I Like to Watch

Jan. 13, 2008 | Like puppies, pizza and pretty rainbows, the free-market system is far too adorable, plucky and delicious not to love. If you didn't take the bus to the library to read this, you've probably benefited from the free-market system in countless ways over the years. Maybe you feel eternally grateful to the free-market system. Maybe you're a libertarian and you want to have, like, a million of the free-market system's babies.

Nonetheless, it doesn't take a filthy hippie or an angry neo-Marxist grad student to notice that things are spinning out of control these days. You don't even need a coherent argument to demonstrate that the very, very rich are leaving the poor in the dust; all you need is a short list of words: Enron, Katrina, Darfur, Baghdad. The little guy is getting screwed with clocklike precision, slam poetry is easier to write than ever, and the words "greedy corporations" and "inhumane, neglectful world leaders" are utterly redundant. Seven years ago, the observation that our great nation was careening recklessly toward disaster felt too glaringly obvious and weighty to state out loud. Now, we mention it in passing to the cashier at the grocery store, as if we're chatting about bad weather.

You'd think that with all of the reckless warmongering and raping of the environment the stock portfolios of the middle class would be skyrocketing from all that greed and corruption, but no. The only thing trickling down these days is shame, self-loathing and a creeping sense that our best years are behind us.

So why am I in such a good mood?

The joy of spandex
I love a good recession and a nation in decline the way I love a rainy day, getting dumped by a jerk, losing an annoying job, gaining five unsightly pounds or getting stuck in an airport overnight. There's something invigorating about a true crisis, something that makes your pulse race and your steps quicken and your thoughts become focused. Change is in the air, along with the odd promise of narrowing possibilities and limited options.

Maybe it makes me nostalgic for my childhood in the '70s, when inflation soared, Americans lined up at the gas pumps, and those bad Iranians took 52 U.S. citizens hostage, but Jimmy Carter was too smart and principled to ply a corrupt nation with high-powered weaponry. Everything looked so grim back then! Hot damn, it was depressing -- and romantic, like huddling in a tube station in London during the blitz.

And what was on TV? "Love Boat"! "The Dukes of Hazzard," "Charlie's Angels," "Family Feud." "Three's Company"! Happy, cheerful, stupid shows were on TV. Even on "M*A*S*H," they were laughing through the tears.

This is the beauty of bad times: The pop-cultural overlords don't give us programming that reflects our suffering. They don't give us anxious people cooking with beans and worrying about their mortgages and racking up credit card debt.

No, they give us behemoths in silver spandex named "Mayhem"! The same cheesy TV producers who dreamed up the disturbed spectacle of "American Gladiators" back in 1989 are conjured up to bring a truly crappy show back from the dead. Why? Because it's just flashy and stupid enough to distract us from the fact that the TV writers are still on strike, facing an uphill battle against their merciless corporate masters.

What can you really say about "American Gladiators" (8 p.m. Mondays on NBC), except that watching it will make you feel like the lead character in a tragic, futuristic short story about the ills of high capitalism?

Sure, "American Gladiators" was big fun during the late '80s and '90s. But lots of stupid things were fun back then: High-grade cocaine. Acid-wash jeans. Big hair. Eddie Money. After watching the premiere of "American Gladiators," I felt like I'd been transported back to a world of leggings and scrunchies and aerobics instructors and puffy-armed freaks in cutout Gold's Gym sweatshirts. While the '70s were a time of sublime, delicious self-abnegation and suffering, the late '80s and early '90s were a time of depressing, repugnant, queasy, foolish indulgence. Remember how, in the movie "Boogie Nights," on New Year's Eve in 1979, the groovy '70s gave way to the self-destructive, pathetic, hopelessly stupid '80s, and everything that was pure and sweet about the porn business turned sour and nasty? Or think of Lionel Richie, singing about how we're going to party, Karamu, fiesta, forevah! The economy was thriving, our cities were chock-full of tacky yuppies feeling their oats, but still it felt dirty, somehow, to dance in the streets with someone sporting pleather pants and a Zorro mustache.

This time around, it's different, though. The second incarnation of "American Gladiators" is so willfully stupid, so clearly designed to distract us from our empty bank accounts and our crumbling national pride, that it just feels depressing. The fact that it seems so sad and small frees us up to revel in its lameness, and marvel that the names of the muscular behemoths are even less imaginative than they were years ago. Nitro! That's a downright artful nickname, compared with "Militia" or "Crush" or "Fury" or, for chrissakes, "Hellga"!

Isn't it disturbing how the producers seem to be coaching the contenders, who sound just like bad child actors pumped full of amphetamines every time they're asked to speak?

"My kids are my life and joy! Hi, babies. I love you. Mommy's gonna make you proud!"

"I'm gonna show everyone what you can do when you get fit and healthy!"

"Marines rock! Semper fi!"

On the other hand, the kinds of people who are in insanely good shape, who do things like swim and rock-climb and lift weights and coach gymnastics and compete in grappling, also tend to be the kinds of people who might take being on "American Gladiators" seriously.

And to be fair, the final obstacle course, "The Eliminator," is almost too difficult for some of these very fit humans to finish. In the first race between female contenders, both women looked exhausted about halfway through the course, and then looked near death at the end. The winner, Venus, winced and almost cried and then gathered herself enough to scream, "I'm in so much pain, I can't breathe, but I am so frickin' excited and happy to be here!"

On the second episode of the show, a standoff between two male competitors ended with both of them standing side by side at the foot of the final steep, moving treadmill called "The Travelator," each trying to catch his breath.

The smaller contenders with lower centers of gravity seem to have less trouble on "The Eliminator," which sort of makes you wonder how pumped-up beasts like Wolf or Toa or Fury would handle it. Why don't they make some of the Gladiators complete the course?

Also, can someone who's familiar with bodybuilding please tell me: Are we expected to believe that this man, who looks like a character from a combat video game, has never seen a steroid in his life? I'm not trying to cast aspersions. I just want to know the facts on the ground as regards bodies covered in massive, bulging, meaty, old-school muscles.

Most of all, it's amazing that more contenders don't get hurt. Sure, the first female contender blew out her knee almost immediately and had to leave the competition, and another female contender bloodied her forehead on the final obstacle course. Even so, each of the challengers falls 10 feet or so into the water or onto mats five or six times through the course of her appearance. One contender, a Marine named Bonnie, held onto rings dangling above a water tank with Fury, a 148-pound woman, hanging off her body, trying to make her fall. (Bonnie eventually made Fury fall to the water, remarkably enough.) I know they're wearing helmets and neck braces, but ... it still looks insanely dangerous. And exhausting.

OK, fine. I'm sort of into this show now. Damn you, callous network executives, pandering to the weakest, rowdiest Greek spectator within me!

Next page: "The Bada Bing Boys"?