Hunting The Muse

A Cruise For America

I have this book by David Foster Wallace called A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, which reprints an article he wrote for Harper's Magazine about his experience taking a cruise.

In it, he writes a lot about Celebrity's (the cruise line) marketing materials. This marketing material is foisted upon the guests during the actual cruise, not just beforehand when they're deciding whether to go.

He notes that the Cruise Director's job seems to be assuring all the guests that they are having a good time. He notices that the overwhelming number of maps with big red dots and YOU ARE HERE statements seem to be "less for orientation than for some weird kind of reassurance". He determines that the narratives in the marketing literature of beautiful scenery, wondrous experiences, and pleasurable feelings are designed not to describe, but to evoke; to assert. And then after a while, all the admonitions of "YOUR PLEASURE IS OUR BUSINESS" and "you will say 'I couldn't agree more!' and 'Let's do it all!'"... start to sound vaguely menacing.

It becomes clear it is a mixture of reassurance and condescension. It is not so much that it is upsetting to the cruise that a guest might not be having a good time... it is instead highly inappropriate. You become bullied into satisfaction.

I was reminded of all of this while watching Bush's press conference today. The man is a bully, he dresses it up in passive language, and it comes through in just about everything he says. You could basically pick a statement at random to illustrate it, the first one I saw from a cnn article:

"I don't plan on losing my job," Bush said during his first prime time news conference of the year. "I plan on telling the American people that I've got a plan to win the war on terror. And I believe they'll stay with me. They understand the stakes."

In other words, re-elect Bush or suffer the consequences. But, he believes in the American people to make the wise choice.

The book author's last day on the cruise was, fittingly, witnessing a hypnotist. A mean-spirited man up on stage attempting to put people in suggestible states, making them believe things that weren't true, having them do things they really would not want to do, all the while playing to the audience and telling them everything is fine and that they are wonderful human beings.

Posted by Curt at April 14, 2004 04:38 AM