through the looking glass >> by juli strader >> *spark-online issue nineteen

Watching the arrival of the millennium on television for a 24-hour time period seemed like a good idea to me at the time. The world became small and intimate as I reflected on the passing of the twentieth century. I felt a connection to the first people to experience the year 2000 dancing in celebration on Millennium Island. An hour later the connection vanished into the air like smoke from an extinguished candle.

Exhausted from my marathon of countdowns, fireworks, and millennium celebrations, I thought I was watching a horrendous, dreadfully long, anti-climatic movie. My millennium anticipation had all but disappeared by the time midnight hit Eastern Standard Time, the significance of my own Y2K taken away by hours of televised foreign celebrations.

Twenty-four hour television news channels, such as CNN, have made the world smaller and yet incredibly distant.

Two summers ago I was in living in Munich when the untimely death of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn, and her sister struck the hearts of people around the world. Although across the ocean, I watched and waited with the rest of Americans for news of the search and rescue. Every moment of the search was televised live by CNN from the moment they were recognized as missing to their final burial at sea. By the end of it all I cried. I was haunted by all the grief.

The world mourned the loss of the beloved American prince, but how did the world lament the horrific torture and killing of UN protected civilians in Srebernica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. News agencies from around the world broadcast the 'story,' but little intervention by nations or leaders was done to stop the gruesome atrocity from proceeding to its finality. Why did it take so long for the images on the screen to affect and motivate leaders to stop history repeating itself when on the hour, around the clock, news channels brought the story of horror to audiences all over the globe? Is society able to choose selectively what will tug at our heartstrings or provoke us to take action?

The affairs in countries like Bosnia and Rwanda happen so far away; so far removed from the world we live in. But the distance is no farther than the flood of refugees escaping from Kosovo. For them the world responded with humanitarian aid and war machines. What was the difference between television coverage of Bosnia and Kosovo? Were the images not equally disturbing?

Why do news producers give priority and 24-hour coverage of stories like JFK Jr.'s death, Princess Diana's funeral--or worse, the O.J. Simpson trial--over world crises like the tumultuous election in East Timor, Indonesia?

Television reduces our world into that box in our living room and yet at the same time the distance is a world away. In January 2001, the earth trembled in India and thousands were left homeless, hungry, hurt, and dead. Earthquakes violently shook the ground, creating rubble out of once standing apartment buildings. For a few days the images of search and rescue teams digging through the rubble flashed across our television screens, but then they just stopped even though the ongoing efforts by Indian people didn't. Another news event was deemed worthier and India's tragedy disappeared from our television sets and from our thoughts. Out of sight out of mind, as the old saying goes.

Naturally, war is not something we readily accept in our version of the world. Those of us who live in peaceful nations have no understanding of life in a war-torn country. The nature of television does not provide for reality; after a while fiction becomes the main genre. We easily disassociate ourselves from what is real and cling to the ideals of fame and riches. We choose not to watch war, bombings, and death on our nightly news, despite its reality, truth, international consequences, and threat to freedom.

We cringe in horror at the power of Mother Nature to destroy the only world we know. Earthquakes and mudslides happen in a foreign land, not our own. Contradictory is our belief in a connection and attraction to celebrities we have never met; it isn't real. The lives of men, women, and children in the flooded plains of Mozambique should be, but the great distance hinders a close connection.

The reality is that I wasn't on Millennium Island when the clock struck midnight at the dawn of 2000, but in the privacy of my home in Eastern Ontario, Canada. Living vicariously through my television set, I was part of the event. But I was no more connected to those people dancing in grass skirts than I was to families trying to rebuild their lives in Mostar, Bosnia.

Through our television set the world is neighborly and unfamiliar, connected and removed, real and fictitious, but everything we see--whether celebrity or civilian--is no further then the reach of our remote control.

Juli Strader is a writer living in Toronto.