The Death of a Mass-Event

So my post title is a direct rip from Arthur Miller's American classic, but it bears remembering at the end of this post.

The Oscar's Lack of Appeal
article taken from LA Times, and idea from Rhett Smith

The hissing you hear is the air going out of the Oscars' balloon.The usual aura of Academy Award anticipation dissipated weeks ago. Wherever I went last week, the talk was about how bad the ratings would be

Conventional wisdom holds that the academy has become infatuated with celebrating low-budget art films that don't connect with mainstream America. This year's best picture nominees, while all having turned a tidy profit, are clearly not big crowd pleasers.But the problem with the Oscars is more deeply rooted than just public lack of interest in the nominees. Ratings are crumbling for the Oscars, and award shows in general, because the Era of the Mass Event is drawing to a close.

With the exception of the Super Bowl, which seems immune to anything short of a civil war, even the biggest sports and show biz events find their ratings in decline. Last fall, the World Series had its lowest TV ratings of all time, dropping 30% from the 2004 Series. Last year's NBA playoffs ratings reached near-record lows as well, down nearly 25% from 2004. The ratings for this year's Grammy Awards were off 10%, with the show easily eclipsed by an "American Idol" installment that attracted nearly 12 million more viewers. Last month, the Winter Olympics, arguably the season's ultimate sports awards-cast, had its lowest ratings in 20 years, down 37% from the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City.

We are now a nation of niches. There are still blockbuster movies, hit TV shows and top-selling CDs, but fewer events that capture the communal pop culture spirit. The action is elsewhere, with the country watching cable shows or reading blogs that play to a specific audience.

General Application
I have to admit that folks at the Oscar party we attended were entertained by each other, not John's Stewart's lame hosting job. In fact, some of the guys at the party reverted to playing the 2 main characters from Brokeback Mountain, but that's another story. . .

So I think I think Patrick Goldstein of the LA Times makes a great cultural critique by looking through the Oscar's failure to the larger picture of mass events loosing their appeal to Americans. It's as though people were temporarily amused, entertained and amazed by large-scale functions they could attend to feel a part of something bigger than themselves. Today, the sparkle of such events has dissapated to a dull glow that people are just not that interested in. Would you rather be a number or a name, a person with a real life that others know and share in? For some reason I think Reese Witherspoon could care less that I watched her acceptance speech on Sunday night. . .and I find no real draw to being a part of an institution where the majority of people there will never know me; whether that is church or work.

The Church Application
I don't think this requires much explination. People want to be known and the draw of the traditionally successful mega-church of the '90's is coming to an end. The movement away from large events & venus transcends a "secular" vs "religious" view and is just about people. See this article in Time Magizine from my friend Sheri's blog; click HERE

Back to the Post Title
Miller's play, Death of a Salesman, offers an excllent crtique of the American Dream (that if with hard work, and a little bit of luck or fate, you will succeed), mainly that it's not all it's cracked up to be. Not unlike the often failed "American Dream" that many authors have examined, perhaps a similiar critique of the "Mega Event" is timely in our ever-changing culture. Specifically related to the church, a move to look more like the church in Acts (our example for churching. . yea, a verb. . .stole that from our pastor. . why not verb it. . .shouldn't it be a verb and a noun. . .)will create an enviornment that better serves the needs of the people; to know their Creator in an intimate way, to be connected to believers along that journe, and to share that good news. So who knew that Hollywood, Olympians and the Mega Church could all be experiencing the same type of growing pains as society is changing. . .All food for thought. . .