The TV show "American Gladiators" has been revived, which pretty much puts to rest any remaining doubt that the 21st century will be less doomed than the previous one. In the first eight years of the third millennium, terrorism, epidemic disease and climate change all menaced the globe with portents of the apocalypse. But the return of "American Gladiators" confirms that humanity is well and truly screwed. Not even Barack Obama can save you now.
The program, aired on NBC, features former professional wrestler (and presidential candidate, God help us) Hulk Hogan, with Laila Ali - boxer and daughter of Muhammed Ali - as hosts of a multi-stage competition held between amateur athletes and the show's professional team of "gladiators." The noms-de-guerre by which the twelve "gladiators" style themselves likely belie a veiled psychological angst reflective of the imperial crisis of late capitalism - Crush, Fury, Hellga, Justice, Mayhem, Militia, Siren, Stealth, Titan, Toa, Venom, and Wolf. Either way, you just know they're going to kick some ass. The events are an interesting blend of Roman grandiosity and heroin-addict nightmarishness; contestants face challenges including swimming under a lake of fire, wrestling a gladiator while climbing a rock wall and digging an arrow out from a sand pit before loading it into a crossbow through a smoke screen and then firing it at an opponent who is, all the while, pelting them with tennis balls shot from a high-power air cannon. Two thousand years ago, all Russell Crowe had to do was beat up Joaquin Phoenix.
12 million people watched the show's two-hour premiere on Jan. 6, which is likely a worse sign for democracy than the Patriot Act, Mike Huckabee and Diebold voting machines put together. Naturally, it's easy to take the pretentious Ivy League high road and scoff at whatever mindless tripe the proletarians are consuming at a given pop-cultural moment (Note: it's actually not that easy. Describing the events makes one realize how awesome this show is going to be). Nevertheless, an objective observer thinking in the best interests of the human race might feel a little concerned that 12 million people (roughly the population of Pennsylvania) in a country with over 10,000 nuclear weapons, more than 700 overseas military bases and the world's largest economy would spend two hours watching "American Gladiators" rather than say, reading a book.
Of course, everyone knows that self-righteous civics lessons are for unhip squares who can't get the joke and appreciate low-brow entertainment ironically. After all, it doesn't take too much of a leap of faith in the American people to imagine that not many of them are taking this show very seriously. The very pleasure of the spectacle of "American Gladiators" derives from its outlandishness, its foolishness and its utter absurdity. The day ESPN starts reporting on the show is the day you can turn in your passport. Until then, paradoxically, the presence of Hulk Hogan should assure concerned patriots that "American Gladiators" will not tear the fabric of this Republic. Instead, the inclusion of his audacious personality suggests that the American people do "get the joke" of "American Gladiators" and are watching, at least partially, to laugh at it. The show doesn't openly brand itself as satire - it doesn't have to, and that would kill the humor anyway. Instead, it grunts and yells and flexes with the unreserved earnestness of a 1980s movie bully. Meanwhile, America plays the self-aware hipster, smoking clove cigarettes, eyeing "American Gladiators" and enjoying it - sarcastically.
In this way the United States has surpassed even post-modern Europe in terms of irony. "American Gladiators" is American culture laughing at itself. We see our propensity for excess, spectacle, rugged individualism and confrontation, and so we indulge those traits and then sardonically marvel at the results. On the surface, "American Gladiators" is merely base and vulgar vapidity, but - just like flannel, Paris Hilton, and the 1980s - it becomes aesthetically valuable once one recognizes those very characteristics as what makes it desirable.
And just as one could have worried that the success of "American Gladiators" spelled the end of American democracy, one's realization of the country's ironic enjoyment of the show also leads to political conclusions. After all, what is Mike Huckabee but the conservative evangelical voting bloc asserting openly, "We know he's a Bible-quoting, Christian fundamentalist minister who couches his political rhetoric in theological terms. That's why we like him!" Is not Barack Obama the self-conscious embodiment of what conservatives most despise about the Democratic Party's values - its youth, its multiculturalism, its idealism and its global vision?
Of course, Mitt Romney and John Edwards are both convincing cases for the continuing lack of ironic self-awareness among certain sectors of the electorate (namely, the candidates themselves). Nonetheless, for all the reasons to despair about the return of "American Gladiators," there are at least as many to hope that it signals a coming political and cultural era of American irony. Perhaps "American Gladiators" heralds the beginning of a new age of self-awareness, in which the United States knowingly recognizes both the strengths and weaknesses, the possibilities and the dangers, of American identity. In this world gone sane, the nation could embrace the finest aspects of American political culture - individualism, idealism, universalism - while self-consciously noting, and thus curbing, its vices - egoism, naiveté and exceptionalism. The United States would become a more responsible, reflective world leader, one capable of engaging the international scene on its own terms while simultaneously understanding how it is seen by the global community.
This would be a good thing for the country, and for the world. But if all else fails, at least there are twelve gladiators ready to smash the nation's enemies with padded pugil sticks.
Jacob Schuman '08's "American Gladiator" name would be Thor.
