CHARLOTTESVILLE was recently ranked number one among places to live in the United States by "Cities Ranked & Rated." While University students are fond of our college town, most would be hard-pressed to say that Charlottesville is the most exciting place to live. It is undeniable that students will develop an itch of boredom here at some point or another. At times, I've been surprised at the ability of some students to liven up the University scene.
This past weekend, however, I was shocked by one such event. I happened to stop by a party at AEPi on Friday night, which itself was a rarity for me. The party had an "under the sea" theme, complete with shiny plastic dolphins on the wall and tons of beach balls. After wandering around for a while, I stumbled upon a large crowd on the back porch surrounding a baby pool. I then noticed a number of guys picking up goldfish out of the water and eating them alive.
It was quite a spectacle. Here were a group of grown men surrounded by a few dozen girls cheering them on in awe. Some dropped the goldfish into their drinks and chugged them down, while others preferred to swallow them. I'm not sure exactly what I found most disgusting -- the way these people were treating the defenseless fish, the fact that they were actually swallowing an animal alive or the attention and admiration they received for this heinous display.
Perhaps I wrongly assumed that University students were a bit more mature. Drunken debauchery occurs on every college campus, but this was exceptional.
I shouldn't have been surprised at what I observed, though. This sort of behavior is far from limited to students at the University, and even to college students as a whole. We live in a society that not only accepts these atrocious acts, but rewards them. Shows such as NBC's highly-rated "Fear Factor" are exemplars of this. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I see nothing laudable about a 30 year old who can drink a maggot milkshake or eat cow eyeballs.
Yet sadly, people actually make money from creating these disgusting concepts. Even more deplorable are those that are actually willing to sell themselves out to make $50,000. What does all of this say about the value our society places on work, money and sense of self? There is clearly something amiss in our culture if this behavior is viewed as generally acceptable, regardless of its entertainment value.
In the end, it can all be reduced to the raw power of a dollar. Why do real work when you can chew on a couple tarantulas in front of a few hundred thousand people and make as much money as you might normally make in a year's time? It's ridiculous that many of us are literally willing to do anything for money, and even more so the fact that many are proud of this.
The media and entertainment industry have played the most important role in making this behavior acceptable. Reality shows like "Survivor," "Joe Millionaire" and "The Apprentice" consistently appear in the top 10 of Nielsen's TV ratings list due to the several million Americans that sit down every evening and tune in.
Reality television without fail lures over double the viewers that most television dramas and comedies do. Are our lives so incredibly boring that we feel the need to live vicariously through other people? It seems that in this case one could at least sit down with a good novel. I'm sorry, but listening to Donald Trump repeatedly tell his so-called employees "you're fired" simply doesn't do it for me. I think that as Americans, we're selling ourselves short by succumbing to this.
The way that the entertainment industry glorifies and commercializes the disgusting and the obscene legitimizes this type of behavior, when it is anything but acceptable. In fact, it's just another indicator of how easily our minds can be warped by what we're exposed to. Call it human nature if you'd like -- but next time you change the channel to your favorite reality TV show, consider picking up a book instead.
Todd Rosenbaum's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at trosenbaum@cavalierdaily.com.
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