Spontaneous Shifting

“You’re a wizard Harry.” More telling words of the kind of mass appeal spontaneous shifting has exuded cannot be considered. Whether it be a guy who works a 9-5 at tech store, a kid whose stuck under a staircase, or just a random person who’s struggling with their workaday existence, people just love to see their everyman thrust out of reality and into the land of possibility.

The idea of spontaneous shifting is most commonly scene when you’ve got some guy and some other guy comes along, and suddenly just dumps this world of possibility on the first guy. Chuck on NBC would be a good example. In the show the main character, Chuck, is a regular underachieving Joe who works at a “Buy More” and suddenly he opens an e-mail and he knows every government secret ever and accordingly he works with an immensely gorgeous spy and gets to go on all sorts of crazy missions.

What?



Are we really expected to believe this crap? No. The creators of this show are relying heavily on our ability suspend disbelief. Sure, we know it’s not possible but we’re willing to set aside such notions for the time being.
The question then becomes… why are setting aside our disbelief? People don’t just surrender their common sense for no good reason.

And therein lies the predatory nature of pop culture which puts people from the real world into extraordinary situations which we simply know are not possible. Instead of creating an altogether alternate reality, which one can escape to, they are creating a reality which we must buy into.

That reality is, life is only good when crazy crap happens. We’re all victims to it, hell I’ve read the Harry Potter series more than once, and I’ve watched every episode of Chuck. Neither of these franchises are successful purely on their artistic merits, they are successful because people need for it to be real.
When you consider that pop culture is an industry, and that its main drive is to appeal to the masses as Theodor Adorno suggested, it’s hard to look critically at the success of these kinds of creations without skepticism. It’s an unfortunate and kind of upsetting reality that audiences need to understand before they embrace a cultural artifact.

People can fool themselves into thinking that watching Chuck, or reading Harry Potter is pure escapism, but in reality, there’s more going on there then pure escapism. It’s a fantasy, and worst of all, it’s not an original one, it’s one that is being conjured up by someone else.

I’m not trying to vilify Harry Potter and Chuck and other artifacts like it, I’m just calling for audiences to remain vigilant in how they consume their culture.