Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 13

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that they bear disinterested witness to the outrages perpetrated by
racists a generation ago in the state o f Mississippi. As for the real
Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner back in the summer of 1964,
Stewart adds:
Their tragedy does not give testimony to American
virtue, excellence or skill. It testifies rather to the
moral horror that still afflicts our society. . . .Their
deaths were not the price paid to chance and natural
forces for a daring search into the unknown; rather
they paid the price of daring to look at and question
the all-too-familiar lies about our moral selves
which we would like to believe are true. Where then
is the shrine, and what are the rites to be established
for these men?^ ^
In spite of the encouraging gains made by blacks and other minorities
in the the past thirty years, "lies about our own moral selves" are
st ill being told in the entertainment industry and elsewhere, and
Stewart's question has yet to receive the answer it deserves.
From the very beginning of the space program, of course, the
adventures of astronauts constituted another form of television
entertainment for the American public. For weeks and months, video
of the Challenger accident of 1986 was re-played by the major
networks, often in slow motion, a practice uncomfortably reminiscent
of the instant replays of televised sporting events. The faces of the
parents of one of the astronauts were shown again and again as they
witnessed the explosion, their eager expressions turning to
puzzlement, then shock, then horror, as the magnitude of what was
happening before their eyes dawned on them.
If there had been broad public condemnation of this sort of
media overkill, perhaps the networks would have seen fit to back off
a little; but no such mass condemnation was forthcoming, nor was it
deemed necessary. The reason for this, I think, also has to do with
television's genius for presenting tragedy as entertainment. As
Richard Stivers has written.
The visual images of television and the other mass
media represent reality as pleasurable, as a spectacle