But I don’t think Mr. Springer’s defense of his performance is simply a mirror right. He didn’t present the Americans as they were. He’s showing Americans as they quickly learn to portray themselves, in front of audiences eager to see people at their most basic. He’s showing us racist kids and geeky teenagers, all handpicked by a group of producers for high ratings and controversy. Mr. Springer is not a conductor; He’s a tutor, and he’s teaching his guests how to be exactly what his audience wants to see.
Back then, audiences could enjoy, or shudder in horror at the sight of their American countrymen behaving badly when safely removed from the television screen — just as audiences can now watch a movie. Similar scenes on reality TV. But the age of social media has broken down the barrier between the ugliness of a performance and its audience. Mr. Springer’s more insidious legacy is that we’ve all been lured through the glass and, like his guests, we’ve all been incited to commit the worst, worst heinous things. mine. vice signal behavior, all while gawking at similar behavior in others. With “The Jerry Springer Show,” we were still just spectators. Now, we’re both spectators And invited guests.
Mr. Springer could say he didn’t want this legacy. He is the son of Holocaust survivors Germans who immigrated from London to the United States with him when he was 5. He once stated that he want his TV show serious, with serious interviews with serious people. But ratings seem to skyrocket as guests on his show spend less time debating the Iran-contra scandal and more time debating whether women with large breasts are attractive. lead than women with small breasts or not.
Mr. Springer oversaw it all and tried to convince us that it was normal. Or to be more precise, we are still normal. We’re not eccentric, unlike his crew. And in that way, he followed a long-standing tradition. The peculiar performances of the 19th and early 20th centuries did not portray bearded women and small people as neighbors, friends, churchgoers, and classmates, but as a separate species. (sometimes literally), completely different from ordinary people can attend the show to stimulate.
Mr. Springer’s genius is knowing that momentum still works – that with the promise of fame, chance or potential notoriety, some people are still willing to perform on their own in the freak show. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, it meant that others turned on their TVs at 11 a.m. to watch their fellow citizens go about living seemingly forced lives of sex, violence and sometimes very stupid for fun, then turn it off and walk away.
