Are We Not Entertained? The Bread and Circus of Sunday

I don’t know if Sunday amounted to must-see TV, but if you want to see what television is about in America and how it’s become one big, interconnected reality show, you could do worse than peek in on what was up on the tube Sunday morning, afternoon and night on Jan. 10.

We had Donald Trump on “Meet the Press,” Washington Redskins fans singing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” and getting it broken. On the Left Coast, we had Ricky Gervais pied-pipering a host of celebrities behaving badly, weirdly, interrupted only by the sound of silence at the Golden Globe Awards Show, the first and probably most silly and odd  of award shows leading up to the Oscars later this year.

There isn’t a great distance between the GOP front-running presidential candidate Donald Trump, who lists really rich tycoon and host of the television reality show “The Apprentice” on his resume, and the parade of presenters, nominees, winners besotten with themselves and each other, presided over by Gervais, who was invited back like a prodigal, profitable son to host the show, Hollywood’s brazened-out version of “Cabaret.”   Surely, one of these years, all made-up with white paint, piercings and suspenders, Gervais will return, singing in his oily fashion, “Willkommen, meine Damen und Herren . . . Willkommen.”

Of course, should things not work out for Trump with this president thing, hosting the Golden Globes might be a good thing for him. Think of how many opportunities to call people “loser” that exist among the overblown categories in television and movies, presented by a group of overseas journalists who rather loosely cover the entertainment business, if not the waterfront.

Sunday on television highlighted our national obsessions of game—playing and watching. There’s the game of politics as a kind of perverse unreal reality show, led by ringmaster Donald, played out as a form of not-too-informative entertainment on television in shows like “Meet the Press” and the recent roundelay of GOP and Democratic debates.

There’s  the game of professional football in which fans make an inordinate emotional investment in the fortunes of their home teams should they still be playing this time of the year. This was especially true of Redskin fans, who went all in, convinced the team under its new coach and resurgent quarterback had turned the corner. 

Last, but not least, there’s the game, not of thrones, but trophies, presented as an entertainment in which the “Today Show” crew, which also presumes to report on politics and news, fawn over their good friends and neighbors like Will Smith and his family, Leonardo DiCaprio, compliment them on their gowns and jewel. They then mercifully dismiss themselves so that Gervais can insult the audience, while the winners try to find their way to the podium, a journey increasingly more difficult as the evening went on.

Trump went on “Meet the Press” in person to spar with Chuck Todd, as opposed to being interviewed on the phone or as a hologram.  Todd—who seemed, intimidated, at least overly friendly, and not a little wary—didn’t lay a glove or a hand on Trump. You never know, of course, what might set Trump off. He always lets people know if they’ve treated him nice, or not, like Jeb Bush or Megyn Kelly, or that Muslin woman who stood silent in protest at one of his rallies recently.   Trump was fairly well behaved and allowed that he was in a tight race with Ted Cruz in the upcoming Iowa caucus, a fact he seemed somewhat puzzled by.  But he let it be known that he was also puzzled by Cruz’s citizenship problem and also explained that, because Hillary Clinton went after him for his alleged sexism, it was O.K. to go after Bill Clinton for his reputation.  “He’s an abuser,” Trump said and noted the word rape had been mentioned by somebody. 

The interview was singularly unenlightening on the issues, but it had the appearance of being entertaining. Meantime, the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary are heading at us like a train with no brakes.  In Iowa, Bernie Sanders is suddenly closing in on Hillary Clinton. Sanders also leads Clinton in New Hampshire, where Trump has a solid lead among GOP candidates.

Speaking of winners and losers, the Redskins did turn the corner into an alley, where they were mugged by the Green Bay Packers and their still proficient, efficient quarterback Aaron Rodgers. It’s not that the Redskins played badly or underachieved, it’s that in these kind of pressure-filled games, they flinched a few times too often.  This was an exercise of dashed expectations for the fans.   Truth be told, I was one of them, at least I was hoping.  It hurts a little more than losing the Powerball lottery, which is only like losing a couple of bucks you left out in your jacket pocket. Still, there, you did it again—you had visions of another Super Bowl in your head.  When an announcer cut in for a preview of the 11 o’clock news to note that “the Redskins are already planning for next season,” it occurred to me to want to say, “That’s because they haven’t got anything else to do.”

That would have been churlish.  For that, we turn to Gervais, who did his very best to make transgender jokes, to be obscene, as if political correctness had already been slain by Trump, to once again get into a mouth fight with Mel Gibson, who got the better line when he said, “It’s good to see Ricky every three years, it reminds me to get a colonoscopy.”

That was about the level of the humor meted out by Gervais, who went on throughout the evening holding a drink which could have been either a stale glass of beer or a urine sample. He mocked the nominees for wanting an award that he said wasn’t important when the award was “worthless.” And so on.  The evening was highlighted by pockets of silence—which presumably bleeped out even more tasteless matter than was actually spoken.

Still, there is something about this kind of show: the red carpet, the beautiful people, the stars, the awards, the way people remember to thank their agent, and their mother and father, their friends, their agent.  This show being set among groups of tables where food and alcohol were consumed, it was looser than say the Oscars where people are stuck in their seats.  You have to love it in some disturbing way: I’m sure tears were shed when Sylvester Stallone won for supporting actor playing Rocky Balboa one more time and Leonardo DiCaprio won his for “The Revenant,” remaining as always an elusive movie star.   There are always moments. Ridley Scott,  who was named best director for “The Martian” in the comedy category, responded to attempts to keep within the time limit by saying, “Screw you.” Lady Ga Ga, who won a best actress for award for “American Horror Story: Hotel,” walked up to the stage in a slinky black dress, all black and blonde, as if auditioning for a future role as Nora Desmond.  Matt Damon won for “The Martian,” his second space movie, and “Mr. Robot” won best drama series.

I kept thinking of  Russell Crowe in the 2000 film, “Gladiator,” at Rome’s Coliseum, bloody sword in hand, yelling, “Are not you entertained? Is this not why you are here?”

You bet, Maximus.