Chatterbox Jazz and the Victim Complex, Part Two

This essay is a follow-up to Chatterbox Jazz and the Whie Victim Complex

Another angle on the entrance to the Chatterbox Jazz Club, which only a
complete doofus would mistake for apolitical. (source)

I can’t help considering the parallels, and the lack of parallels, between Elise Hensley, who videoed herself getting ejected from the Chatterbox Jazz Club, and George Floyd. To reiterate, Hensley almost certainly recorded her expulsion deliberately, hoping to cultivate the impression of herself as an oppressed minority. But so far, the explosion of outrage she expected hasn’t arisen. It bears some time to consider why.

Hensley’s video and Darnella Frazer’s recording of George Floyd’s death might seem superficially similar to chronically online denizens. Both filmed on cellphone cameras, these videos show what their respective target audiences consider an injustice. But the online outrage machine flourishes with such displays of false equivalency. Hensley’s staged confrontation, and George Floyd’s unplanned murder, only resemble one another to lazy media consumers.

To exactly such lazy consumers, the sequence appears thusly: somebody distributed video of an injustice in progress. Millions of Americans were outraged. Protesters filled the streets. Ta-dah! We see similar reasoning in the hundreds of January 6^th, 2021, rioters who live-streamed their push into the Capitol Building, speaking metaphors of Civil War and 1776: they thought simply seeing provocative media created public sentiment.

This bespeaks a specific attitude, not toward current events, but toward media. Lazy consumers see events not as events, but as content, and information distribution not as journalism, but as content creation. Functionally, Hensley doesn’t elevate herself to George Floyd’s level, she lowers George Floyd to her level. The spontaneous recording of an actual crime in progress, becomes neither better nor worse than her forced confrontation with a queer bartender.

Let me emphasize, this isn’t merely a conservative phenomenon. I’ve struggled to follow political TikTok because, Left and Right alike, it mostly consists of homebrew “journalists” either repeating somebody else’s breaking reports, or shouting angrily at like-minded believers from their car or bedroom. The read-write internet has expanded citizens’ speaking capacity to, hypothetically, infinity, depending on server space. But it’s created little new information.

But conservatives, especially White conservatives, receive one key point differently. They’ see stories of injustice multiply rapidly and gain mainstream attention, and they believe the media creates the martyrs. If martyrdom happens when cameras capture injustice, rather than when humans or institutions perform injustice, then anybody with media technology could recreate the martyrdom process. Anybody could, with a 5G connection, become a martyr.

Such lack of media literacy travels hand-in-hand with the inability to distinguish between forms of injustice. Hensley’s description of her ejection as “discrimination” suggests she thinks herself equal to Black Americans denied service at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in the 1950s. By extension, it suggests her MAGA hat equals organized resistance to injustice. She can’t see the difference, and hopes you can’t, either.

When all news is media manipulation, in other words, then all injustice, no matter how severe, no matter how authentic, becomes equal. Hensley can’t distinguish her own inconvenience from George Floyd’s death—or at least, she expects that others can’t distinguish. The meaninglessness of Hensley’s public stand, as nobody has rallied around her faux injustice, reveals that media manipulation isn’t the same as reality, and some people still can tell.

One recalls the occasional online furor surrounding some doofus who just discovered that “Born in the U.S.A.” isn’t a patriotic song, “Hallelujah” isn’t a Christmas song, and punk rock is political. These people aren’t stupid, despite the inevitable social media pile-on. Rather, these people consume all media, from music to movies to news, passively. Under those conditions, everything becomes equal, and everything becomes small.

Did Elise Hensley seriously believe herself a martyr, surviving a moment of bigoted injustice? Well, only God can judge the contents of her heart. But she evidently hoped other people would believe it, and throw their support behind her. Some evidently did, although the fervor has mostly sputtered. Without the jolt of authenticity, her media manipulation stunt gathered scarce momentum, and seems likely to disappear with the 24-hour news cycle.

The whole “fake news” phenomenon, which pundits say might’ve helped Trump into the presidency twice, relies upon the same action that Hensley attempted, mimicking real events under controlled conditions. But, like Hensley, it mostly failed to fuel real action. It might’ve helped calcify political views among people already inclined toward extreme partisan beliefs, but like Hensley, most “fake news” produced meaningless nine-day wonders.

If I’m right in my interpretation, media consumers are growing weary of manufactured outrage. The next stage will probably be performative cynicism, which is hardly better, but will be at least less terrifying.