First there was Diana. Of course, hers was a tragic death and she was in many ways a remarkable person. But is it churlish to suggest that the thunderous international keening, the clear-cutting of flower beds all over Europe, the launching of a thousand magazines to pay tribute to her was more than a bit overdone? This wasn’t grief, it was emotion run amok. What made this eruption of tears all the more remarkable was that its epicenter was England. If the British can’t control their feelings and if the queen herself is forced to bow her head in homage to someone she had every reason to dislike, if the prime minister feels called upon to read First Corinthians as if it were ““The Death of Little Nell,’’ then truly the floodgates are open.
It was not long until the Brits had another chance to show off their new penchant for emotional bingeing. When a Massachusetts jury found an English au pair girl guilty of murdering an infant left in her care, the country burst into a storm of outrage. The young nanny, who had been alone with the child when it went into a coma, was seen as an innocent caught up in the toils of a crude and alien legal system. The wails–amplified by a lot of American ones–may have reached the ears of Judge Hiller Zobel, who took the unusual step of tossing out the jury’s verdict and setting her free.
It would be unfair to blame all the bathos on the British. Many Americans, too, seemed unable to get through an encounter with the newspaper without reaching for their hankies. The Oklahoma City trials and the unsolved murder of little JonBenet offered new occasions to relive recent horrors, and there were tears of joy when septuplets were born to an Iowa couple. When the news didn’t oblige with something to weep or cheer about, the annals of history were mined for suitable subjects. Some people suggested the U.S. government should apologize for slavery, thus giving us a chance to indulge our feelings about something that ended 130 years ago. And if we apologize for slavery, how about myriad injustices to the American Indians, or the Salem witch trials, or that gross insult called Prohibition?
Sentimentality has never been far below the surface of public life, at least in democratic countries. But it does seem to be bubbling up into view more frequently of late. We journalists bear some of the responsibility. These are ““slow news days.’’ Not many big events are happening to engage the reader’s eye, and so editors try to engage his gut–either with shock-horror sensation or tear-jerk emotion.
Politicians are playing the same game. At a time when the electorate neither expects nor asks much from government, anyone with a favorite piece of legislation faces a hard time mobilizing public support. One way of doing so is to frame a proposal that will tug at the heart. That’s just what’s happened this year. Have you noticed how many government measures have been put forward that would benefit children? President Clinton wants a new program to help parents pay for child care. This year’s tax bill offers credits for children and for education. Joe Camel ads are banned because they appeal to kids, V-chips are proposed to keep TV violence away from kids and the government may even get into the school-uniform business. Our politics has become kiddie politics–if you want a new government program, hitch your wagon to a child.
But don’t blame just journalists and politicians–there’s something else going on. Thanks to our culture of self-indulgence and self-expression, feelings are back ““in.’’ And we overdo them. Most of the Diana grief, for example, wasn’t the personal grief we feel when something bad happens to ourselves or someone we know or love. This was ““event’’ grief, in which emotion is the glue that fastens people to an event played out in the papers or on television. Emotions of this sort hardly count as feelings at all; they’re a form of participation. They’re like the screams at a pop concert, which don’t signify love or even admiration but just exuberance at being part of the show.
I wonder, too, whether overstated emotion isn’t of a piece with all the other extremes that our culture has brought us. In the movies, scenes of ever-increasing visual intensity–whether it’s the obstetrical ickiness of ““Alien Resurrection’’ or the awesome verisimilitude of the sinking ““Titanic.’’ In televised sports, greater mayhem and celebration of mayhem. In cyberland, a crescendo of utterly abandoned discourse. There’s a sort of ““can you top this’’ contest at work to offer something bigger, grosser, wilder than what has gone before, and we may all be getting a little jaded. So jaded that expressions of grief or joy have to be hugely oversize in order to register at all.
It’s no accident that ““road rage’’ was one of the new expressions of the year, and that ““venting’’ (of anger, spleen, resentment) was looked on as a healthy thing to do. In 1997, if you weren’t raising your voice or your fist or your handkerchief to your eye, people thrust little mirrors under your nose to make sure you were still alive. It may be too late to restore a degree of serenity and self-restraint, but let’s try. I invite fellow nonventers to join a Stiff Upper Lip Society. Instead of paying dues, members are asked to bottle up one wayward emotion per week. For starters, have a calm Christmas and a placid New Year.
