Judge Judy, Moral Decline, and Capitalism

Why is a television show, such as Judge Judy, which is little more than an electronic media milieu of meanness, a daily high-tech pillorying of people’s flawed, feet-of-clay personalities and characters by a harsh-chiding biddy in judicial robes so many people’s idea of entertainment?

My answer is that it’s a symptom, yet another symptom of the current depthless materialistic & egoistic ethos/zeitgeist of our society, which is conducive to a preference for low, shallow, sensationalistic fare, such as a program featuring a severely judgmental retired judge berating those before her bench. That is, thanks to our materialistic attitudes/anti-values our tastes in TV programming altogether lack a dimension of ethical concern and humane sensitivity to the feelings of the unfortunate folks who appear on daytime reality shows. As viewers many of us no longer have any sensibilities to get in the way of our enjoyment of such cruel entertainment. Indeed, the vulgar sensationalism very much appeals to the vulgar materialist in so many of us nowadays.

Moreover, the egoistic delight in seeing others verbally scourged for their stupidity or moral shortcomings adds to the pleasure we derive from shows such as Judge Judy. There’s no doubt that such shows are very much a guilty ego-boosting pleasure for their typical avid viewer. They overtly pander to one’s crass love of sensationalism and of feeling superior to the schmucks who offer themselves as fodder for the likes of Judith Sheindlin and Jerry Springer. They truly are a symptom of something disturbing in our modern ethos.

What precisely is so terrible and toxic about the Right Honourable Judge Judy and her over-the-airwaves mock court? Quite simply that she’s too blatantly, immoderately, and improperly judgmental. Say what?! Isn’t a judge by definition supposed to be, well, judgmental? Actually, no. A judge is supposed to be not judgmental but rather judicial and judicious – which means rational, not reproachful; dispassionate, not dyspeptic; objective, not overly keen on putting people in their place. It’s not the primary function of a real judge in an honest-to-goodness courtroom to tell litigants off. A court of law is not supposed to be a venue for a judge to express her cantankerous personality for the entertainment of spectators. A judge is supposed to be a professional trier of fact, not a practiced scold.

Judge Judy, alas, is the egregious reverse of everything that a judge ideally should be. She’s rampantly reproachful, inveterately irascible, and proudly peremptory. She seems to deem her function to be rubbing people’s faces in their own dumbness, and she certainly behaves as though it’s her prerogative to be temperamental. She really is quite often more of a shrewish scold than a serious judge. Whether or not this biases her rulings and disserves justice is another matter which I won’t go into. What there is no question about is that she’s an authority figure who insidiously validates being unprofessional, unkind, and unpitying.

This of course makes her right for our increasingly harsh-spirited, right-wingish, and cynical culture. But she and her fellow media kings and queens of mean (the Dr. Lauras, Bill O'Reillys, Rush Limbaughs, etc.) do more than market themselves in a nasty cultural niche, more than merely pander to the public’s already existing appetite for the vicarious pleasure of watching someone verbally lay into the people they love to hate (dumb litigants, unwed mothers, gays, etc.). No, they help create the ugly niche that they fit, and the appetite for meanness that they lucratively tap into.

The likes of Judge Judy certainly promote what they sell, which are the grapes of misdirected middle-class wrath against the so-called “losers” of our society. How so? Well, her show, like so many others, really is something of a high-tech pillory, i.e. it features individuals who in one way, shape, or form or another fit the popular bill of a bum, a schlemiel, a “loser”, who are unabashedly subjected to a bit of righteous rebuke, to a deserved dose of public scorn and humiliation, to stern judgment. In olden times the good folk would pay a visit to the town square and literally look down their noses upon the wretches in the stocks in order to enjoy a sense of being holier than their sinful neighbors. Today we just have to switch on our television and tune into a talk or court show.

Such shows indeed and quite clearly serve precisely the same purpose as the medieval pillory. What they do for their audience is give them a tidbit of satisfaction, a fleeting feeling of schadenfreude, and of superiority to the scapegrace or jerk du jour. Viewing too much of this kind of pandering and desensitizing television does not exactly make for a characterful and compassionate human being. Rather, it feeds into an appreciable decline in character and compassion in our contemporary society. A moral decline that is one of the signs and portents of the prevalence of the materialism-egoism corroding the cultural, axiological, and spiritual foundation of a truly human form of life.

Irony of ironies, in the name of righteousness (a name which they take in vain) the Judge Judys kill kindness and thereby murder a bit of our humanity. They are a part of the pathology, not the remedy of what ails our civilization. But is our society really in such a moribund state of moral malaise & decline?

Well, that’s an involved question. In brief, the answer is that the moral condition of our society is a paradox. By certain social and ethical criteria and measures it’s advanced quite a bit in the last couple of centuries. For instance, legalized chattel slavery is a thing of the past, and many countries have abolished capital punishment. These are two great evils that we’ve grown beyond. On the other hand, however, our culture is proliferating economic and existential poverty all over the sociological-demographical map; and, symptomatic of this, mass producing dysfunctionality-ridden and drug-addicted citizens. Our society’s overall wellbeing certainly leaves much to be desired, and much of what passes for merely vapid entertainment on TV is in fact contributing to our societal ill-being.

Which brings us to one of the fundamental and ultimately fatal foibles of the capitalist market, that it doesn’t at all encourage our entertainment industry to concern itself with elevating our taste as consumers of its entertainment products. Rather, show biz, with the same capitalistic priorities of any “biz”, operates in the amoral matrix of economic activity called the “free market” by outputting subliterary and sensationalistic junk food for our minds and by debasing our culture to the lowest common denominator of insensitive Philistines who enjoy the spectacle of the Ricky Lake Show, or of MMA fighters beating each other up, or of Judge Judy verbally beating up the victims of her vituperation.

More than this, mean-spirited television of course also works against the material interests of working-class folks, and their ability to make progress toward a better economic form of life for themselves, and serves to protect the capitalist status quo. How’s that? Well, it’s the old story of divide and conquer. Mean-spirited television programs focus our free-floating discontent and anger and cynicism upon other ordinary, relatable, blue-collar individuals, and away from the underlying socioeconomic system that’s really the causal culprit behind our society’s deeply endemic discontent, anger, and cynicism.

The way it works is really quite simple, the system and its ruling elite are ipso facto prevented from becoming the objects of critical analysis and resentment when we click on and get engrossed in a show that presents our neighbors airing their dirty linen for us to self-righteously cry shame upon. And such shows do have the very real and very insidious effect of pitting average Joes and Janes against each other, diminishing their sense of class solidarity, and diverting their attention away from the capitalist power structure and power players causing their pain. In this and numerous other ways is the revolutionary potential of the public neutralized and the unjust capitalist social order preserved, to most people’s detriment.

To sum up, shows such as Judge Judy adversely impact the ethical development of our personalities, the quality of our humanity, and our ability to stand in unity with each other to create a kinder & gentler society. And, seriously speaking, we ought to ask ourselves if we were genuinely a society whose heroes were intelligent individuals such as Thomas Jefferson, or kind individuals such as Mother Teresa and Jesus, would we really care for such dumbing-down, divisive, and downright cruel “entertainment”? I strongly think not. The colorful attorney Gerry Spence has written a book whose attention-grabbing, alliterative title refers to the media’s “bloodthirsty b*tches”, without question Judge Judy Sheindlin qualifies, but rather than emulating her by judgmentally focusing our thoughts upon her we should be critically reflecting on what her popularity says about us. Nothing good, I’m afraid.

As a Springeresque final thought I’d just like to point out to the religiously oriented among us that all of the churches and traditions, the Moseses and Muhammads, the revelations, dharmas, and divinings of humanity exhort us to be better than we are, while shows such as Judge Judy have the truly dangerous and diabolical effect of making us complacent, upon our couches and easy chairs, in our mean-spiritedness and moral mediocrity. They are spiritually contraindicated. Stick that in your pious and Pecksniffian pipes and smoke it, members of the religious right.

 

Then do what I and much of my family has done. Turn off the (*)(*)(*)(*)ing TV.

 

I think it's a reaction against hollywood. myself. At least in Judge Judy, there is the IDEA that acting stupid is a bad thing compared to most hollywood trash in which a person is subtly praised for being "enlightened" enough to have unwed sex, drop out of school to be an "artist", or do drugs. In judy's courtroom, those who play by the rules generally win, and no one can get out of stupidity by claiming oppression, as compared to most hollywood dribble.

However, feel free to enjoy "real housewives" in which alcoholism, laziness, rudeness, and stupidity are promoted as a "lifestyle".

 

Piker. I haven't had a television for 17 years and after the first few months of detox I haven't missed it. I'm still puzzling that amazing new oxymoron, reality television.

I've also noticed that some people who don't like television sure seem to watch a lot of television so they can be critical. Who the hell is Judge Judy? I do know who Jerry Springer is, or was. I went to visit my dad in the U.S. and when I went into his room at the assisted-living facility the television was on. After a couple of minutes I said, "Why are you watching this, Dad?"

He waved a remote control with about sixty buttons on it at me and said, "I don't know how to work this (*)(*)(*)(*) thing." Well, neither did I.

 

"But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials -- many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it." -- from an address by FCC Commissioner Newton N. Minow, to the National Association of Broadcasters - May 9th, 1961

50 years later, very little has changed.