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August 22, 2006
30 days
At one level, it's impossible to dislike Morgan Spurlock's TV series "30 Days." It's warm-hearted. It's affirming. People can learn, it tells us; if only you nudge them, they will grow and change. When they're forced to live with their opposite for 30 days, their horizons will stretch, their bigotries fall. It's a great message. It gives me warm tinglies.
It's also a lie.
The first thing I noticed was a predictable pattern to the epiphanies. You will find a skeptic who comes to embrace alternative fuels, New Age philosophy, or the like, but you will not ever see, say, an atheist who lives with Christians and turns her heart over to the Lord. Despite professions to the contrary, the show is simply not interested in exploring neutrality. The deck is stacked to promote an agenda, and time and again, Spurlock deals himself a winning hand.
I actually appreciate "voice" in entertainment. The Daily Show, for instance, pulls it off expertly. Without self-consciousness, they imbue their work with an overtly liberal point of view, and it lends to their observations a philosophical candor and ethos that I adore. I can't recall ever thinking that the Daily Show strained to mislead me. My trust earned, I simply listen to the message. And when they criticize the left, it carries the weight of angry introspection. Their voice gives the material real depth and credibility.
30 Days, on the other hand, feigns objective neutrality. Despite the fact that we can predict the outcome when we first hear the premise—gee, I wonder if the gun-toting border patroller will soften toward the plight of illegal immigrants?—Spurlock insists on going through the motions. Deception, however well meant, undercuts his message,
And the show flat-out cheats. I grimaced when, while demonstrating how hard it is to live on minimum wage for 30 days, both Spurlock and his wife "required" expensive emergency room care, for a cold and a sore wrist. Convenient, that contrivance. Thesis-affirming, even. Worse, though, are the cut-aways. Watch the epiphanies carefully. Look at how they're cut together. You'll find that the speaker is often off-screen and you're watching the "reaction" of someone else. If Survivor has taught me anything, it's that this signals a distortion. After the immigration episode, I was so suspicious of the border patrol guy's awkwardly edited change-of-heart that I went to the Internet and found interviews in which he accused the show of exactly the distortions I suspected.
Whether or not I was right is immaterial. As I tell my students, "if I have to go to the library to see if you plagiarized, you're already in trouble." I distrust the show. I distrust whether what I'm seeing is true. And that's a shame, 'cause the message is important and there's some great material in there. At times, the show achieves the critical-thought-as-theatre to which it aspires, and that's when it works best. The family of illegals, for example, is spectacularly loving and hard-working, a credit to any nation. Their plight needed no embellishment, but it was certainly diminished by it.
It's time for Spurlock to unstack the deck and demonstrate a little faith in his worthwhile convictions. His convictions will thank him.
I'd like to thank Mr. Spurlock for compelling me to search immigration-related web sites, which inevitably led me to the virulent, poisonous "anti" crowd. Yeesch. Those illiterate, hate-spewing bigots are truly the dregs of humanity, and I forever lost brain cells for being exposed to them. Thanks, Morgan.
posted by john at 2:17 AM • permalink