Previous posts have all expressed how entrenched we are in these stories; we read into them and absorb every detail of who these people are and read into their actions, making absolutisms (Jon is a bum, Kate is psycho, and the Jolie-Pitts are crazy for adopting that many children).
I find this all fitting into Radway's theory concerning romance novels and how they serve the dominant interests of society and, to a certain extent, counters them.
Well, we've done a perfect job, as a society, of demonstrating this theory. Society feeds off of: drama/scandal, news of violence, harrowing stories, and dead celebrities. These gossip column feature stories serve the general population's intrigue for drama and scandal (we follow these stories like a bloodhound on a particularly odiferous scent), and dead celebrities (I worked at lovely Wally-world, more commonly known as Wal-Mart, over the summer...I didn't know they could print that many magazines on one person...and yet Michael Jackson was on every magazine rack from the week he died and was still going strong when I left mid-August).
I mentioned how this counter's society's dominant interests...as a whole, we seem to be intrigued by scandal, yet nonetheless scandalized. People roll their eyes and say, "that Jon and Kate, all they ever do is hold out their hands for money from t.v. shows and use it for obnoxious haircuts and random weekend excursions to Colorado;" and yet we are still drawn to it. Most of these stories counter an accepted norm, and yet instead of dropping the issue, we're drawn to it.
The following is a youtube video of a proposed revolutionary news station "the REAL news." While this is interesting, I wonder just how popular this would be? Gossip, whether we take it in as we're waiting for the lady with 31 items to go through the 15 items or less check-out or we're kicking back in the evening for a bit of television absorption, we're drawn to these stories that serve our interests...
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