While at the in-laws' house recently I saw American Pickers was on the TV. This is a show about antique dealers who sort through people's barns and sheds for historical items that they can buy and resell. It is interesting from time to time and I ended up watching it.
This particular episode focused on the items left behind by a well-off woman from the 1930s who died -- you guessed it -- childless. She left her belongings to her niece, who had invited the pickers to come and buy it.
There was a lot of history in this episode. The woman had owned one-of-a-kind art created by a well-known artist of the era (now unknown). Her father had given her a high-end car to drive that she kept in pristine condition. It was a classic car I've never heard of.
The woman had been an activist. The pickers admired her collection of political pins and stickers. "Question Authority" one said.
She had been an active woman with many adventures. Her niece clearly admired her...and then sold her stuff.
While the episode portrayed it all in a positive light I was struck by the wasteful inversion of it all.
Sure it's cool that she contributed to a vaguely educational reality show. The pieces she left behind were pretty neat. So what? The only reason this all came to on TV is because of the bad choices she made. Her commercial success came at the cost of life success.
The woman did not have children. She married, yes, but clearly dedicated her life to the activism circuit.
If she had had a normal life she would not have had all these things. She would have had some of them and her children & grandchildren would had treasured them. We the public would have never known.
But since when was reality TV the measure of a person's worth?
The public success in one tiny instance came at the price of heavy loss in totality. For the pickers this was a success. Compared to the might-have-been that never was it was a heavy failure. It's like focusing on a little scorch mark in the shape of the Mona Lisa while ignoring the fact that it is on the wall of a burned-out children's hospital.
We live in a society where dysfunction is the only path to recognition. Things that work, things that go right, are too quiet to even notice. The detonations of dysfunction gain attention.
In one sense that doesn't matter -- why do functional people need attention anyway -- but mass media sets the frame for those who have yet to decide.
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