Mark writes:

 From a cultural perspective, I was wondering if you had any thoughts worth sharing about the whole Jon and Kate plus Eight  phenomenon (which for all I know is just about played out). My wife & I are usually way behind the curve on these things; since we don’t have a TV, our only familiarity with the Gosselin family was based on what we could gather from cover shots on the magazines you glimpse at the grocery checkout. My initial impulse was one of mild contempt, in that I find the whole reality show concept creepy and exploitative.

 
But recently, my wife started watching some of the episodes on YouTube, and got me into watching too. I have to say I found the Gosselin family dynamic more interesting (and even somewhat absorbing) than I would have imagined. They struck me as extremely normal, brutally honest people, who really were trying to do the best they could in a challenging situation. And yet, the marriage fell apart, with her filing for divorce. Judging from a lot of the footage over the 5-season series, you can see all sorts of marital tension simmering just below the surface, but one can empathize — for a lot of us, it’s not easy at the best of times, and imagine having eight kids! Now they’re divorced, with him running around “dating,” and her talking about remaining strong (and defiantly single, no doubt) for the sake of the children.
 
I think the whole thing is terrible, not just for the kids (who of course will come to have a warped view of marital relations), but for society at large, which seems to view divorce as such an easy option. I’d love to see them turn it around, and agree to work through their differences for the sake of the kids, and learn to fall in love again … but it seems that modern people are very unforgiving.
 
Have you any thoughts on the matter? Mine are, as you can tell, mainly impressionistic and not fully formed.

Laura writes:

I’d like to congratulate you for not owning a TV and take this opportunity to explain my First Law of Popular Culture.  Here it is:

  The more absorbed a person is in popular culture, the more removed he is from culture.

This seems counter-intuitive and conflicts with the reigning belief of our intellectual class. Journalists, academics and other professional non-thinkers cede more and more of their attention to the lowest in popular culture in the belief that to be in touch with the most commercially-successful products is to be in touch with the people, to have their fingers on the pulse. They want to feed from that cash cow of course, but they also suffer from a crippling loss of confidence in the right to discriminate between the high and the low, the first-rate and the tenth-rate. They gaze into popular culture the way soothsayers gaze into crystal balls, hoping to see something significant there. The problem is there’s no there there. I could take a tour of a large city’s sewer system, descending into the very bowels of the city with a flashlight and boots. Sewage is a central fact of existence after all. It’s the most democratic phenomenon of all; everyone is involved with it. But, would I come away understanding the city and the mentality of its people more by touring its sewage pipes? I guess I’d learn about one aspect of their lives. But the truth is despite its constant presence sewage doesn’t really tell us that much about ourselves. Our intellectual class is constantly trolling the underground waterways of our culture in search of meaning. They only come up with tissue paper on their shoes.

So don’t waste your money on a TV and don’t fear that by not having one you are out of touch. In fact, you are more in touch.  TV induces stupor and catatonia. Gradually, it disarms the cerebral reflexes. In many people, it also creates anhedonia, the inability to experience simple pleasures or happiness.

As for Jon and Kate, I think your initial reaction proves my First Law of Popular Culture.  You were more in touch with the show before you watched it than after you watched it. The size of the family, the charm of the children on screen, the seeming normalcy of their life, the wife’s attractiveness and her apparent naturalness disarmed you and made you think, There’s something real here. An army of professionals worked like dogs to create the realness you saw. Jon and Kate devoted their full attention to creating the realness you saw. The children in their own way were conscious of their need to appear real. The truth is, it was all a very studied effort to charm you.

The initial draw for the show was the size of the Gosselin family, with one set of twins and sextuplets. Large families make terrific dramatic material. Every day is eventful in a large family.  Americans are lonely for real family life, with siblings and cousins and chaos, and this show appeals to this wholesome interest in large families. However, from the very start, there were two things deeply wrong with the show. One, it clearly was a major disruption in the lives of the children. The show is filmed three days a week in their house and one can only imagine what it’s like for them to be surrounded by dozens of people and cameras on those days. There’s nothing natural or normal about their lives.

Second, Jon Gosselin was not supporting the family and apparently was not settled in his work. (He was an “information technology specialist” with the state government and left this job soon after the show started.) It seems it would have made more sense for the family to do a few specials, earn some money by it and then return to real life in the hopes he would eventually be able to support them. There was a weird and by-now familiar dynamic in the family from the beginning. The wife was the boss and the Dad was at loose ends. This was a disaster waiting to happen.

When a man has his masculinity subtly removed from his life, what’s he to do? I say he has an affair with another woman. Whether it’s true or not that the marriage dissolved because of Jon’s infidelity, it makes sense for it to be true. The show should have immediately been pulled with the news of the divorce. It was not taken off the air for obvious commercial reasons and has been more of a success because of prurient interest in the family’s break up.

Now the show is more unreal than ever, judging from what I’ve read and heard about it. It would be funny that people still continue to see it as some kind of affirmation of the beauty and chaos of large families if it weren’t that someday this is all going to be so painfully real for eight people, and for their children, and for their children’s children. This kind of family disaster has devastating effects for years. The Gosselin boys especially are in for a hard time.

It’s no surprise that Kate Gosselin recently appeared as a guest host on The View, the talk show that celebrates female power more than any other. She’s a despicable woman, who constantly justifies what she does in the name of maternal instinct and her love of her children. In fact, she has warped maternal instincts. Nature endows women with the ability to give birth, but not always the temperament to empathize with their children. It’s one of history’s oldest secrets. Not all mothers love their children. 

 Mark replies:

Thanks for taking the time to put together such a thoughtful and in-depth response to my inquiry. I appreciate your validating our decision to not have a TV in the house, and agree with your reasoning.

In the case of the Gosselins, all I can say is, “Wow!” Your reading is identical to my gut response prior to my watching a single episode, so there likely is something to your First Law of Popular Culture. I’ve long recognized the power of slick marketing on TV, which was one of my reasons for getting rid of it a number of years ago. Of course, with YouTube, people like me can backslide … 

While you have me on the ropes, I’m wondering if you aren’t being a bit too hard on Kate. Calling her a “despicable woman” seems pretty strong. From what I was able to discern from the earlier episodes, my take is that Kate was a decent woman with good intentions, who needed some serious counseling so she could learn not to disrespect her husband in the myriad ways she did.  

Her being on “The View” may or may not attest to feminist leanings on her part. From what I could gather, her bossiness in the relationship (and her occasional punchiness toward Jon) may have had less to do with feminism than with the fact that there are lots of women who would reject the label of feminist, but who are nevertheless so highly-strung and emotionally restless that they’d need either intensive counseling or painful, conscious self-adjustment in order to change. (We know a few women like this among our circle, who are in fact trying to go against their nature and be better, more submissive wives.)  

Or maybe I’m being too soft-headed and giving too much credit to Kate. You provided two reasons for the breakdown of the marriage: (1) the show’s intrusiveness into the family’s lives, and (2) the unhealthy wife-as-boss dynamic. I agree completely with your assessment, but would add a third factor. The parents (perhaps more Kate than Jon) took a “kids-come-first” approach to the marriage. My wife said the other day that this was actually part of the problem; the marriage should have come first. That really rang true for me.

Further thoughts?

Laura writes:

I recommend Kate’s blog at The Learning Channel site. It’s supposedly written by her. Unfortunately, the link’s not working at the moment or I would quote from it. She comes off as self-absorbed and money-hungry. I’d also like to point to her statement at the time of the divorce:

Over the course of this weekend, Jon’s activities have left me no choice but to file legal procedures in order to protect myself and our children. While there are reasons why it was appropriate and necessary for me to initiate this proceeding, I do not wish to discuss those reasons at this time, in the hope that all issues will be resolved amicably between Jon and myself. As always, my first priority remains our children.

Apparently, Jon was involved in some flirtation or assignation over the weekend. There was no evidence that he was a danger to the children or had ever been a danger to them. Her comment, “to protect myself and our children,” suggests that he was a danger. I can think of few worse marital sins than for a woman to accuse her husband of seeking to harm his children when he is not. Someday their children will read these words. Divorcing him seems to benefit no one but Kate. Did she have no endurance at all? It hurts for a husband to be unfaithful, but she seems to suffer from excessive pride.

Many women reject the label “feminist” because it now has a tarnished image. But, rejecting a word is not the same thing as rejecting the beliefs. Many reject the label but still pursue career and pleasure to the detriment of family life. I do however have sympathy for women in trying to lead a non-feminist life and to tone down their personalities. It’s been hard for me too. We’re surrounded by encouragement to be aggressive and it’s difficult to resist.

Couples often take a “kids-first” approach to family life when a woman has too much to do. (And, typically she has too much to do because she has decided or agreed to have too much to do.) She’s the one who is most sensitive to the needs of intimacy and when she’s not actively giving herself the time to feel and to digest what’s going on, the kids become an overwhelming preoccupation and sometimes an escape from marital intimacy. The worst case of this I ever saw involved a couple who decided to divorce and yet remain in the same house and raise the kids together, giving themselves the freedom to date other people as well. Wow. This was selfishness packaged as a “kids-first” approach. I do also think that Freudian thought has nearly destroyed the confidence of parents and made them fearful of psychologically scarring their children. Being psychologically scarred isn’t half as bad as being morally scarred. Children raised in a stable home have a better chance in life than children raised in a broken family where the parents pay them constant attention. There’s a balance in these things and it’s never easy. I have no sympathy with those who opt for divorce and say it’s for the kids.

By the way, by saying all of the above, I seem to be contradicting my earlier point that popular culture is not a meaningful reflection of culture at large. Yes, Jon and Kate tell us things about our world. But, they don’t tell us something real life doesn’t tell us. We can easily learn these facts about our world just by living. Watching the show unfortunately involves tacit approval.

Karen Wilson writes from England:

The first thing that I noticed about Jon and Kate was that they are a mixed race couple, the wife Caucasian and the husband Asian. [Laura writes: Jon is mixed race. His father is white and his mother is Korean.] How could such a couple be considered by Mark to be “extremely normal”? Surely mixed race couples are still a minority in the US. He comments on the “marital tension simmering” and advises that they “turn it around, and agree to work through their differences.” The striking thing about this is that he does not understand the deeper issues of compatibility in marriage. The cultural gulf between spouses of different racial backgrounds, often overlooked or even not understood during the dating stage, is just too great to create the bond required to sustain a marriage. The higher moral and spiritual purpose of marriage, that of preserving racial, cultural and religious tradition, is not there. This Kate and John marriage was one arranged for the fulfillment of personal desires only.

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