Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

I recently took an online survey as part of a psychological study on the long-term effects of sudden bereavement; every page included a link to resources to help deal with emotions that might be evoked by thinking about the loss of a loved one. That’s because part of designing a legitimate experiment that involves people is to consider any potential harm (including emotional) that may come to the people involved in the study and finding a way to minimize it. Human subjects review boards require that. ABC’s spinoff show, What Would You Do?, however conducts highly unscientific “experiments” on people who have not given consent to see if they respond to upsetting scenes; if the show has counselors on hand to help anyone who may be traumatized or retraumatized by the scene, they haven’t made it clear.

Their latest episode shows scenes in which a woman who appears to have been physically abused is being emotionally traumatized in a restaurant by her boyfriend. The show itself cites the statistic that one in four women in the US will experience domestic violence at some point in her life, which means that there was almost certainly a woman who had survived abuse in the restaurant where they conducted this “experiment”.

Did they consider how filming their show might affect that woman?

And is this show really doing anything other than exploiting serious issues for infotainment?

Lindsay’s post at Jezebel on the latest episode sees worth in the show:

While obviously the show is highly unscientific (notice that in the second video, the white actor is inexplicably dressed up in a suit) and meant for entertainment, it can’t be a bad thing to force viewers to think about issues such as racism or domestic violence. Maybe the next time they see someone being abused, they’ll be more likely to step up. (After all, they might be on TV!)

I, however, am not so sure. People who have seen the episode may be more likely to intervene, but only if they recognize the situation as similar. It assumes that they won’t find an excuse for why it really isn’t abuse. The show’s not being scientific makes it harder for people to use it as a jumping off point from which to discuss widespread attitudes that lead people not to get involved when they see abuse. It’s all too easy for viewers to sit back secure in the belief that they are morally superior to people who fail to respond, that they would know the right thing to do and would do it.

In other words, I don’t think this show is very likely to change anyone’s attitude or actions. It takes the form of serious inquiry and uses it as an excuse to entertain with someone else’s pain. The people being abused in the show are, of course, actors—but what they portray is an all too common reality. And those who have experienced that reality are placed at risk of triggering and renewed pain by the way the show is made.

I’m not one of those progressives who have become deeply disillusioned with Obama, but that’s because I never shared that sense of gleeful hope. I could point to policy positions to explain why, but the truth is, as I wrote then, that I didn’t vote for Barack Obama, but I was glad he won; it was, after all, a relief to see the Republicans out of the White House. I might well have followed the same emotional arc so many did if I had not experienced that same arc seven years ago over the space of less than a week.

It seems strange now to say that I had hope when the war in Iraq began, maybe even self-indulgent, but I had been to so many massive marches and rallies against the impending invasion that I believed there was enough anger in the US to force a real and dramatic change to the structures of power through direct action. I believed this at the candlelight vigil on the night the war was announced, and I believed it the next day when I showed up at 7 am to meet other people who were ready to put their bodies on the line to stand for peace. I believed it when the police charged our human barricade at the Federal Building. I believed it when I was arrested there, and I believed it through the weekend when people were still in the streets and when every time I entered my building on Market I passed people in costumes or with signs heading to a different rally. I even believed it when, after the 72-hour limit during which I wouldn’t be given a cite-out if rearrested, I joined a group of protesters trying to block the Federal Building, though we didn’t have the numbers for our actions to be anything but symbolic. But it turned out that after a few days during which civil disobedience disrupted San Francisco, the protests waned; nothing ultimately changed, other than there being more police helicopters hovering over my apartment.

So when Obama won, I wasn’t able to feel the same unguarded joy that led so many to dance in the streets. I can’t believe in change being made in one dramatic move.

The US is still in Iraq. Soldiers are being withdrawn from there only so that more may be sent to Afghanistan.

But this doesn’t make me wiser than those who can hope without bounds. That feeling, too, can help bring about the gradual shifts that make life a little easier for the oppressed and that maybe one day will add up to more.

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We’ve all heard about the potential for rumors to spread rapidly through social media, especially Twitter, and you’ve probably seen a false report of a celebrity death or two if you’re at all active in the same. As yesterday’s panic on the Potomac shows us, however, it isn’t only online media that is vulnerable to mistaken reporting. When networks run with unsubstantiated reports, however, the effect is quite different from when such things are spread primarily by citizen reporters tweeting.

Because supposedly reliable news agencies, starting with CNN, were reporting gunshots fired, the DC police department rushed to the scene, while flights at Reagan National Airport were grounded. I’m not sure that a trending topic on Twitter would have had such an impact, yet rumors instigated through Twitter tend to get fact-checked rather quickly through @ replies looking for verifiable sources.

If someone saying “bang bang” over a loudspeaker had started off a rumor about gunfire that was confined to social media, we would all be having a good laugh right now about how silly people were to confuse the two and how gullible the people who passed the story on were. Instead we’re getting a lot of talking-head outrage about the Coast Guard training on 9/11 and letters from networks justifying their coverage decisions. The coast guard is reviewing their procedures.

Now, maybe the Coast Guard should have been more sensitive to people’s fears. That said, the story shows the speciousness of arguing against social media as an information source because it is vulnerable to false information. It also calls into question how we decide which misinterpretations should be anticipated or, failing that, taken seriously.

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You may have heard about the off-duty security guard at the Seattle Art Museum who took it upon herself to perform an “excavation” of Yoko Ono‘s Painting to Hammer a Nail, removing notes and business cards other people had tacked onto it. If we look at the work in terms of power, as allowing museum-goers to share the artist’s power to create (if only to a limited degree), then what Amanda Mae (the guard in question) did was to claim all that power for herself.

Taken as a commentary on the role of the curator, this is an intriguing act which makes a fair point. Even the problematic framing of Mae as the savior of the work with a “higher calling” fits this interpretation.

On the other hand, her act is also a real use of power—as real (if trivial) as when some asshole tears down all the fliers on a utility pole because they think ads for indie bands or lost cats don’t belong there.

Whether we look at this as a statement or as a real act, that Ms. Mae apparently referred to public interaction with the work as a “gang rape” shows a total lack of empathy for people who have survived that sort of violation. It also seems to suggest a failure to understand the piece. (As this comment was made in an email to an artist friend rather than publicly, I am disinclined to class it as a poor attempt at commentary on the understanding of curators).

ETA: Jon Hendricks, curator for Yoko Ono Exhibitions, sent a response to Ms. Mae that reads in part:

I think you have to consider art in a much deeper, more profound sense than you do. And also, to have greater respect for the artist, and not presume that you know what she intends. If the artist had instructed the work to be returned to its “austere” beginnings, that would have been her prerogative. But as she did not, you didn’t have the right to dictate what the artist’s intention was, and to rob those many people who had interacted with the work before you of their contribution to this process.

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