We’re stuck in a new Me Decade
An unfortunate lesson from David Byrne and the Jeffs
Committee for the pre-timed release of the winners to the media. By the end of the night, half of the audience had left the room. The hardworking support staff at the venue, some of whom told me they had to be up early to deal with their kids, did not have that privilege.
The problem? Excessively long acceptance speeches. One after another, some going on for 10 or 12 minutes, many occurring in multiples. Even as the aisles filled with people headed to the exits. The show’s organizers had dropped the standard awardshow practice of strict time limitations followed by forced musical send-offs, presumably on the grounds that we all can be trusted with our much-deserved moment in the spotlight. Instead, they relied on the winners to police themselves. Very respectful. Fail.
The skill known as “to limit oneself,” is not at its peak here in 2019, a moment when we just cannot stop talking about ourselves.
There is a model for a fine acceptance speech — a humble thank you, followed by a brief statement of how the other nominees were every bit as deserving, if not more so, than the winner and expressing pride in just being in their breathtaking company. That’s followed by a short recounting of the eternal truth that none of us get anywhere worth going alone, and, in fact, we rely on more courageous forebears and barrier-shatterers than ourselves. And that means mentioning a couple of key mentors and collaborators. A couple. Too many and you dilute the force of the ones that matter the most.
The evidence of the night suggests that model no longer works. Almost no one mentioned the other nominees. A lot of people said that their work was, in fact, fully deserving of this honor. And while very many friends and collaborators were mentioned, and very generously so, it rarely was in the time-honored sense of, they did the real work here, not me. And this was not an issue confined to a small-bore award show in Chicago. It is pervasive.
Why is this going on? Socialmedia bleed, to my mind.
There is a growing fear that excessive modesty represents dangerous unilateral disarmament — dangerous in the sense of torpedoing a career in a competitive marketplace. If your rival for a gig is self-promoting on Facebook with ever increasing sophistication, crafting posts that appear to throw recognition elsewhere or to stand up for a popular political cause, but actually are designed to promote the poster’s own work and career, then you have little choice but to do the same. But humblebrags are much easier to pull off on Facebook, a medium designed specifically for their expression, than in person. There is something about standing there and talking, person to person, that tends to reveal whether you really mean what you are saying. People often find this out in the middle of their speeches as they intuit that the audience is sitting there and judging. Assuming they’ve not gone home.
Less spoken of is another consequence of the rise of social media — fear that a genuine mistake will result in humiliation, or worse. In generations past, to forget a name or two might have resulted in a peeved phone call. But people now are well aware that the spurned, or sympathizers therewith, could easily take to social media and take the winner down.
Thus, acceptance speeches inevitably become defensive acts.
In the most extreme cases, they are becoming not unlike appearances before the Soviet Politburo, where there is so much to worry about that the genuine expression of the complex feelings that most of us get when we are honored for some achievement gets squelched.
Decent people, those aware of life’s inequalities and injustices but also how hard they have worked, feel a lot of complex stuff when they get a prize. But it has become very hard to say so. There are so many boxes to check. And, of course, it now takes awhile.
There’s a good argument, of course, that modesty is an archaic notion that inevitably protects prior privilege. Sometimes you have to grab your moment to make news and get something changed. Cameras will soon point away. All true.
But the returns are not always what they seem. In an ideal world, anyway, we’d all know how to limit as well as to express ourselves, and we’d conduct ourselves with the kind of empathy needed for our fellow travelers if this country is not to fall apart.