Oprah has put Tolstoy on the NYTimes best-seller list.
Imagine a book that every three pages a salesman leaps out of the pages and chases you around the room talking extra fast and shining bright lights in your eyes.
Oprah works for that.
But the illusion is she's on TV because she loves her people. I'm not saying she doesn't love her people - she obviously does, I'm saying that's not why she's on TV.
The maintenance of that illusion is what's sacred, and like a lot of sacred things, taboo. You can't talk about it. There's no diagram of the hierarchy of power. It's the vast cloud of apprentice angels and their squadron leader. And somewhere far away, a God so undefined no pronoun will serve.
Everything's filtered and watered-down. Each emotional reaction is anticipated and incorporated, like the colors of the couches on the set and the clothes of the guests. Every bit of reality is vetted and if necessary depiliated or even castrated, though so completely off-screen it's not that hard to pretend it's not happening.
The reason this is important is there is an exchange of power for comfort, for growth, nutrition if you will. The power is something people are trained to not see. Their own power is denied them from birth and then given back in metered transactions that make it seem as though they were being liberated. It's exhilarating, and it can seem profoundly liberating, as long as you ignore what's really happening. The sexual constrictions and control of marriage practiced by most religions works on the same dynamic. Control a naturally occurring basic drive, repress it forcibly, and then give it back to the victim in such a way they think it's yours to give.
People are starving for truth and truthful stories. They've had stories stolen from them, been completely severed from the traditional story lines, and then had them given back as "entertainment" as though stories were a luxury; instead of the vital necessities, especially to children, they've always been. Stories are a form of cultural nutrition, they're vital. They're not luxuries any more than vitamins and minerals are luxuries.
Anna Karenin is good food, no question. People need good food. When California was invaded by the Spanish the web of husbandry and gathering was disrupted to a degree that the people starved, or they went in to the padres at the missions and, in return for their birth rights, got food for their children. It became taboo to see that relationship for what it was, there was only the gathering in of heathens, lost souls, and salvation.
It's taboo to talk about the relationship of Oprah's audience to what's now feeding them Tolstoy.
Oprah's the priest. The church is invisible, unnamed, and far more powerful in all our lives than the Catholic Church ever was.
