"The world's greatest social experiment" is just one lens that shows us who we are and where we're going.
 | | Illustrations by Braulio Amado |
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As columnists here at Times Opinion, we mostly write about the Big Important Issues. Politics and ideology; stubborn wars and elusive peace; matters of the soul and the mind; ethical dilemmas and opportunities for grace. But we are all — well, most of us — huge culture junkies too. Culture, especially popular culture, has become an indispensable lens through which we can understand ourselves, our fellow citizens, the evolving soul of the American experiment. |
So when the editors asked us columnists to dream up a short essay about a cultural artifact that would help explain America today for "America Is …" I guess I could have reached for my well-thumbed copy of Tocqueville's "Democracy in America." |
But I thought immediately of a more recent cultural artifact that would be even more illuminating: the long-running reality show "Survivor," in which a band of castaways tries to outwit, outplay and outlast one another after being marooned in a desolate, remote location with almost no supplies. They vote their fellow contestants off, one by one, until a jury made up of ejected players chooses a winner from a group of finalists who had ruthlessly eliminated each of them from the game. Its creators called it the world's greatest social experiment. |
That may be a bit of showman's hyperbole, but to me, born in the United States but reared mostly abroad, it was a Rosetta Stone for the American psyche, revealing the strange and often contradictory admixture of qualities we prize in our winners: ruthlessness and grace; strength and vulnerability; guile and innocence. The unwritten rules that emerge — about cunning and competition, of course, but also about race, gender, class and opportunity, and how those have evolved over the show's run — taught me a great deal about who we are as a country. |
I was utterly mesmerized by its first season, 23 years ago. So were millions of other people. It has run for more than 40 seasons and spawned endless imitators and innovators of the format. Television would never be the same. |
My brilliant colleagues took to this assignment with gusto, applying their catholic curiosity to a range of other cultural objects for the project. Carlos Lozada explains how a children's book series shaped his immigrant childhood. Maureen Dowd tells us how a classic horror movie embodies our American dystopia. Zeynep Tufekci muses on how "Breaking Bad" illuminates the ugly underbelly of American exceptionalism. Jamelle Bouie tells us how a movie about a pastor doubting his faith captures the despair and dread many of us feel living in a broken country on a dying planet. And Charles Blow writes a love letter to the "rough-hewn" joy of one of my favorite early rap songs. |
I hope that in these essays you'll find clues to who we are, where we have been and where we might be headed as a nation. I know I did. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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