Embarrassment

Joy in Another's Shame: Humilitainment Anyone?

When another's humiliation is pleasing

Posted March 16, 2014

Interest in the Dreyfus affair endures -- although it happened more than a century ago.

Dreyfus was an officer in the French army and a patriot, and yet largely because he was Jewish, he was wrongfully accused and falsely convicted of passing military secrets to Germany. He spent years imprisoned on Devil’s Island, one of the hellholes in the French penal system off the coast of French Guiana.

If you’ve seen Sand Pebbles, you know the kind of wretched place this was.

Through the efforts of his supporters (and despite the conspiratorial actions of others), his innocence finally came to light, and he was exonerated.

Books continue to be written about Dreyfus, most recently a historical novel, An Officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris.

Roman Polanski is working on a film version.

I had only superficial knowledge of the Dreyfus affair until I came across the audible version of An Officer and a Spy. I couldn't put down my ear buds.

Harris begins his account on the January day in Paris, in 1895, when the recently convicted Dreyfus suffers an intensely public degradation. In front of a large group from the French army, he is stripped of his army rank and his sword is snapped in two (the sword has been weakened earlier so that it will more easily break). He is then paraded by thousands of French citizens to shouts such as “Death to the Jew!”

I was startled by the extravagantly staged aspects of this humiliation and the intense, righteous pleasure that so many witnesses received from it. Many believed Dreyfus deserved it, as they were unaware of the conspiracy against him, but, even so, this was way over the top. I could hardly believe it.

But it got me thinking about our own time. A quick look at popular culture today suggests that many of us have almost insatiable appetite for witnessing the public humiliation of others, especially if we can see it as deserved --- as many of the thousands jerring poor Alfred Dreyfus apparently satisfied themselves was the case in an earlier century.

Opportunities for satisfying this craving comes in many formats -- from the tabloid magazines, the many websites emphasizing human failings, to reality TV. Media scholars, Brad Waite and Sara Booker, coined the term “humilitainment” to capture this tendency.

Even programs that are, on their face, not about humiliation in fact take advantage of its appeal to get our attention. Remember William Hung of season three of American Idol? Endearing though he was, his rendition of “She Bangs” was irresistibly entertaining largely because it was so awkwardly performed. His humiliation was a ratings jackpot.

The popular program, To Catch a Predator, also used humiliation as its main draw. New episodes stopped in 2008, but the show continues in reruns. The producers found ways to lure men to places where they expected to have sexual encounters with minors. At an optimal moment, the host of the show, Chris Hanson, said a variant of this line, “I have to tell you that I am Chris Hanson with Dateline NBC and we are doing a story about computer predators . . . “. Dateline employees with cameras or boom mikes recorded the reactions of these men and followed them as they were surrounded by police, handcuffed, and arrested. This was, and continues to be, successful TV -- going by the standard of good ratings.

Steven Reiss and James Wiltz, media rsearchers who examine why people watch TV, have findings suggesting that two motives stand out in the case of reality TV especially: a desire for prestige and self-importance and a desire to get even or a sense of vindication.

This fits with why shows such as American Idol and To Catch a Predator can entertain. Seeing soneone's humiliation can give veiwers a way of boosting their relative status and self-importance. Contestants like William Hung are selected partly because of their “inferior” characteristics, and so provide a kind of downward social comparison. Certainly, with To Catch a Predator, most viewers can see themselves as superior to the men who show up in the stings. Furthermore, and importantly in terms of viewers' reactions, in both shows the humiliations seem “deserved.” No one forces contestants to audition for American Idol, and the men who show up for the stings in To Catch a Predator do so voluntarily. Opportunities for a social comparison boost and to see justice served may indeed be a very satisfying mix. Gone are the days of elaborately staged humiliations of the type suffered by Alfred Dreyfus, but the gratifications of status and getting even never seem to get stale.