Less this kind of tabloid
I used to be embarrassed by my tabloid habit. Why did I love reading schlocky sensationalist stories? A part of me absolutely cringes at the rabidity with which people follow some of the top tabloid stories. And think of how eager vast swaths of America is to watch reality shows about people with truly fucked up lives. We’ve entrenched the phrases “train wreck” and “can’t look away” into our language. The part of me that cringes thinks humans must be ghouls to want to read about children raised in dog kennels and young women locked up in dungeons and families that fall apart around their parents myriad indiscretions. Why do we want to misery and misfortune and suffering as entertainment?
The less cringe-inclined part of me has a ready answer: it’s all part of our story.
All the things that humans do to themselves and to each other in the pursuit of their lives, it’s all part of the human experience. Of course, we’re curious about it. There but for the grace of [insert cosmic intermediary of your choice here] go we. We could be the train wreck tomorrow. We could be the victim whose blood stains the sidewalk on the 10 o’clock news. We could be the confused person covering her head with a jacket as she runs from her lawyer’s car to the courthouse. It could be us, and so we want to prepare ourselves for it. We want to look at the train wreck and imagine how we would handle such things.
Some people are inclined to use their vantage point for judgment. Well, that’s what she gets for leaving her toddler alone! Well, that’s what he gets for marrying her. Well, that’s what happens when you live that kind of life.
For me, my interest in these tragedies are all about the question “And what then?” As with any trauma, people have to choose how they deal with the aftermath. That is a thing that never ceases to interest me. And so I find myself reading the Daily Mail, ferreting for details about the young man who was starved and imprisoned in his own home for years, before being put on a bus to California. What becomes of him now? What about the guy in a sham green card marriage who coerced his older, wealthy lover to enter into a sham marriage with his mother to get her a green card? Or the woman in Ohio who learned after her husband’s death that the man she was married to was actually her father, too. Once you get beyond the titillation, you have the opportunity to look right in the face of human experience and wonder, how does a person process this revelation, integrate this knowledge into her psyche, and go on with her life? These are important questions.
More like this kind of tabloid
Not all traumas are as traumatic as that young man’s life. Not all secrets are as shocking as learning you married your father, but when you explore the fallout from that sort of secret, you’re exploring general ways in which people handle these things. (In this case, Ms. Spruill is choosing to go public, to seek out other siblings lost in the turmoil of her mother’s life.)
As a writer, I think that’s why I go on being obsessed with these stories. Possibly I’m just making excuses for my interest, but when I read these stories I believe I’m fueling my understanding of humanity. These things happen to real people and real people must deal with them. So while I have not yet written a story about a woman who marries her father, nor do I particularly plan to, I have definitely written stories about people who uncover secrets they wish they hadn’t.
I don’t think my urge to read tabloids is any different from a writer of murder mysteries researching ways to dispose of a body. It seems morbid and creepifying, but it serves the story. People do commit murder and hide the bodies. People who write about these things need to peer into that dark place. Those of us who write about more tame aspects of human experience, we still need to inquire into the extremity of life’s shocks and surprises.
So I’ll carry on with my tabloid habit, still a little ashamed but convinced it’s research. How about you?
Bryn Greenwood 
As a writer, I’, also interested in the human condition aspect of the story and am particularly fascinated by what happens immediately after the transition from the shocking circumstance. How does the person whose whole family was shot up in some bloodbath deal with the immediate aftermath of no longer being a father and a husband, but it abruptly transitioned back into single man? Stuff like that.
I also think the general pruruient interest in tabloids and reality shows also stems from being able to think, “well, I may feel fucked up, but I’m not *that* fucked up” and so we feel better about ourselves.
Yes, I think that’s part of the judgmental urge. To say, “Well, at least I’m not that fucked up.” When who knows? Maybe we are.
I remember an interview with a tabloid editor. He was asked about the difference between his publication and other, more mainstream publications. His answer was funny. He said the only difference was that they did less fact-checking, that’s all.
That seems a fairly accurate representation of the situation. It’s part of what makes tabloids so interesting. More reckless.
A friend of my brother’s wrote for the Weekly World News for a few years. Since they didn’t even pretend to be real, he loved it. Said it was a fun way to make a living in between his serious journalistic jobs and turned out to be a great talking point in future interviews. We used to lay in a supply of WWN for dramatic readings for parties.
Stuff about real people, not so much. They never get into follow-ups, as you say, which would be much more interesting than the cheap shock.
But they do make me look normal.
It’s nice to see your kittehs as cover girls.
But then I rather like filling in the blanks of what happened next.
What happened next IRL is usually pretty boring.
Unless you’re BatBoy.
I became a semi-closeted reader of The National Inquirer while waiting for my mother at her hair salon. The place was a throwback from the 50s, where older women got “shampoo sets” and had their hair done in Mamie Eisenhower pincurls, and the stylists called their customers “hun” and “sweetie.” The reading material in the waiting area was of course classic: “women’s” magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal and tabloids with screaming headlines like “Kate Caught Nude on French Beach!” and “Man Gets Pregnant, Delivers His Own Baby.” The magazines were often torn apart by coupon clippers by the time I got ahold of them, but the tabloids were precious. It was kind of like lifting a rock and seeing all the teeming, icky life underneath it. I admit I liked the sensational crimes best—serial killers arrested with their victims’ heads in the freezer, a man who had tied his girlfriend to the toilet for almost a whole year. (Where did he go to the bathroom all that time?) I think I liked them for the same reason I enjoy murder mysteries: I’m horrified by the crime, but I want to see if the perp ever gets caught, how he gets caught, and yes, What Happens Afterwards. Too often, however, that’s left to your imagination. Unless the trial discloses lots of gruesome evidence, the legal procedure is a bore. Which is kind of sick and sad on my part.
Now that my mother is gone, I don’t have an excuse to read the Inquirer anymore, unless I actually buy one at the grocery store. I won’t, however—the thought of being seen reading “Harry In Nude Orgy in Vegas, Photos Inside!” by my respectable, serious-reader friends makes me cringe. A bit. Ahh, who cares, there’s a great story about a family terrorized by a possessed dog….
Well, luckily the Daily Mail is available on line in all its schlocky glory.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html
Maybe you should have pursued that Psychiatry degree. It is a bit fun to crawl under the hood of someone’s life and see the messy goings on that occur, especially when it’s not your own life. You read those things and suddenly your problems seem on a whole new realm of strange. It’s not everyone that gets to raise batboy, you know.
HA! But there’s some expectation that a psychiatrist has to help her patients. A writer…not so much.