Peeping Toms
	I have always been fascinated by the media, and its shaping and even dictating of how the national appetite for entertainment should be fed. Over the past few years in the history of entertainment, the marathon TV extravaganza has come into its own, beginning perhaps with the non-stop extravaganza that CNN forged out of the first Gulf War back in1990, thereby introducing a novel kind of audience-pleasing spectacle, with every moment held up for scrutiny to fill the belly of a nation with details and news that played out in real time. We see this same phenomenon again with the current war or with some of the natural disasters, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in China and the cyclones in Myanmar being aired almost like TV miniseries. Columnists and writers have branded this new genre a "mediathon," a relentless hybrid of media circus, soap opera and tabloid journalism. The Gulf War gave way to a host of breathless sequels, dwelling on every possible detail of Anna Nicole Smith's life and death, the exhaustive coverage of the 2008 primaries and presidential candidates, as well as Brittany's escapades, and Angelina and Brad's life and babies. All of these and many more have captured the national consciousness and have commanded wall-to-wall air time to the point of total saturation. One of the many grim outcomes of these media-spun events is the way in which they have tapped into our deepest voyeuristic urges and cynically played them to the hilt. Demanding no intellectual engagement from the audience and manipulating our longing to be entertained, these media events have fostered and encouraged passive, uncritical viewing of whatever the networks deem fit for mass consumption. With its unerring instinct for a quick buck and understanding all too well how to play to the lowest common denominator in our national psyche, the media seized upon this notion of audience as voyeur and voila, Reality TV Shows - Survivor, Lost, The Real World. They are cheap to produce, and they have a frisson of authenticity, but mostly they satisfy our voyeuristic impulse that the media has uncorked and now counts on to keep us watching. Reality TV purports to have no preconceived narrative template whatsoever. Within the loose contours of tribal competition on Survivor, or the sexual come-ons of Lost, the contestants are free to do as they please. With their mantras of outwit, outplay and outlast, reality shows often encourage the audience to eschew empathy and emotional involvement and in essence to become Peeping Toms to the struggles, conflicts and manipulative behavior of a group of people placed in inhospitable environments (and motivated to win by the promise of a million dollars). Social Darwinism gone awry. When we read, and enter into a world created by an author, are we not also voyeurs, living vicariously through created characters and fictional settings and plots? When we enter Pip's world of Great Expectations, are we merely watching as Magwitch is taken and subjected to the horrors of deportation; do we simply observe Miss Havisham's frozen world and Pip's early life? No, I would suggest that what separates the contrived TV reality show from the world of a novel is the intellectual engagement demanded by the author, which cannot help but tap into the reader's own imagination, leading to an interpretation of what we have just read and a level of interaction with the material. We are there with Pip, almost at one with him, as he moves through young adulthood, and we empathize with Pip when Magwich dies. Similarly, when reading Jane Eyre, consider the experience of being actively drawn into a work of art when Jane addresses us as "Dear Reader"; she, the narrator, is actively inviting us into her world, to be a part of her emotional and psychological journey of self-discovery. We enter Jane Eyre's interior landscape and interpret and react. To watch King Lear, Hamlet, Othello or any good play is to interpret, or as T.S. Elliot framed the experience, "to seek, to pounce upon the secret, to elucidate the pattern and pluck out the mystery." This very act of interpretation removes us from the realm of voyeur into that of engaged participant where we can reconstruct in our own imaginations the author's vision and intentions. Literature pushes us to expand our intellectual and emotional horizons; to read and experience worlds beyond our own, and to be an active participant in our own entertainment. So I leave you with my usual message--read and read some more, and enjoy the active engagement of your imagination.