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May 10, 2006
Gilligan Unbound
Another interesting book I read recently is Gilligan Unbound by Paul Cantor. Cantor explores the changing face of globalization in the world and on television using four shows as his examples: Gilligan's Island, Star Trek, The Simpsons, and The X-Files. Most of these are interesting takes on a fairly complex subject and he does a good job exploring the 'end of History' of Francis Fukuyama and Hegel, by focusing on 'end' as in ends and means instead of end as a terminal point in time. While I think there is a logical truth to the idea that history shows liberal democratic capitalism is the most effective and just form of government for allowing human happiness, the 'enders' make the mistake of assuming that all people are rational in their choices of government and the choices for their lives in general. People ought to want to live in a liberal democracy, but many do not for religious, emotional, ideological, or cultural reasons or because they simply do not care. A lot of people are either irrational, foolish, motivated by other competing good desires that conflict with liberalism or democracy, or uninformed about the effectiveness of liberal democracy. And sometimes people are plain old evil and want to rule with (or be ruled by) an iron fist.
I read this book part because I had heard several people recommend it and in part because I think cultural studies are interesting. TV is everywhere and has had profound effects on how we interact with the world. TV invites complete strangers into your home week after week and bombards us with messages. Other media like video games and the internet will probably have as profound effects on future generations, although Cantor only briefly touches on these issues when discussing the X-files. The point Cantor makes is that the shows in the 1960s showed how globalization meant American power and culture expanding into the globe, while shows in the 1990's showed how globalization was influencing the US by bringing in foreign influences and showing the weakness of the modern nation state.
In Gilligan's Island you had a cross section of Americans who formed there own mini-USA on a tropical island with competing and complimenting Americans influences: the military through the Skipper, technology through the professor, money through the Howells, and Hollywood through Ginger, with Gilligan as the common man. In Star Trek you had American power expanding across the galaxy with Kirk ignoring the prime directive (for non-geeks reading this the prime directive commanded Star Fleet types not to interfere in local cultures) to violently overthrow aristocracies, monarchies, and theocracies to put in place liberal democracies. Kirk would justify this by turning to Hegel and saying he was putting history back on its correct course again.
Fast forward to the nineties and the end of the cold war and you have the reverse: global influences affecting American culture and a deterioration of the relative power of the nation state. Apu Nahasapeemapetilon is a regular character on the Simpsons and the Simpsons interact with everything foreign from Japanese TV commercials to foreign exchange students. Congress and the president are mocked fairly often and the local community survives on it own in spite of the rest of the country. In the X-files (which I was an early fan of, but I have not seen most of the episodes including several Cantor discusses) immigrants are a constant plot theme, whether from other countries or space. The nation state and other institutions are treated with paranoid suspicion and it is up to individuals like the Lone Gunmen to use technology to outwit the secret bad guys.
Cantor makes an interesting point in comparing all four shows treatment of NASA, which was one of the primary ways America expressed its influence over the past 50 years and the space race was a key part of the cold war. In Gilligan's Island several episodes revolve around space probes, rockets, and cosmonauts. Star Trek was all about space exploration and some real life NASA astronauts regarded the Star Trek characters as close to heroes. By the nineties however, NASA was an object of ridicule with Homer becoming an astronaut to save sagging NASA TV ratings and in one flashback having Homer contributing to the space race by sabotaging the MIR space station. In the X-files NASA is treated as an evil government organization collaborating in some cases with aliens plotting to take over the earth.
Posted by Pete at May 10, 2006 08:23 AM
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