I confess I never watched the Jerry Springer show, although I certainly knew what it was, from clips and headlines, and the general unavoidable knowingness of the flashiest flashpoints, highs and lows in the cultural zeitgeist. Springer, even having never watched it, was clearly a low. Netflix has a 2-part documentary about the show (oh great, only 2 parts, I can do that) which – having viewed it – made me more glad than ever that I didn’t tune in. And, it haunts me, a handful of the details, and how a few white men – male producers, a ‘respectable’ male star, male network executives, and a few women too – did this, made this trash, hurt people, especially vulnerable women.
The description of a triangle of geography from which 75% or more of their guests were pulled, a triangle including deeply poor, rural parts of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and southern Illinois, was tragically illuminating. This triangle was good for mining outrageous stories, but also ripe for a grotesque form of exploitation. Enter The Jerry Springer Show. What individual living in poverty in a rural community wouldn’t love to be made much of by city slickers from Chi-town, not recognizing the bone-deep cruelty at play, the patronizing, dehumanizing horror? Basically, guests were being used to provide shock value – “She’s sleeping with her husband’s brother!!” (or much, much worse; see below) – for which their guests received no counseling, no follow-up, and a major dose of public shaming and humiliation. But, the ratings were great, so who cares?
Conscienceless capitalism is a cancer on and in the body politic, on our civic lives, and in every sector of public life. Springer is dead, yet throughout the documentary he is portrayed as a good, smart, decent guy – which he most certainly might’ve been during his career as the Mayor of Cincinnati, and as a news reporter. But. By the time the Springer Show became a mainstream phenomenon – including beating Oprah in the ratings for an extended period – is it really plausible to cloak this very wealthy man, wealthy by way of exploiting and trashing others, as a hero, free of culpability? No, no it’s not.
Springer was a smart guy, he knew what was going on, he was the name on the show, and is as guilty as anyone else who worked there. If Ellen DeGeneres can be (and was) held responsible and accountable for an abusive work atmosphere at her named show, an atmosphere created by members of her crew and producers, a much lesser infraction of human decency by far than what went on at the Jerry Springer show, so must and should Jerry. Just because he had a developmentally disabled daughter who loved his sorry ass, and who he loved, does not excuse the abuses there, or make him a fucking hero. Ditto simply getting and staying rich.
One of the male producers quit the show because of a story line they were pursuing, a tale that involved a young woman, 18 or 19 years old, who was working as a prostitute in her home state, and whose father kept hiring her through the escort service being used. Yes, you read that right. Her dad was paying a service to fuck his own daughter. This male producer – whose dad worked on SNL, by the way – brought her to Chicago where she was ‘safe’ from her abusive dad in a hotel room paid for by the show, except, her father found her through the service again anyway, ‘hiring’ her for sex once more. The painful ugliness of that story made him quit the show, but guess what? He went back. Money talks, cowardly bullshit walks and then returns for more of same.
As I was watching that part, I felt sick to my stomach. I still do. Call the fucking police, I screamed at the TV, call a shelter for abused and exploited women and children, call a domestic abuse hotline, call your mother or someone who thinks you’re still a decent human being and check yourself, you dumb, cruel brother-fucker.
Similar to the WWE (another form of entertainment I’ve never indulged in) the conflicts on the show were staged and ginned up – literally in many cases with booze – pre-rehearsed with producers determined to get the most literal bang for their buck.
Conscienceless capitalism is a cancer on and in the body politic, on our civic lives, and in every sector of public life.