The Weird Power of Video

Forgive me, for I have sinned….

I have been running video training bootcamps in one form or another for more than 20 years now.

Part of the bootcamp experience is that we give people cameras and send them out into the streets, whether it’s in NY or DC or Chiang Mai. We tell them to go find stories.

Novices are always worried about how they will manage to talk their way into a tailor shop or a tattoo parlor to get access to film.  I always tell them not to worry. In our culture, and this is global, video cameras and those who carry them have some kind of magical power that grants instant access.

This is not only true for our trainees.  When I was producing reality shows like Trauma, Life in the ER, or Paramedics or Police Force, it never ceased to amaze me how utterly intrusive the cameras were and how people were delighted to surrender their privacy with almost no questions asked.

My sister was for many years the Executive Producer for Maury Povich.  She invented “who’s the daddy?” among other things. I could never understand what drove people to line up around the block to be on the shows – but bookings were never a problem.

When we produced Police Force for TLC I was always astonished at how quickly the perps signed the releases; “what channel am I gonna be on”?

We live in Screenworld.

We live in a culture where people spend 8.5 hours a day staring at screens, and more than half that time watching TV.

Our reality is defined by video much as the reality of another generation might have been defined by daily farm labor, physically crossing a continent or an ocean or physical labor done with their hands.

Our world is built upon images. Fake created images. But that is our reality.

For a thousand years during the Middle Ages, the sine qua non of existence was the search for Salvation. The power of the priesthood was nonpareil.  Everyone sought salvation through the priests and the Church.

Today few seek salvation. Many seek their 15 minutes of fame, and the path to that ‘salvation’ is the video camera and the TV production company – the priesthood of the 21st Century. And like those who self-flagellated or fasted or drove nails through their hands, the devotees of videoland are no less dogmatic and no less driven.

Those who carry video cameras or produce ‘reality shows’ are the priesthood of the 21st Century and their sway over the general population is powerful indeed.

Don’t believe me?  Go get yourself a video camera and start shooting and tell people that they will be on TV and see what they are willing to do for you.  (Where do you think Girls Gone Wild comes from?)

The Heenes of balloon boy fame, the octomom, the Jon and Kate.. the list goes on and on and on. The Salahi’s of Washington DC, hoping to become the Real Housewives of Washington DC are no different.

Something is happening here.

Something very unhealthy for a society.

We are losing the ability to differentiate between real and fiction on a daily basis, and worse, losing the ability to care that we cannot differentiate.

Will the White House Gatecrash pay off for the Salahis?  Apparently so. Larry King, arbiter of national taste has already booked them.  Can their own ‘reality show’ be far behind?

Probably not.

The upshot of the selling of indulgences and other corruptions in the Catholic Church ultimately lead to the Reformation and a general overturning of people’s fixation on the search for salvation.  Will there be a Reformation in the Cathedral of the Media? Probably not any time soon. We are, I fear, only at the very beginning of this.

Worse is yet to come, but it will.