Damsels in Distress in China

This begins with this column by Eugene Robinson in Washington Post:

Someday historians will look back at America in the decade bracketing the turn of the 21st century and identify the era's major themes: Religious fundamentalism. Terrorism. War in Iraq. Economic dislocation. Bioengineering. Information technology. Nuclear proliferation. Globalization. The rise of superpower China.

And, of course, Damsels in Distress.

Every few weeks, this stressed-out nation with more problems to worry about than hours in the day finds time to become obsessed with the saga -- it's always a "saga," never just a story -- of a damsel in distress. Natalee Holloway, the student who disappeared while on a class trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba, is the latest in what seems an endless series.  Holloway assumed the mantle from her predecessor, the Runaway Bride, who turned out not to have been in distress at all -- not physical distress, at least, though it's obvious that the prospect of her impending 600-guest wedding caused Jennifer Wilbanks an understandable measure of mental trauma.

Before the Runaway Bride, there were too many damsels to provide a full list, but surely you remember the damsel elite: Laci Peterson. Elizabeth Smart. Lori Hacking. Chandra Levy. JonBenet Ramsey. We even found, or created, a damsel amid the chaos of war in Iraq: Jessica Lynch.

The specifics of the story line vary from damsel to damsel. In some cases, the saga begins with the discovery of a corpse. In other cases, the damsel simply vanishes into thin air. Often, there is a suspect from the beginning -- an intruder, a husband, a father, a congressman, a stranger glimpsed lurking nearby.  Sometimes the tale ends well, or well enough, as in the cases of Smart and Lynch. Let's hope it ends well for Holloway. But more often, it ends badly. Once in a great while, a case like Runaway Bride comes along to provide comic relief.

But of course the damsels have much in common besides being female. You probably have some idea of where I'm headed here.

A damsel must be white. This requirement is nonnegotiable. It helps if her frame is of dimensions that breathless cable television reporters can credibly describe as "petite," and it also helps if she's the kind of woman who wouldn't really mind being called "petite," a woman with a good deal of princess in her personality. She must be attractive -- also nonnegotiable. Her economic status should be middle class or higher, but an exception can be made in the case of wartime (see: Lynch).

Put all this together, and you get 24-7 coverage. The disappearance of a man, or of a woman of color, can generate a brief flurry, but never the full damsel treatment. Since the Holloway story broke we've had more news reports from Aruba this past week, I'd wager, than in the preceding 10 years.

I have no idea whether the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida hung on every twist and turn of the Chandra Levy case; somehow, I doubt he did. But I suspect the apostle of "deconstructionism" would have analyzed the damsel-in-distress phenomenon by explaining that our society is imposing its own subconsciously chosen narrative on all these cases.

It's the meta-narrative of something seen as precious and delicate being snatched away, defiled, destroyed by evil forces that lurk in the shadows, just outside the bedroom window. It's whiteness under siege. It's innocence and optimism crushed by cruel reality. It's a flower smashed by a rock.  Or maybe (since Derrida believed in multiple readings of a single text) the damsel thing is just a guaranteed cure for a slow news day. The cable news channels, after all, have lots of airtime to fill.

This is not to mock any one of these cases (except Runaway Bride) or to diminish the genuine tragedy experienced by family and friends. I can imagine the helplessness I'd feel if a child of mine disappeared from a remote beach in the Caribbean. But I can also be fairly confident that neither of my sons would provoke so many headlines.

Whatever our ultimate reason for singling out these few unfortunate victims, among the thousands of Americans who are murdered or who vanish each year, the pattern of choosing only young, white, middle-class women for the full damsel treatment says a lot about a nation that likes to believe it has consigned race and class to irrelevance.  What it says is that we haven't. What it says is that those stubborn issues are still very much alive and that they remain at the heart of the nation's deepest fears.

Kevin Drum pointed out that Engene Robinson had a missing entry:

Actually, Robinson forgot the DiD who came in between the Runaway Bridge and Holloway: Schapelle Corby, the attractive, white, Australian beautician who was recently sent to jail for allegedly smuggling marijuana into Indonesia. I'm going to take a wild guess and estimate that dozens of foreigners have been sent to jail for smuggling drugs into Indonesia in the past year alone, but Corby is the only one to get splashed all over CNN's front page. Can you guess why?

(Answer: According to a cable news employee who was willing to state the obvious on an anonymous basis, "We showcase missing, young, white, attractive women because our research shows we get more viewers. It's about beating the competition and ad dollars.")

What has this got to do with China?  Here is a statement translated from an interview with a certain famous Chinese media expert (via Boxun).  He has seen what goes on in the United States and he does not like it.

...

Free thought is a very irrational way of thinking, because it has a proclivity for entertainment.  For example, you know that the public adores celebrities; when you turn on the television set and you see some celebrities, you pay attention to the celebrities instead of the things that concern you.  What is the celebrity thinking?  What is he doing?  

The celebrities are setting the agenda for the general public, which does not have to pay attention to what is happening around them, or care about it, or think about it.  Instead, the public watches and listens to whatever the celebrities feel like talking about.  But sometimes the thought may come to the public member, "What he is talking about has nothing to do with me personally.  He seems to talking about things from another planet.  Maybe something is happening to me right now, but how come I don't feel that it matters to me at all?"  That is why I am opposed to free thought.

The other thing about free thought is that it feeds on scandals.  For example, in the United States, the media are reflecting on the Monica Lewinsky case.  Lewinsky was a White House intern.  The media went overboard with the sex scandal between her and President Clinton.  It was all intern all the time.  Every small and large detail about Lewinsky has appeared in the media.

At the time, the audience loved it.  When people go home, what they think about most was what happened between the two, or what will happen to them.  All the radio and television stations bombarded the country around the clock for a month, and then the newspapers published the entire Starr Report.

Later, people reflected: What do such things such as the private affairs of the president got to do with our public interests?  Does not the president have really important things to deal with: environment protection, foreign relations, Sino-American relations, the Taiwan Straits problem, American-Russian negotiations about strategic ballistic missiles, unemployment, minorities, Indian tribes, education, campus massacres, and other matters that the American public care about?

Concerning those issues, 'free thought' should have given individuals a major impetus to form a public opinion force to demand the President solve the problems.  Instead, free thought wants to know if the President went to bed with Monica Lewinsky.  If free thought continues to cause that to happen, is it not damaging the public interests?  Sometimes, people praised Americans for being free to think; they are even allowed to think about whether the President went to bed with that woman.  But if everybody starts thinking about those kinds of things, then where is that society heading towards?  What have these things got to do with the people?  What have these things go to do with the public interests?

Here is the first thought: If the Chinese Communists want to cement their hold on their country and turn people's attention away from political and social issues that might challenge their rule, shouldn't they be running Damsels in Distress stories?  That was a rhetorical question, because the answer must be ... ah, but they do and will probably do a lot more!  For proof, just read Danwei continuously (especially the summary of newpaper front page stories) and take note of the tendency in Chinese media.

What is the alternative then?  Here, I am going to insert the section that was previously omitted by the ellipsis in the statement from the Chinese media expert:

Your own free thoughts may be different from the thoughts of society and the government as a whole, because you don't have all of the relevant facts or you haven't considered all of the aspects.  The thoughts of society and the government have been approved by the relevant government departments, which have collected all the relevant facts and thoroughly considered all the positive and negative aspects on your behalf, and then express the information in the way that you prefer to receive.  In so doing, we are selfless.  We only do this so that you won't have to think for yourself.  All you have to do is live like pigs.  

Here, I must add that I think that pigs are the luckiest animals in the world.  It is noted that there I am referring to domestic pigs, not wild boars.  As arranged by the master, pigs live, eat, drink and play without a worry.  Although their ultimate fate is death, they are lazy, they don't think and they live happily.  For them, death is only terrible in the final few minutes of their lives.  Most of the time, they live in a happy paradise.  But wild boars are different, because they have individuality and they think too much; they want to fight with humans and they need to find food for themselves; for them, death is not just terrible in the last few minutes, but it is a fact in every minute of their lives.

What a choice!  Choice #1: Spend your life worrying about (white) damsels in distress.  Choice #2: Be a mindless pig and trust the government to take care of everything.  The correct choice should be clear -- NONE OF THE ABOVE.  Why must I choose between two extremely weak straw men?

For the record, the Chinese media expert is Li Xiguang (李希光), the Dean of the Tsinghua University School of Journalism.  He was previously featured in the post The Man With Two Faces.  The Boxun article which reproduced his remarks in their entirety has this sub-title inserted by the commentator: "I ask everyone inside and outside to get together and boycott Li Xiguang and Tsinghua University!" (吁海内外共同行动，抵制李希光和清华大学).  Indeed.