This is the first paper that I wrote in Writing 340. It's mistake-prone in some areas (a lot of cheesy rhetorical questions, I'm afraid), but I certainly learned a lot from the feedback I received (both at the Undergradute Writers' Conference and the comments from Professor Feagin). For the uninitiated, the prompt reads:
You have been commissioned by the New Yorker (or Harper's) to write a thesis-driven essay addressed to an intelligent but general audience on the socio-cultural significance of a single fascinating text or series of conceptually related texts. Use the majority of your essay to develop and defend your thesis by engaging your audience in a compelling, close reading that goes beyond the obvious and which features intellectually entertaining analysis and evidence.
I have a challenge for all the news junkies out there: Reflect on the glut of media coverage involving missing or kidnapped children in the last decade or so. What sort of names come to mind? Perhaps you recall the story of Elizabeth Smart, the 14-year-old Nordic beauty abducted by Mormon fundamentalists five years ago, and later found three short miles from her home in Sandy, Utah. More recently, one may remember Natalee Holloway, the deceased debutant in a media escapade that sullied the unimpeachable reputations of loose women on Spring Break everywhere (assuming Girls Gone Wild didn’t beat them to the punch). In a sociological sense, the extent of our knowledge on such kidnappings can be a frightening case-study of American values, and we shall get to that. But most interesting about this challenge are those names that do not immediately come to mind. Does the reader recall 4-year-old Jaquilla Scales? Dannarriah Finley? Cynteria Phillips? Alexis Patterson? Well, why not?
According to
a study by the Scripps Howard News Service, “…whites account for only half of the nation’s missing children. But white children were the subjects of more than two-thirds of the dispatches appearing on the Associated Press’ national wire during the last five years and for three-quarters of missing-children coverage on CNN.” Unfortunately for Ms. Scales and her equally ignored peer, Ms. Phillips, our mainstream media has chosen to selectively represent the variety of children kidnapped on a daily basis. The result, predictably, is what we see from the news on a consistent basis: Caucasian child goes missing, uproar ensues, investigations are widely publicized, and Larry King presides over a tearful interview with the grieving parents. Conversely, colored girl goes missing – and you would be lucky to see her information amidst CNN’s lowly headline marquee at the bottom of your television set. But if the media is beholden to the public by virtue of ratings, how can this be? Surely, American audiences are not the perpetrators of this social injustice. Or are they?
Let’s shift focus for a second. The Academy Awards will soon grace our television sets with the glamorous personalities and lifestyles of the Hollywood elite, the proverbial aristocracy of American society. On February 25th, about 43.5 million will gleefully huddle around their television sets, praying to God above that a movie that taught us the horrors of the Holocaust or a once-in-a-lifetime performance that inspired the nation to make every day count wins the coveted Oscar. Gold-plated and slender, the Oscar figurine represents everything that an entire as come to fawn over: Wealth, ostentatiousness, and celebrity. Before they even grow into their training bras, many little girls with delusions of superstardom rehearse acceptance speeches in front of an adoring audience filled with perfectly made-up Barbie dolls and pristine action figures made to resemble her peers, her family, and all the little people who made her excess possible. Coyly, she looks to her left and thanks the assembled Cabbage Patch Kids, representatives of the Hollywood Foreign Press, for their conscientious acknowledgement of her meager contribution to the silver screen. Clutching her imaginary 13.5 inch claim to fame, she struts off stage and into a world filled with shattered dreams and unfulfilled destinies. In the not-too-distant future, after repeated bouts with the “real world,” she resigns herself to worship of her secular gods and goddesses, the real award-winners. And, on February 25th, she sees a little bit of herself and her dreams on that stage.
An entire echelon of media coverage devotes itself to the ignoble task of satiating the celebrity lust of a religiously movie-going country. Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, and Extra are but a few amongst an industry that reveals the raunchiest secrets of America’s aristocrats. Last year, according to official statistics on the most popular searches on the internet, Google helped make Paris Hilton the most sought-after celebrity on the worldwide web. White trash in a Gucci outfit and Prada stilettos, this rich nobody sports a chic handbag filled with credit cards and checkbooks issued by the inexhaustibly profitable Hilton Hotel, Daddy’s lucrative empire. Everywhere she goes, ET broadcasters are sure to capture all the messy details of her personal life, initiating a babbling dialogue with the hypnotized working-class stooges who constitute their core viewership. “Which club will host Paris Hilton’s birthday party? Coming up when ET returns!” Not the “Vanguard,” that’s where she met Nicole! “Paris’ intriguing love affair...Are wedding bells in the picture?” Tell me she dumped what’s-his-face by NOW! “Richie and Hilton: Best friends again?” Not in this simple life. The triviality of it all borders on farcical, and the sane are left to wonder: Do people actually watch this crap?
Useless They must. If my hatred for Paris Hilton rings loud and clear, then the reader should understand that I don’t necessarily dislike the Hilton heiress for her morally bankrupt antics, repulsive though they may be. Believe it or don’t, there exists an entire subculture of similar bohemians, but they are not the object of America’s fanatical devotion and relentless interest. The bulk of my contempt remains directed at those who perpetuate the inane coverage of the celebrity elite by tuning into these “entertainment” shows day and night, providing an easily-tapped television constituency for the folks in media, who in turn ignore the bigger issues.
Indeed, the magnetic appeal of the glitzy Hollywood scene begins with the little girl who dreams of celebrity and riches. When her dream dissipates, nothing remains but an intangible obsession with the life that she always wanted. It is a life marked by whimsical carelessness and devoid of even a semblance of productive labor. These are the virtues espoused by a decidedly materialistic America, as demonstrated by their “idols” in Los Angeles. Through Paris Hilton, thanks to “The Insiders” at ET, the little girl – or little boy, if the reader possesses the necessary sex organs – vicariously experiences every aspect of the decadent celebrity lifestyle, creating a self-identification with the subject on the television screen that elicits the viewer’s interest.
Bluntly stated, beneath the reflexive moral revulsion, people actually yearn for the life of Paris Hilton. In this woman, Americans recognize the little part of themselves that swoons at the thought of floating through life and the North Hollywood club scene without direction or purpose. Entertainment Tonight, a show OK’d through to its 30th season, plays on this childish notion of a life without responsibility or moral inhibitions. So, in the end, we are responsible for the glut of inane celebrity coverage. We are the ones that tuned out the “important” issues – President Bush, commander-in-chief and self-proclaimed “deciderer” for 300 million people, only managed 41 million viewers in his 2006 State of the Union Address, compared to the Academy Awards’ aforementioned 43.5 million. We are the ones who decide who and what makes the news, and the people have chosen: Hilton, in; Bushy, out. Never mind the well-being of the homeland, or racial equality, for that matter.
We come back to it: Who are the likes of Cynteria Phillips, and why have they been forgotten? Born in poverty on December 10th, 1986 in Miami, Florida, Cynteria Kimberly Phillips was known to her family and friends as a “friendly, smiling ‘tomboy’” who enjoyed talking on the telephone and planting flowers. An extremely active and energetic child, Cynteria’s closest friends remember that, even through the worst of times, she managed to crack an enchanting grin that, perhaps, masked a more profound pain. It is difficult to imagine any girl of 5 smiling as she explains to an adult in a rape treatment center: “I was bleeding below.” Cynteria would suffer trauma after trauma, beginning with the rape at the hands of her drug-abusing father. As a ward of the state, she embarked on a merry-go-round of foster homes, but the death of her second foster parent plunged the child deeper into despair. In 1999, at 13, the unstable adolescent would run away from home and live as a prostitute on the streets of Miami. During this time, on the night of August 15th, 2000, she was raped and murdered by a yet-undiscovered male [visit
theangelchild.com for more information about Cynteria]. This tragic fate seems to warrant all sorts of special-investigation pieces on network news: Domestic abuse, drug abuse, foster-home life, and a myriad of other social issues pertaining to Cynteria Phillips’ tribulations. But her name is not found anywhere “mainstream,” while Elizabeth Smart, a girl of privilege who was raised in a stable white-bred household to loving parents, and who possibly volunteered for abduction around the same time that Phillips was taken against her will and killed, remains the favorite amongst American audiences.
Poor, black, and not as sexually stimulating to the white American eye as 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey (I know – sick, but what are the chances that a beauty pageant star amongst a never-ending sea of missing children becomes the object of a nation’s fixation?), Cynteria and those like her represent a world antithetical to the glitz and opulence of our glamorous role-models on Access Hollywood – a world which we either cannot or do not want to identify with. They pass into the night, silently, while we opt for the stories of promiscuous white women in Aruba and adolescents in Sandy, Utah. Unlike their colored peers, they bear aesthetic qualities and possibly a lifestyle that mirror Paris Hilton’s, teasing the sexual impulses of men and women alike as they play with our demonic fascination with amorality and easy-living. Phillips’ story, involving domestic abuse, poverty, and prostitution, appears patently unglamorous and unattractive, while her racial status proscribes self-identification amongst white America, which in turn reduces the likelihood for empathy or sympathy on the part of the viewer. Translation: Low ratings for CNN.
One way to apply some of the implications of this piece is to reexamine some recent controversies involving race. Upon learning of the Bush Administration’s “relaxed” response to the retrospectively predictable destruction of Hurricane Katrina, rapper Kanye West
eloquently and tactfully redressed the injustice before a star-struck national audience: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Indeed, the social conscience of the American psyche, as illustrated by Kanye, usually chooses to blame individual actors for perpetrating racism. But this narrow-minded approach ignores the possibility that there exists a broader discrimination in American society that isn’t necessarily as palpable as Jim Crow or lynchings. One such example is de facto segregation, in which large social groups work to directly or indirectly contribute to the homogeneity of society. In spite of this, one might still argue that Michael Chertoff or President Bush himself are to blame for the failure to address the crisis in New Orleans, but their failure to act was predicated on the assumption that you, the voter and the viewer alike, were not concerned about the well-being of the disproportionately impoverished, non-white, and non-voting inhabitants of New Orleans. Indeed, you can only imagine the extent of the federal response if a wealthy, overrepresented segment of the American population faced an oncoming natural disaster.
In a rare move, the media followed through with its stated mission and actually reported events accurately as they were unfolding in devastated New Orleans, shocking the nation into action. Again, one might argue that, at least in part, white America’s outrage at the images of poverty and despair prompted action. But the damage had been done, and the dead, including Cynteria Phillips, remain silent. But, to our knowledge, Alexis Patterson has not passed yet. Jaquilla Scales may still be alive. Rather than waiting for the media to shock us with pictures of their decaying corpses, perhaps we should take the initiative by tuning out Paris Hilton and Entertainment Tonight’s other marquee attractions and create some incentive amongst the media moguls to broadcast the names and stories of ALL children who disappear, not just rich white girls that appeal to our sense of vanity and self-perception. Nobody’s asking for you to move mountains or coerce media coverage single-handedly; this can be as simple as emailing CNN’s Nancy Grace tonight, inquiring about the state of Alexis Patterson’s kidnapping investigation. These little girls are crying out for help, wherever they are. It’s up to us – not just people who share their skin color or income bracket – to hear them and act accordingly, so as to bridge a social chasm that makes a mockery of multiculturalism and equality.
