We are Entertaining Ourselves to Death
By Jonathan Dodson | July 9th, 2010 | Category: Gospel and Culture | 8 commentsTip: Put on Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” then listen to “Karma Police” while reading this blog entry.
This machine will, will not communicate
These thoughts and the strain I am under
Be a world child, form a circle
Before we all go under
And fade out again and fade out again
Cracked eggs, dead birds
Scream as they fight for life
I can feel death, can see its beady eyes
All these things into position
All these things we’ll one day swallow whole
And fade out again and fade out again
~ Radiohead, “Street Spirit [Fade Out]”
Thom Yorke Says We’re Dogs (and he’s right)
Commenting on “Street Spirit”, Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead, says: “All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve… ‘Street Spirit’ has no resolve… It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end. It represents all tragic emotion that is so hurtful that the sound of that melody is its only definition.”[1] The song has been summarized as both “Hopelessness” and Radiohead’s “purest song.” The music delivers a message of pure hopelessness and futility—strain, fading life, swallowed whole, death.
You might say that “Street Spirit” is the futility of a life lived without the Spirit of Heaven. It is life without life, an absence of the animating spirit of God who restores us our humanity. Without the Spirit, life becomes an impersonal machine that doesn’t impart hope. We go through the motions of work, play, and family without any connection to God. Whether we acknowledge it or not, a life disconnected from the Spirit is the dark tunnel of a hopeless life. Yorke comments: “We all have a way of dealing with that song… It’s called detachment.” That’s exactly what many of us do with the hopelessness of our disconnected lives. We detach from reality, from our strained, fading relationship with God. We all detach.
All too often we look to entertainment and media, not for life-giving leisure but for life-denying escape.
How do you detach? Many of us detach ourselves from reality through entertainment and we drag our children with us. As the world becomes a stressful place, we run to entertainment not to the Spirit. Media becomes our savior, rescuing us from our demanding or despairing days. After a demanding day, during a season of suffering, or in search of fulfillment somewhere other than God. These days have a way of building up over years, tipping over into the sense that our lives are profoundly hollow, disconnected, and lifeless. We abdicate parenting to dvds, television, computer games, twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.
What are we living for? In a moment of honesty, we might acknowledge this, the beady eyes of death penetrating our souls, but more often, we cover up our hopelessness with a new music download, some mindless internet surfing, social networking, or just one more Netflick. The media signal gets stronger; the Spirit fades.
Commenting on his experience of playing “Street Spirit” live, Yorke compares his smiling, cheering fans to a dog who gleefully wags his tail just before he is put down. We are the fans, and the fans don’t even think about what they are singing. They just sing; they just watch, killing themselves softly. We are detached. All too often we look to entertainment and media, not for life-giving leisure but for life-denying escape. In the words of Neil Postman, we are entertaining ourselves to death.
Watching 24 Will Inspire & Kill You
Surely you’ve felt this, this gnawing sense that you just wasted part of your life while you were surfing, streaming, watching? I recently started watching the TV Series “24” to wind down in the evenings, but its become much more than winding down. It’s addictive. Just one more episode, and it’s so easy on Netflix. Why?
Well, the story is incomplete and the suspense kills me. They frame my suspense with a 24 hour clock that counts down in each episode, prodding me to the next. There’s a good reason for the addiction—part of us that longs to participate in a meaningful story and see it to the end. We want to participate in bringing Serbian hitmen down, to see CTU/Center for Terrorist redeemed from its corruption, and, perhaps most of all, to experience the restoration and healing of the Bauer family. Jack Bauer, the director of CTU has fractured his family through overworking and an extra-marital affair. He’s trying to repair things. We long for restoration with Jack. That’s the good reason we keep watching 24.
We distract ourselves from the real story of our lives by escaping into the fictional story of other’s lives.
But there’s also a bad reason, another part of us that wants to be distracted from the real injustice (homeless and poor of our cities), real need for restoration and healing (of our broken, disconnected, overworked lives). The story of 24 (or any form of entertainment) can become an escape from the real injustice and brokenness of our everyday lives. We will empathize with Jack & Terry while we neglect our own marriages.
We will be angered by betrayal in CTU but undisturbed by the poverty in our very own city. And then there’s the brokenness and hopelessness of our own lives. We cover it up with escapist stories, stories that we don’t even really reflect on. We distract ourselves from the real story of our lives by escaping into the fictional story of others’ lives. The media signal gets stronger; the Spirit fades. But if we would stop and listen to these stories, not just watch them, we would detect an echo of our own lives. A deep down longing for attachment not detachment, justice not entertainment, life not death. Escape your escape and jack into the Spirit of life, recover your humanity, not only for your own sake but for the sake of your children.
[1] Thom Yorke – http://radiohead1.tripod.com/songs/album/streetspirit.htm
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Interesting post. Always loved Radiohead and have long thought Yorke to be a deeply insightful but tortured man. To this day I think The Bends is still my favorite of their albums. Anyway, this topic of entertaining ourselves to death hits me square in the face – along (I think) with much of us here in the U.S.
Something else to consider or add – What if the entertainment driven escape we all are prone towards is, at it’s core, a form of worldliness we have blindly given ourselves over to? Worldliness is ultimately to find satisfaction in the things of this world. This is essentially the appeal of entertainment – disconnect and be satisfied. Movies, music, etc. become our little false saviors that “lift us up” for an hour or two.
I was wrestling with this idea last week and found myself dealing with James 4:4-10. He scolds us saying: “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (5) Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? (6) But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” (7) Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (8) Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. (9) Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. (10) Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”
I have always thought verse 9 to be strange advice. Now I’m more inclined to think it’s spot on. We entertain ourselves rather than deal with the reality of our brokenness and the brokenness that permeates our world. We seek relief from movies, music, food, drink, and company so as to avoid dealing with this. We make ourselves laugh rather than mourn and repent.
I remember some time ago watching some news show or something where the anchors were discussing Radiohead and, in particular, the song Street Spirit. After hearing a portion of the song one of them was quick to make a joke about it being “depressing.” The real joke though was them. You could tell the song hit a nerve in both of them…despite their polished look and smile – something about the song hit them in the gut. And like we all do so often they dismissed it by making light of it by joking and laughing it off.
Another time I asked someone what they thought of Sufjan Stevens song, “John Wayne Gacey Jr.” They said it was a “beautiful song.” Maybe from a detached stylistic point of view I could say that. But as a whole that song is simply unnerving. It causes you to ask questions about yourself that are not the most flattering or fun to ask and leads emotionally to a rather empty and dark place. It’s not easy to look in the mirror.
I think the rebuke and counsel in James is incredibly relevant for us today. “Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.” It’s a direct assault on our inclination to seek and find satisfaction in this world. It’s a direct assault against our tendency to “keep it light” by cracking a joke and just want to “have fun.”
We might do well to take James advice to feel our brokenness and to sit in it. To let it crush us and cause us to mourn and weep. To let it drive us to humility. But its just so darn easy to push play and eat some Häagen-Dazs.
JD,
Great thoughts…been wrestling with some similar ideas. Landing on the idea that consumption of the ideas of others is only recreational if it stirs me to re-create. To respond with some kind of cultural artifact or idea of my own. Otherwise it is only, and truly, a-musement….a disengagement of all thought from my own. I’m not sure that’s always bad, but it can, as you suggest, become addictive.
I just started The Empire of Illusion which grapples with some of this as well.
Blessings friend.
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[...] Jonathan Dodson: We are entertaining ourselves to death. [...]
@Charlie
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Although “worldiness” might be a way to detect a pattern in our lives, it still doesn’t tell us why we our worldly. Moreover, worldly can be very good. There are worldly trends that we do well to learn from environmentalism, sacrifice, social justice, Arts foundations, scientific advancement, and so on. In light of this, I find the term “worldly” unhelpful, creating an us them distinction that doesnt honestly assess the world our ourselves. Instead, I think we need to celebrate the good, true, and beautiful worldly things and critique those that are not. We need to begin the critique with ourselves, asking the question WHY am I drawn to the negative, false, distorted things? My post was an attempt to get at the excessive devotion to an otherwise incredibly creative and often truth-telling medium.
@John
Great thoughts as usual. I like the idea of worthwhile recreation stimulating creation. Jonathan Edwards says something like that about godly leisure. However, surely theres something to just enjoying the product, reflecting on its truth, admiring its beauty, whether we create or not. Edwards was a little too “efficiency” driven, I think.
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