Temptations

I have never been very good at resisting temptations. Especially ones involving books. Although I admit that I did not even try very hard when I saw the most recent list of books on sale from The David Brown Book Company. I found a couple of very interesting titles at laughable prices: Letters from the Desert by Margaret Drower (2004), which contains letters and journals of Flinders Petrie and his wife, Hilda; and Women Travellers in the Near East by Sarah Searight (2005). I will try to find time to comment the books here after I have received and read them.

When I was a child, I dreamed of becoming an explorer. I read books about expeditions to the little known corners of the world and was an avid follower of the TV documentary series "The Silk Road", a Japanese-Chinese co-production filmed in the late 70's and shown in the Finnish telly in the early 80's. It was probably this dream which unconsciously drove me when I applied to study ethnology in the first place. Later, when it had become clear that I was not to follow the Finnish academics of the 19th century into expeditions in Siberia (I mean the ones who went voluntarily; a number of Finns were exiled there because the Tsar did not like their views), I turned my interest into archaeology. It seemed to promise at least the uncomfortable accommodation and not-too-good meals on digs, if not the excitement of discovering new territories and peoples. In hindsight, my ending up spending several seasons in Jordan, camping on a mountaintop*, was just a logical continuation of the kind of career choices I have made.

"The Silk Road" is currently being rebroadcasted on YLE Teema. And I still dream of traveling the Silk Road all the way through Central Asia to China, preferably on horse- and camelback.

*Although, truth to be told, the camp was relatively comfortable and the food was actually good if a little monotonous.

Reality TV

I don't, as a rule, watch reality TV. I can basically understand Idols or something similar - singing contests are, after all, nothing new in television. But there is an aspect to these TV shows that makes me wonder, and that is the aspect of purposefully humiliating the contestants. The Weakest Link was pretty lame by today's standards. The nastiness of the judges in Idols is legendary, but even then you can - at least in theory - hate the evil judges and feel sorry for the poor sod who has made a fool of him/herself. (Except that it is in the nature of most of us to side with the winner.) The worst I find shows like Fear Factor, where people are practically competing to shame themselves by doing disgusting things. (I admit I also wonder at the people who are willing to brave this televisioned humiliation in front of millions of watchers for their five minutes of fame. What kind of a sad person wants to be famous for eating s*t in the telly?)

Public humiliation used to be a form of punishment. Not long ago in our schools you might be told to go and stand in the corner for misbehaving in the classroom. A little longer while ago you would be put in the stocks for socially unacceptable behaviour, and other people would come to leer at you. Even in the more gruesome forms of punishment, such as whipping, cutting of the hand, or execution, the publicity of the punishment added an element of shame to it. By all accounts the public punishments tended to be great fun for the audience, though. The ancient Romans had really understood the amusement value, and made a spectacle of the executions of criminals.*

Most of us enlightened western people would probably detest the stocks as a form of punishment, not to mention cutting of body parts or throwing people to the lions. However, we seem to find other people's humiliation quite acceptable amusement. When our attitudes towards other people's psychic integrity are like this, do you really need to ask why our kids torment each other in schools? If it is wrong to humiliate another person, how can you watch it in the telly and say it is just a harmless passtime?

* I am not going to be greatly surprised if in the near future we see in a reality TV show people actually maiming each other. The reality TV survives by being shocking, and the more people see, the more they get used to seeing. And after all, who could oppose a modern version of gladiators - as long as it is between consenting adults?