I want to be on the Jerry Springer Show. I want to parade my darkest secrets on international TV, for all the world to see. I want all those who have cheated on me, and all those I have cheated, to enter the studio, in turn, on cue, to face my wrath and/or plead for forgiveness. I want the screen to be filled with colourful captions about my life, such as *Tainted Love - You used me, you Rat!* or *I'm addicted to sex - I want to come clean!* The audience, hyped to a frenzy, know what to expect; and they're on my side, bellowing, urging me to do what I gotta do. To give Good Television. Nothing else matters.
I want all remnants of poison and guilt to be purged from my system, in one colossal shameless eruption, spewing up my stored-up vitriol on all around me. I want to scream and shout and pour abuse, in raw untreated Anglo-Saxon, on all those unremitting shits who have done me wrong. I want the syndicated audiences across the world, from Lagos to Manila, from Perth to Reykjavik, to see my mouth move in foul contorted obscenities, to the sound of a continuous beep. I want to rent my clothes like I'm possessed by a particularly sleazy god, and show off my frenzied body, pouting, preening and swaggering, roaring till my voice is shot to pieces. I want to punch and kick and punish the air for separating me from the objects of my gloriously righteous rage. I want five mountainous men to hold me back and restrain me from inflicting serious damage on all those within my grasp. I want the audience to stand up and grunt and holler and yell their approval, every time I make a run for it and strike another blow for vengeance.
I want to hear their roars of approval as I dig the knife in to that low-lying scum of a cheatin' ex-lover. I want to see those who have swindled and lied to me stand and blink in terror, as the crowd hisses at them, outraged at my sorry tales of sordid betrayal. I want to hear blood-curdling moans of hate rumble from the crowd, as some smug bastard throws my flowers away and refuses to accept my apology for having done him wrong. I want the audience to chant my name ecstatically as I pick up those flowers and try to shove them up his tight bony little ass, foiled only by being sat upon by two hefty bodyguards in the middle of the petal-strewn coliseum.
I want the show to end with the stage full of all the characters in my life, with me in the centre, bedraggled but reborn, while Jerry gives his homily to the world on the nature of forgiveness, with his (still obligatory) tone of dry distaste, as he patronizingly wishes us, his guests, happier lives.
As the credits roll, and my fifteen minutes is done, I want to leave the studio with people shaking my hand and clapping me on the back, for having done the performance for them; for having spoken what they daren't speak, for having felt what they daren't feel. I want the rawness inside to fade, to be replaced by a sublime contentment. I want to know that there's nothing left inside to conceal, to fester. I want to feel that I've confessed to the world, and that the world has tuned in, in their millions, to give absolution. After such global redemption, there is no more room for the heavy baggage of shame.
Others may feel ashamed for watching the show, disturbed by its amoral exhibitionistic narcissism, and perturbed by the way in which television has eroded the concepts of modesty, of discretion, of privacy, and made them appear to be synonyms for prudishness and shame. In the new century, where feelings are judged only by how well they translate to the small screen, expressions of hate and lust and envy and greed, once the great deadly sins, are now prime-time fodder.
It's good to feel bad. Let it out. Nothing's too lurid for the new age. Forget all Victorian concepts of neurotic decency. The new plebeian morality banishes patrician pretence in favour of an unvarnished ugly candour, a primeval display of animalistic passion, uncivilized and grotesque. To the ever-increasing class of folk who gain their emotional literacy from daytime soap operas, (the same the world over, from Brazil to China, with clearly defined villains and heroes, infused with a western obsession for ostentatious wealth), the Jerry Springer Show offers the opportunity for catharsis that is as far removed from the psychotherapist's couch as is possible to imagine. Whether such emotional purging is self-indulgent and destructive, or liberating and necessary for good mental health, is a moot point; but both Jerry and the shrink perform the same function.
After years of the dreary drip-drip-drip of listening to my own neuroses reverberate around a room to an audience of one in therapy, I long to get it all over and done with, and let Jerry work his special voodoo on me; to feel what it's like to have my preposterous pretensions to bourgeois decency come tumbling down, to the ecstatic roars of approval from the great unwashed, who have never been taught that their feelings should be tamed, like wild prairie-bred horses, broken in for market. n