Drama-Junkie Nation

When drama was first invented in Ancient Greece, people consumed perhaps twenty hours of it per year, during annual festivals. Today people typically consume that much in a week or less.

Here’s a disquieting theory: our mass-overdosing on drama is causing widespread psychological harm that weakens our ability to respond to crises like this pandemic.

For instance, people today are reacting quite differently than people did in 1969 to the Hong Kong Flu, which killed 100,000 Americans (in a smaller total population): could this be because we’ve watched so many happy-ending productions that we’re ingrained with a belief that bad outcomes can always be avoided if only we recognize and follow the right advice? I’m a product of the TV age too, but it seems to me that people who spent more time on their own life-problems and pursuits and less time watching idealized, imaginary representations of life, constructed by dramatic formulae, would have more realistic ideas about the human condition and more humility about what sort of misfortunes we can hope to avoid.

Drama uses actors, and actors gain success by conveying passionate emotion: usually not so much by showing calmness, civility, or cool-headed practical common sense. Could it be that our spooning this stuff down every day, hours at a time, has contributed to our becoming largely a touchy-feely nation of useless snowflakes, rather than a greatest-generation nation that could roll up its sleeves, make hard decisions, and do the needful?

The bad part of this rumination is: if we’re a nation of drama junkies now, how do we kick the habit? How do we persuade enough people to want to turn off the flatscreen and go do something real? I haven’t got an answer. But if you’re newly married and starting a family, severely limiting screen time for your own kids sounds to me like a good idea.