Fitter Happier: The Struggle for Individuality in American Culture

In the United States we are constantly bombarded by texts and images that depict the American Dream.  These stimuli attempt to dissuade us from developing our own individuality.  Advertisements, politicians, and even works of art all pull at us to join the movements of the masses.  Corporations want us all to be the same, so we'll buy the same things over and over no matter how frequently they brand their products.  Since corporations control the media, the level of brainwashing has reached new levels in the last few decades.  This influences American individuality because original ideas are often replicated, stolen, and manufactured into products that the whole population can eventually have access to.  Not only do these advertisements have an effect on our individuality, but on our emotional states as well.  A Radiohead song called Fitter Happier, written by British singer Thom Yorke, is a satire of the condition one lives in when American values and computerized efficiency are put to heart. 

If you listen to the minute-long song, which really reads like a poem, you will hear a monotonous computer-like voice that hauntingly sounds emotional.  The piano and the violin in the background of the song strike dissonant chords as the drone projects its state of living to the listener.  Listening to this song for the first time may bring tears to your eyes.  If you’ve ever thought about how the human spirit is slowly becoming more static and digital, then hearing this anthem of despair might take you to a very frightening place. 

The song opens with the vocalist stating how he has improved (“regular exercise at the gym... a patient safer driver”).  These are both conventional activities that most Americans have steadily become accustomed to as a result of modern living.   The life he wishes to lead seems to be deprived of individual freedoms and is more based on what's expected of him. 

As the piece continues the listener gets the sense that it isn’t meant to be taken literally, but more as a work of satire.  The drone uses extremely sarcastic remarks towards the middle of the piece, such as, “No killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants” and, “Still kisses with saliva”, to convey that the piece may be better defined as a satire.  This sarcasm works by convincing the listener that the computer is in fact human, or is perhaps a human feeling more robotic lately due to his changing lifestyle, and that everything he is saying may be interpreted in a different context. 

As the work progresses, the listener starts to feel deeper emotional ties and a sense of empathy for the vocalist.  After all, the listener may already be brainwashed by the exact same lifestyle obsession of achieving the American Dream that the speaker is suffering from.  “Fond but not in love” implies that the emotional state must constantly be repressed in order to sustain such determination.  Further evidence from the song supports this: “Nothing so incredibly teenage and desperate, nothing so childish” is dryly sarcastic in that it mocks the repression of childish instincts in our drive to achieve. 

Further ahead, “No chance of escape” might resemble the true nature of this processed human, as recognized by his intrinsic system of values (or Thom Yorke actually decided to mix the literal with the figurative, as so many other affective artists do).  In this line, the vocalist gives us the direct impression that he is not happy with the path he has chosen.  When you have corporations and billboards telling you what to value, real individual values become forgotten and are replaced by them.  Corporations seek to degrade the human spirit and promote low self-esteem in order to isolate us from developing any sense of identity.  “No chance of escape” is the key line in the song; it's the anomaly in the microprocessor that transforms its coded thoughts into a satirical criticism, and thence into the desperate cry of a mortified human. 

Some of the lines in this piece reflect other tenets of achieving the American Dream.  “Pragmatism not idealism” and “the ability to laugh at weakness” reflect ideals that take the focus away from dreamy pursuits and puts it on achieving greatness (whatever that means to the individual).  Such is another American ideal: valuing feelings of superiority or winning. 

At the end of the song the vocalist finally gains a sense of awareness.  He gives two direct metaphors that resemble his condition after choosing the path that made him conventional: “Like a cat, tied to a stick, that’s driven into frozen winter shit”; “A pig, in a cage, on antibiotics”.  The listener suddenly knows that the dissonant atmosphere of the entire song has complemented the conclusion that the American doctrine of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” has been overshadowed by the desensitization of conventionality. 

Whenever I listen to this song, I can always feel the sting of tears penetrating the corners of my eyes.  Sometimes I feel that just listening to the computer-human allows me to become him.  It feels like the same walls in a prison cell surround me; that I am lost and obsolete in a digital framework that suffocates me.  I look around at my fellow Americans and wonder if they really know what they want.  The reason why most of them can't answer this question is because they have so many things telling them what they want instead of listening to their hearts and figuring it out on their own.  I see my peers and understand why they tend to distance themselves from the rest of the world.  The pressure of achieving success in our society is so great that it ironically hurts our development.  I also think about how the United States is the country with the highest percentage of its population being treated for mental illness.  I look at the entire world and see how globalization can be better defined as a virus, copying our dogmas and filtering them down through other countries like Great Britain, where the lyricist is from. 

One redeeming thing about this piece is that it offers a warm abode of sympathy, a comforting feeling that reminds me I am not alone.  While most American ideals desensitize the human spirit, it is the freedom we have in America that allows us to find different ways of escaping the system it created.  Art like this can still take us away whenever the overwhelming pressure of the world unhinges us.  While Fitter Happier depressingly reminds us that we are slaves to modern society, it also rekindles the great comfort of knowing that individuality will never be overshadowed by the American Dream, so long as people are still expressing themselves in works like these. 

 

The Rise in Counter-Commercial Entertainment

 When making observations about the world, we make the clearest judgments using sight because it’s our most trustworthy of senses.  Humans pay attention to sight more often than sound or scent because images are most often used in society to convey information.  Among other things, images are used to promote new products, offer entertainment, or to simply give viewers some aesthetic pleasure.  On top of this, advertisers and the media have used the art of deception to manipulate the public into associating images with lifestyles.  When most people watch television for visual satisfaction, it allows the media to become far more powerful than it would be otherwise. 

History has shown that a corruption of power is often countered by a revolution.  Because an image can be viewed under different perceptions, a revolution in entertainment, which I like to call “counter-commercial entertainment”, has sparked public interest.  Shows like The Simpsons represent the unbalanced side of this equation.  On one side we have the black and white world that the media and advertisers have attempted to create before our eyes, and on the other we have a more open-minded form of entertainment that keeps us grounded to the individual. 

The core of The Simpsons revolves around the fact that Americans love to stereotype.  Each character on the show has most of the attributes of all our favorites.  There’s the foreigner who owns the local market shop, innocently trying to make a living in a country that promises a better life.  There’s also the lazy cop, who appears to be taking care of things yet can’t seem to take his eyes off a donut.  Furthermore, we have the goody-goody Christian neighbor; the greedy capitalist, who we usually find involved in a corporate scandal; the bratty kid with an addiction for getting into mischief; and Homer Simpson himself, who may fittingly exemplify the lazy couch potato watching the show.  Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, took all these stereotypes and threw them into a blender, offering a seemingly endless potential for cliche driven plots and easy humor. 

Is it such a coincidence that Springfield (set in no particular state that we can identify) might be analogous to our own melting pot, the United States?  By sitting ourselves in front of our television sets and viewing this show, we enter an animated version of our own lives.  I believe people watch The Simpsons because it reflects a lot of the things we encounter every day as a result of media distortion.  This can be attributed to the idea that, at the expense of freedom, we have closed our minds to the environment around us. 

People in our country like to put labels on others, not because we’re cold-hearted, but because we like to know who a person is before we really know them.  Because we are a culture that seeks the fastest, easiest solution to things, we are prone to generalizing and looking at things from a black and white perspective, leading to prejudgments and stereotyping.  This social laziness appears to be the result of our luxury of freedom; we've been so free to look at things from the simplest perspective possible that it doesn't matter if we judge things by their appearances.  The media took advantage of this after the invention of television.   It knew this was an opportunity to conform people into believing what they’re shown, likening it to a mass mind control agent.  While some may be blind to this cynical view of our society, other non-conformist types who watch The Simpsons may find peace in the knowledge that yes, there is something in the media that is pointing at the stupidity of stereotyping and laughing at it. 

The Simpsons has broken down the doors. It has helped to create a revolution in the sit-com era that I like to call “counter-commercial entertainment”.  This form of entertainment is crucial for our society in that it takes the focus away from political propaganda and commercials (as can be identified on almost every other prime-time television show), while making fun of them in the process.  Stereotyping is only one thing we are tired of them propagating.  We’re also tired of watching talk shows selling a lifestyle that induces people into following a consumerist mantra; sick of watching politicians lie when being asked a question that might hurt their agenda; and fed up with magazines assigning us gender roles.  These examples are based solely on the media.  In the real world, when we look around we see real social issues, like xenophobia, people taking advantage of medicinal marijuana, and psychics being heralded as mystic beings (not to mention the people who actually believe in their vague insight).  Here we can see that a lot of our complaints aren’t coming from the television itself, but from the lifestyle the media has fueled into the heart of America.  We need to find something we can relate with that expresses our views of this dispirited society.  This new genre provides us with an escape from all the images we are tired of seeing in everyday life. 

South Park has joined The Simpsons in carrying the torch of this revolution.  The show blatantly mocks American popular opinion.  In one episode, members of our country are depicted in a song using Canada as the scapegoat for all our problems.  Other times you will see an entire group of people clapping and agreeing in unison at everything a politician or a historic figure says, clearly to show them being brainwashed by their doctrines.  By mocking popular opinion, episodes like these represent the ignorance of “the followers”- people who believe everything they’re told.  These "followers" are the reason the media has such an influence on images.  When the media is easily able to effect images in our society, it greatly influences the way children view the world as well. 

South Park complements The Simpsons by using children to show the true nature of the people that our consumerist culture has created.  In one episode a psychic is seen asking vague questions leading to vague inferences that inspire a rise out of his crowds.  Because one vague question after another leads to a very specific answer, the psychic is praised as an immortal being who can accurately predict the future.  If you want to push things further, the episode even sets an example of how a messiah might rise to power.  The point is: the children of South Park are the only ones who can see through this deception, but are discredited for their opinions because that’s how it is in our society.   The opinions of the youth are overshadowed by those of the older generation, simply because they think they know better. 

In another episode, a child drew a stick figure of the lynching of some unfortunate being.  We don’t know who he is specifically, but because the color of the crayon was black, the older generation felt that the drawing glorified the lynching of black slaves.  This confused the children.  The children were so oblivious to racism that using a black crayon would have made no difference than if they'd used a white crayon.  South Park also did a great job illustrating the surprise on the faces of the adults who realized that the children were less superficial than their own selves. 

Here we can see how the values, opinions, and questions our youth have are often set aside and ignored.  When we look closer, we realize that adults have these same values, but they’ve been tainted as a result of becoming “followers” of society.  Children hold human nature in its true form.  When everything in the media pulls at this nature to be something it isn’t, the vast majority of our adolescent population becomes molded into adulthood by the lifestyle images they perpetrate.  And if they can't be molded, they are dismissed as vagabonds, or worse, as having a mental disorder. 

South Park does a good job representing the voice of our youth by showing us children who think like adolescents that have not been deceived by a culture of consumerism.  Often the children are the ones listening to the voice of reason, whereas the adults are the ones acting like children.   Like The Simpsons, it makes fun of virtually every superficiality that stereotyping in marketing can offer. 

The fact that these shows are both animated means they have a larger appeal to the youth, enhancing the subdued generation's voice for these subtle commentaries on modern living.  Cartoons also make it easier to exaggerate images and characteristics.  These shows are projecting images that will ultimately open the door to this new genre.  Just as African Americans are still reminding us that racism exists, what Matt Groening, Matt Stone, and Trey Parker are doing is reminding us that it’s ok to take the radical side of an argument because there's always a silent minority that’s laughing at the other side with you: the "hip" side, for lack of a better word. 

Most images in the media are still telling us who to be and what to become.  The shows above are opening our minds and letting us know that because we’re laughing at everyone, we are everyone.  We cannot fit any single stereotype because we’re always changing and looking at things from different perspectives.  The media doesn’t want us to be this way.  If we all opened our minds to change then no one would ever believe the false lifestyles that the media tries to sell.  If no one believed the media, then the greedy forces that drive it would suddenly be countered by a mass shift in consciousness.  Sadly enough, because equations of balance govern everything in nature, even mankind, a media-free “utopia” cannot exist.  We must accept the fact that followers and not individuals are what drive mass consciousness.  But there must be a balance between the two, and that's finally being reached in television today.  For every manipulation the media comes up with, it gets exposed by parodies in interesting places like Springfield and South Park.