intellectuals often do when creating a new metaphor, the book is so dense with ideas and frankly so right on the money that it is worth a careful read.

For example, in my own work researching business, this argument is extremely relevant. I have been in many companies whose marketing strategy is to develop a kind of narrative for the consumer to enter, either to imagine they belong to some "tribe", or as a feeling of taking part in something bigger than themselves, or simply a series of products that evolve as a story progresses. For example, Ducati is making motorcyles that recall the company's past glory in races: they are still excellent bikes, but they also evoke an experience of belonging to a story, complete with accessories, the periodic appearence of Ducati bikes in films, etc. This is also true of Disney self-reinforcing multimedia marketing (characters in film and parks = buzz, which sells toys), LEGO's bionicles, Alessi's quirky appliances that bring art into the home, and any number of other companies: they are in part manufacturing an alternative reality, an experience (of entertainment), that is to be found in how we describe ourselves to ourselves.

This book has allowed me to articulate this to myself in a new way, though I must sift through the ideas in my own mind over time. I am sure that anyone interested in culture, politics, or business will feel the same way once they have read this book. This is delicious brain food.

Warmly recommended as an outstanding intellectual adventure. This is a masterful essay that consolidates a huge range of research, including updates of Neil Postman, Marhall McLuhan, Daniel Boorsten and many others. His prose is unusually dense and vivid. A final thing that I should add is that, while Gabler is very critical about these developments, he states very clearly that he wants to stimulate debate rather than offer prescriptions - he admits he has none.

Gabler has written about an age where collective narcissism finds its outlet in a culture where cinema represents our highest reality, where the movie screen projects all our unfulfilled fantasies. His thesis is that we have become actors, either unconsciously or not, and that as such events are contrived and/or interpreted as being "cinamatic." We all want to be the stars of the movie, that which is life.

Another important theme is that entertainment has trumped substantive knowledge in the media currency so that we are well entertained but grossly underinformed.

He quotes from and praises Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, a fine companion piece to Gabler's Life: The Movie.

Along with Paul Fussel's Class, these books are provocative views of modern society. Like "Class", Gabler doesn't really tell you anything that you don't really know but he does lay it out in a manner that I, at least, had never considered deeply. In doing so, he revealed a weakness that I recognize in myself and in much of the people in this society. Weakness? Gabler doesn't judge. He presents the case and steps back but there is some amount of consternation. How else can you view it? When a person's life becomes nothing more than fulfilling a part in the play? Is that good? Or is it the natural outcome of a society that finds itself more and more removed from the constraints of Mother Nature?

This short book is jammed packed with great ideas and beautifully coined phrases. Neal Gabler has synthesized an analysis of how entertainment has influenced our lives. He has a rare talent for social commentary. Extremely well researched and organized. If you're up to the cerebral challenge, go for it.

The thesis begins with an interesting history lesson about entertainment. Life was particularly dull on the farm in the 19th Century. After people moved to the cities, they had time to sit down and get entertained. Movies became America's preferred entertainment pastime. Newspapers morphed into tabloid journalism. Tabloid journalism morphed into television. Eventually reality took a backseat to entertainment on television.

The 20th Century's biggest contribution to Art was the invention of the "Celebrity". Celebrities are "famous for being famous". Today we increasingly see professionals - lawyers, engineers, architects, doctors and scientists - vying for celebrity status in their fields. Even inanimate products - Coca-Cola, Nike, Microsoft's Windows - have been "celebritized".

We are social animals, adopting the roles that society gives us. Movies and TV present models for dressing, talking and behaving. There are social pressures placed on us to conform to these standards. However, the standards of people shown on "the other side of the glass" are warped and unrealistic. Many people think that their lives are failures if they don't become a celebrity.

Gabler makes no conclusions, leaving it to the readers. He does make a brilliant analysis of the philosophical dilemma facing each of us: To seek reality or delusion. Studies have concluded that, from a mental health standpoint, those who live with happy delusions, however unrealistic, seem to live happier lives. Since the 19th Century, there has been a shifting of values from pragmatic realism to a culture that accepts and embraces delusions. These polar opposite viewpoints are the basis of disputing opinions on many issues.

This book reminds of another I read many years ago, "The Birth and Death of Meaning", by Ernest Becker, one of my personal heroes. I've circled so many gem phrases in "Life" I will never be able to re-sell my copy.

What does one say about a work like this? It's an interesting premise. It's well written. It's provocative. It portrays 99% of America as idiots. And it lacks cohesion - sometimes it reads more like an extended vehicle for the author's liberal ranting and raving about contemporary culture than anything else. Five stars for the premise and the research; one star for the sniping and heckling.

Some books cause double takes. They thrust reality into a whiplash for which the only sane reaction remains re-evaluation. Such books pull us up from the roots and place permanent filters on our worldly experience. "Life: The Movie," though somewhat cursory, produces this effect. Watch your neck. It pulls our ordinary notions of "entertainment" up from its feet onto its head, shakes vigorously and waits for all pockets to empty. Reality comes out of this wash heavily altered and potentially unrecognizable. It all begins with entertainment.

Of course, everyone knows that Americans enjoy entertainment. This facet of American life has even morphed into a trite stereotype, along with obesity and cultural myopia. But many don't know how entertainment came to dominate today's culture and to what extent people may appropriate and embody entertainment itself. After all, people, with their sponge-like relationship to the world, tend to absorb the dominant values of their culture. And when that culture esteems entertainment, people, willingly or not, will tend to base their lives, actions and beliefs on the values posited by entertainment. At first glance this may sound ridiculous, but exchange "entertainment values" for "military values" and the process of value absorption becomes more familiar and coherent. Sparta, to take the classic example, embraced militaristic values. "Life: The Movie" makes the analogous argument that America has become an entertainment culture, or more specifically "The Republic of Entertainment." Consequently, Americans have integrated entertainment into their very lives and conscience. The argument goes light years beyond the notion that Americans merely remain obsessed by entertainment. It claims that life itself has become entertainment, and vice versa.

So what does this mean? Basically, through various media, mostly via television and movies, we have all formed images and ideas of what we want to project as "our self" or that we believe really is our identity. We then spend our lives, regardless of reality, shaping ourselves and living up to these images and ideals, which often derive from some extracted entertainment construct. These ideals can also change over time, but still originate from similar sources. A teenager that wants to become a pop star may play the "pop star" role that media or society presents via various conduits and even alter behaviors, beliefs or appearance in hope of "becoming" a pop star. Later in life this same person may take on the role of "CEO" and repeat the role alteration process. In other words, the role becomes the reality, even if it never comes to fruition (which it rarely does in the cases mentioned). Roles may embed themselves so deeply that people may even remake their bodies through surgery to fulfill the fantasies. Going further, these fantasy roles can change us and our perspective on the world. We may, in short, become these roles and live a life of unrequited or partially fulfilled fantasy. We may appear scripted. More succinctly, we become method actors playing ourselves, or playing roles conforming to who we think we are or want to be. Troubling questions of identity can arise.

These roles occur in what the book calls "lifies" or "life movies" that provide narrative shape to the roles we choose to play. People desiring pop stardom will attempt to live as though their role inhabits a "lifie" that concludes with their seemingly inevitable success. Actual success, or even potential success, is not a prerequisite for playing the role. These "lifies" borrow their form, looks, beliefs, actions and narratives from entertainment media. We may thus live as though we're enacting a retroactive biography of our assured life of success, complete with an expected "happy ending" that may never come. On this topic, the book quotes Sam Shepard, who states the issue with laconic clarity: "People here / have become / the people / they're pretending to be." We have been raised to perform in life. We may even take on various roles given different circumstances throughout a regular day. The book raises startling questions about personal identity in the consumer age as well as evoking complicated questions about just who we are. Are we merely actors? Is the meaning of life to act?

"Life: The Movie" leads up the these ideas with a historical survey of how entertainment came to dominate culture and identity. The story begins with the age worn dichotomy between art and entertainment in the 19th century United States, which culminated in the 1847 Astor Place Opera house riots in which 22 people were killed. Opinions on acting methodology provided a subtext for the violence, but these opinions were also divided on social class, "high" versus "low." Journalism extended entertainment to life via the "penny press" which arguably sensationalized the news to sell papers. Life dramas were played out in print almost daily and publishers found that people preferred a personal dramatic touch to a deep non-personal analysis of news, events or opinions. So this trend continued and expanded until a primordial celebrity culture emerged. As the technology of photography developed, publishers started filling pages with photos, which many readers seemed to prefer to print. The image culture was born and papers became "fun" to read. "Lifies" appeared in tabloids as early as 1919's Illustrated Daily News." Gradually the news media took on aspects of entertainment and people seemed to read newspapers for entertainment rather than for information. The seeds were planted as early as the 19th century, though many today think that our "infotainment" culture began only recently.

Movies and television upped the stakes. These media, in Bazin's terms, "strove to replicate reality completely." Television in particular turned everything into entertainment. The visual and distinctly narrative nature of these new technologies allowed viewers to apply them to their own lives. Then life itself became entertainment as people watched the romanticized lives of media personalities unfold in theaters and in living rooms. As these figures dominated attention using the techniques of entertainment, politics also appropriated these same techniques. Image became primary. Issues, being boring compared to life dramas, were largely marginalized. JFK was amongst the first of the "image" or "star" presidents. Media coverage then revolved around the "best show." These ideals even bled into book publishing, sports, fine art and academia. The ethos of entertainment seemed to permeate everything.

All of this ushered in the era of "famous for being famous" celebrities, which Zsa Zsa Gabor epitomized. Everyone seemed to know who she was, but no one really knew why they knew who she was. The point wasn't accomplishment, it was publicity. So people strove to great heights to receive media coverage and the media, in a nearly mind-numbing recursion, covered people attempting to get media coverage. The era of Barbara Walters' often melodramatic celebrity interviews arrived. These were "lifies" presented to millions of viewers. Those with the best "lifie" prevailed, so entertainers like Madonna "made [their] life movie about [their] life movie." The point then became artifice. For many life became the race of receiving publicity. And since those with the best "lifies" received the best coverage, people obviously tried to create the best "lifies" for themselves. The act dominated completely, though often presented as "reality." Celebrity became available to more people through sensationalized talk shows. Even unknowns could appear if they had a good story, no matter how self-deprecating. Celebrity became mostly about the person or their persona. Reality didn't seem to matter anymore. This process culminated in Micheal Jackson who subverted his entire being to entertainment, even his physical appearance.

As media "lifies" dominated, people began to relate on a personal level to these fantastic and highly publicized narratives and reflected them onto their own lives. As celebrities have a narrative and a role, so apparently do people. Life became, and has become, largely about performance and personality. People find comfortable roles to play that paralleled the "people" experienced in the media. Attention-getting requires a good "lifie." We have become real life actors.

Those who find these ideas convincing may also find them disturbing and frightening. Surely we have distinct identities regardless of what life throws at us? The book provides a surprising twist at the end: it does not present a moral value judgment, but leaves it to the reader. A short section even covers the positive side for role-playing as potentially psychologically healthy. We may need illusions in certain circumstances, though never delusions. But do such positive arguments, such as some of the studies cited, merely reflect the culture in which they took place? Rather than dictate conclusions, the book christens the debate between "realists" and "postrealists." The substance of this debate revolves around whether or not an entertainment-engorged life is destructive. The book presents no answers, nor does it pretend to claim to.

"Life: The Movie" presents a mere taste of its subject matter. Complete coverage would entail volumes. As such, it presents an invaluable perspective on our entertainment culture. And though it appeared in 1998, its themes still ring true today, even though many of the now dated references may not. The book raises important questions, explicitly and implicitly, about people's place in the world and society. It also has the power to make us question ourselves on a fundamental level and evoke that eternal question "who am I?" In the end, do we really know? Or do we just pretend to know?

It is a good sign (if only to know that we are not alone) when anyone critically discusses the disappointing, alientating society in which so many do not really live, but instead pretend to live, acting on recieved values and donning cloned identities. Yet, I was extremely disappointed that the author made no mention, that I could find, of Guy Debord, the Situationists, and particularly Debord's Society of the Spectacle, which seems the appropriate starting point for this one and only truly human discussion. Those of us who have learned to live again know a good place to go to get the real goods. Unfortunately, the population in this mental space is still a bit thin.