A deep, dark cave, an extraordinary tale and a captivated, global audience
In the darkness, down the twisting stone tunnels and through murky water, they awaited an uncertain future. Outside, under the skies of a modern planet, cameras and bystanders and a rapt global audience of millions looked toward the remote hills of northern Thailand, connected by cables and satellites and wireless signals and gadgets in their pockets. For two weeks and more this went on.
We have barely a hint of what the past 18 days were like for the 12 young Thai soccer players and their coach. But for the rest of us, watching from afar as an uneasy planet’s media juggernaut beamed us live shots and the unknowable was revealed drip by tantalizing drip, we knew one thing: It was hard to look away.
Particularly when these two words were splattered across the world’s websites and mobile apps in impactful typefaces: “LIVE.”
Were they even alive in there after so many days? Probably not. And yet they were. Could we get a glimpse? There they were, captured on video, waving tentatively to what had become their public. Could they be pulled out, through water that rose and fell and threatened to rise again? That question, drawn out for so many days as the clock ticked menacingly, found its answer with a resounding yes.
“We really needed something to cheer for right now. We needed some positivity. We needed a good headline that could carry the day,” says Daryl Van Tongeren, an associate professor of psychology at Hope College in Michigan who studies how humans build meaning in their lives.
“People started believing, like a snowball rolling down a hill: ‘Maybe they WILL get out.”’
First, the obvious. These were children who did nothing wrong, and we love tales of innocents. Plus, it was easy to conclude for several days that they’d met their end prematurely and unfairly.
When they did not — when children not unlike those in our own lives had a fighting chance at being OK — many eyes locked in on the story.
At that point, the saga was also fueled by hope, and by a possibility of a good outcome — both elements of any memorable tale.
There are other reasons this particular story was so captivating, though. They cast light on some things about ourselves and the strange forces — sometimes wonderful, sometimes destructive — that shape our lives in a modern media society.
HOLLYWOOD It’s cliche to compare the real world to showbiz (“It was like something out of a movie,” so many witnesses to disaster say). But even bearing that in mind, it would have been impossible to craft a Hollywood treatment that felt more cinematic.
For decades in the American film industry during the 20th century, a production code made sure the bad guys couldn’t win and that bad things couldn’t be shown.
What’s less known is that the code discouraged ambiguity and subtly encouraged sharp, distinctive resolutions to plotlines — something that came to be known as the “Hollywood ending” and endures to this day.
That’s what we got Tuesday out of Thailand — a satisfying, alltied-up-in-a-bow ending, the kind that would make a reality-TV producer salivate.
“This sets the framework for what we expect from a great story,” says Roscoe Scarborough, a sociologist. “Any action movie follows this script. Thinking they’re dead, but they’re alive. A race against time and the odds to get them out,” says Scarborough, who is also a firefighter. “It’s a cultural product that we understand. But this is a real-life version.” TECHNOLOGY SAVED THEM Our world today is utterly consumed with technology — witness the ability to witness a lot of this event on television and mobile devices — but also increasingly uneasy with the way it affects our lives and landscapes.
To look at a remote area and watch a good outcome unfold because of smart uses of technology, from the pumping effort that drained water out of the cave to the carefully calibrated oxygen tanks used in extracting the kids, illuminated the ways technology can encourage our humanity rather than whittle away at it.
SACRIFICE In any epic narrative, something precious is lost. In this case, that was 38-year-old Saman Gunan, the Thai Navy SEAL who died in the cave late last week during rescue efforts.
This happens often in rescue efforts: People who die heroically trying to help others become martyrs who are seen as the best of us. The highest-profile example in recent years: the firefighters and police officers who died helping people on Sept. 11, 2001.
“They become symbols of our shared humanity, representative of our collective values,” says Scarborough.
NO POLITICS It’s pretty obvious that our media-consuming world needs some news that couldn’t possibly be contentious or political.
TIME The saga in Thailand was the kind of story a modern, mediaconsuming human is literally conditioned through life to consume.
It takes its place among similar underground sagas that entranced the planet — the trapped miners (Chile, 2010); the Quecreek mining disaster (Pennsylvania, 2002); or 18-monthold Jessica McClure trapped in a well (Texas, 1987); and the first such event covered by modern media, the cave death of Floyd Collins (Kentucky, 1925), where coverage featured radio bulletins.
No matter how decades pass or the technology progresses, we do the same thing: We watch, we wonder, and we hope for a happy ending. And then we move on.
This time, though, in this contentious season of humanity, we can do it with a smile.