Leaving the Room
Recently an episode of ABC’s The Middle included a scene where painfully eager daughter Sue is invited to a party by her older brother Axl. Leading up to the actual party scene the writers and the actors managed to telegraph that once again, Sue would be a fish out of water and say or do something embarrassing while trying too hard to be liked. It was my cue to get up off the couch, walk into my den/studio/office and check my email.
Since I became old enough to follow a story I have had an extremely low tolerance for tales where people, even fictional ones, suffer embarrassment and humiliation. Growing up my family was used to the fact that I would sometimes get up and walk out of the room during Gilligan’s Island rather than watch a scene that made me uncomfortable. Today I have zero compunction walking away from anything that sets off my ‘someone is going to be humiliated’ alarm. Indeed there are some shows that I altogether refuse to watch. Included in this category are any shows that involve pranking or its younger cousin punking.* And when short but elaborate video snippets that feature people being startled by a stuffed bear that suddenly comes to life or a terrified by a velociraptor that haunts parking garages come on my Facebook feed I reach for the Hide Post button. Everyone knows how bad embarrassment and humiliation feel, and some of us have to draw a line to maintain our humanity.
Apparently Immanuel Kant anticipated my discomfort. As a rule I do not read German philosophy, and I came across this quote by accident in someone else’s work. I have no idea what context Kant may have been constructing around the statement, but the Wikipedia translation seems to be pretty unambiguous on its own.
Going back to the sitcom, I realize that Kant provides me with scant support for objecting to anything that happens to a fictional character. But there is a contradiction here—the closer the writer and actor can take us to what we experience in real life, the more compelling the story. So the more life the writer breathes in to a character, and the more the actor becomes that character, the more that character qualifies for some kind of Kantian regard and sympathy. True, Gilligan’s Island isn’t exactly Tennessee Williams and The Actors Studio rolled into one, but I was eight and it was competing against Beverly Hillbillies and Bewitched. So when I get up and walk out of the room, you’ll know why. It beats squirming.
*Candid Camera came perilously close to setting off my alarm, but somehow Allen Funt (and later his son Peter) managed to find a middle ground that celebrated the inconsistency and irrationality of humans without holding them up for ridicule.
Since I became old enough to follow a story I have had an extremely low tolerance for tales where people, even fictional ones, suffer embarrassment and humiliation. Growing up my family was used to the fact that I would sometimes get up and walk out of the room during Gilligan’s Island rather than watch a scene that made me uncomfortable. Today I have zero compunction walking away from anything that sets off my ‘someone is going to be humiliated’ alarm. Indeed there are some shows that I altogether refuse to watch. Included in this category are any shows that involve pranking or its younger cousin punking.* And when short but elaborate video snippets that feature people being startled by a stuffed bear that suddenly comes to life or a terrified by a velociraptor that haunts parking garages come on my Facebook feed I reach for the Hide Post button. Everyone knows how bad embarrassment and humiliation feel, and some of us have to draw a line to maintain our humanity.
Apparently Immanuel Kant anticipated my discomfort. As a rule I do not read German philosophy, and I came across this quote by accident in someone else’s work. I have no idea what context Kant may have been constructing around the statement, but the Wikipedia translation seems to be pretty unambiguous on its own.
Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.Where video pranks are concerned the “end” in question seems to be some form of entertainment for the person watching the video. Watch as that statue suddenly moves and scares the bejeezus out of that woman! Now that’s funny! I suppose a case could be made that the viewer experiences catharsis watching something more or less traumatic happing to someone other than him or herself, but the connection with Aristotle and the Poetics is a reach at best. And I hasten to add that I’m not one of those people who wishes to censor humor. I merely reserve the right to show my disapproval of stories and situations where the plot object is to make a human feel humiliation or embarrassment, by removing myself. I don’t find it funny.
— Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)
Going back to the sitcom, I realize that Kant provides me with scant support for objecting to anything that happens to a fictional character. But there is a contradiction here—the closer the writer and actor can take us to what we experience in real life, the more compelling the story. So the more life the writer breathes in to a character, and the more the actor becomes that character, the more that character qualifies for some kind of Kantian regard and sympathy. True, Gilligan’s Island isn’t exactly Tennessee Williams and The Actors Studio rolled into one, but I was eight and it was competing against Beverly Hillbillies and Bewitched. So when I get up and walk out of the room, you’ll know why. It beats squirming.
*Candid Camera came perilously close to setting off my alarm, but somehow Allen Funt (and later his son Peter) managed to find a middle ground that celebrated the inconsistency and irrationality of humans without holding them up for ridicule.
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