Sub-title: How America Is “Not Letting the Terrorists Win” Through Consumerism

I realized that I missed a couple of blog posts–and now I’m back with another blog post. Anyway, today’s topic is all about mayonnaise; more specifically, about how mayonnaise is an instrument.

Okay I lied, it’s not really about mayonnaise. Fun fact: the Spongebob episode from which the memorable quote “is mayonnaise an instrument?” originated aired four days before the September 11, 2001 attacks. It is a commonly held belief for Spongebob fans that Spongebob episodes airing post-2004 movie have been declining in quality, catering more towards a younger audience. Personally, I agree with the notion that Spongebob has decreased in quality when they decided to shift from witty humour to slapstick comedy. This is not a shift seen only in Spongebob, but also with American television as a whole. This argument as well might bleed over to other Western media cultures (such as the British and their overly exaggerated comedies and the cheesy Latin American soap operas), but for this particular blogpost I decided to focus on American television and how breaking the consumerism culture amounts to “letting the terrorists win.”

But first, let’s take a step back and figure out what “letting the terrorists win” is really about. The recent Sony hackings and the delay of the satirical (and somewhat tasteless) comedy The Interview have sparked new interest of the topic of letting terrorists win. Celebrities have criticized Sony about the alleged cancellation of The Interview. As the criticism grew heated and plenty, George Clooney himself couldn’t resist to join in on the bandwagon and decided to create a petition to release The Interview. Lo and behold, UBC’s very own Film Society is screening the movie The Interview from February 25th to March 1st.

However, some people (and by some people I mean mainly myself and journalist Jessica Goldstein) have pointed out that the Sony attacks are obviously not about terrorism. In her article, Goldstein noted that Sony has been hacked multiple times during the past years, and this new recent hacking is not really new–except to the general media. Goldstein said that “the movie industry is so afraid of risk, new ideas, and failure that barely anything but sequels, superheroes, and sequels about superheroes ever make it to our screens.” Thus, the exaggerated publicity could be concluded as a publicity stunt by Sony themselves due to the absence of confidence Sony has in this movie. To a degree, it worked. President Obama himself has said in an interview with ABC News that “for now, [his] recommendation would be that people go to the movies.” Regarding the speech, Goldstein has said that “Obama’s encouragement that we go about consuming entertainment as usual sounds a bit like an echo of George Bush’s post-9/11 rallying cry that everyday Americans fight terrorism by ‘shopping more.'”

So is it safe to say that to not let the terrorist win, we have to consume and consume? In regards to the cancellation of the 53rd Emmy Awards, media scholar Lynn Spiegel recites in her article what Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Chairman Bryce Zabel told viewers: “…cancelling the Emmys would have been an admission of defeat. Like baseball and Broadway, we are an American tradition,” (251) implying that Americans have been a consumerist culture and will always be. There is truth in Zabel’s words, and there is both positive and negative implications to his statement. As Spiegel writes in her article regarding the state of television culture post-9/11, “television was the medium hardest hit by this conflict between maintaining the image of “public servant” and the need to cater to the public taste (or at least to what advertisers think the public likes).” (236)

And television never recovered, and neither did the American entertainment industry as a whole. Television loves their prime-time dramas and their nationalistic pro-consumerism shows, while Hollywood loves their American pride and safe sequels and nationalistic pro-America superhero movies. Meanwhile, the cartoons of pre-9/11 have become something of a niche product–even The Simpsons have become a shadow of its former glory. I understand that not all American television shows and movies are full of nationalism and have been playing it safe (see The Interview and post-9/11 consumerism culture), however the general mainstream entertainment of America have been either promoting the culture of fear or distract the general viewers from the bigger issues at hand–I mean, who cares about conflicts in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe when debating about which movies should’ve won an Oscar are clearly more important?

As we move towards the latter half of the 2010s, it is becoming more apparent that American television and entertainment industry is dominating the whole world, bringing along its consumerist agendas and nationalistic superhero movies. However, as the world now acknowledges the East’s success in the Western markets, who knows? Maybe our grandchildren will forget all about the patriotism rising from the ashes of 9/11 and turn to the complacency of the pleasing choreography and exotic music of the East.