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Jewish World Review May 13, 2005 / 4 Iyar, 5765 I, um, do By Tony Snow
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
A wedding notice for actress Renee Zellweger and country music star Kenny Chesney ends with the notation: "This is the first marriage for both."
Perhaps this sort of thing has become de rigueur on today's society pages, but it seems to invite us to think, "Well, that's interesting. I wonder when Number Two will come along?"
The announcement treats wedlock as a temporary arrangement — a vacation, with community property laws and squadrons of lawyers at the ready — that in time will give way to Wedding Number Two and Wedding Number Three and so on, until the oft-hitched celebrities enter the Trump Zone, where people stop counting and start yawning.
The practice of numbering weddings involves some pretty cheeky cynicism on all sides. After all, why begin serializing solemnities unless you're ready to add a sequel or two. It would be fun if wedding veterans not only began numbering marriages, but also started naming them: "Mr. and Mrs. Donald Trump are proud to announce their 'Phantom Menace' nuptials."
But this seems the sort of conceit reserved for the rich. Imagine what would have happened if you had added to your wedding announcement the fact that this was your "first marriage?" Would your betrothed have demanded a few words with you? A pre-nup? A recount? The phone number of Jennifer Willbanks' travel agent?
Even though divorce rates remain revoltingly high, the institution of marriage maintains a unique place in the American heart. We consider matrimony as more than an agreement, arrangement, or legal deal. We view it as a path of life.
That's why average folks don't enumerate matrimonial vows. We work on them. They enable men and women over time to surrender their self-absorption for something nobler and a lot more pleasant: the quiet joy of having said, "I do" and knowing that you plan to spend the rest of your days intertwining with another soul — a mate for life.
The Zellweger-Chesney announcement (or is it Chesney-Zellweger?) illustrates an increasingly obvious trend in our country. Hollywood is inching further from Main Street with each passing day. That's because studio executives seem to view the typical American as a chipper dope — someone who glides through time unfettered by excessive care and rendered witless by the onslaught of baffling new realities. Most T.V. Dads are loveable idiots — feckless, boisterous and utterly expendable.
T.V. moms aren't much better — Betty Rubble with an office and a view. Junior, meanwhile, is a combination of James Dean and Einstein, while Sis attempts to emulate simultaneously Lolita and Marie Curie. The effect is to trivialize the responsibilities of adults while minimizing the relevance of kids, who are permitted to be sexual, but not childlike.
Perhaps this explains why box-office receipts have declined 11 consecutive weeks. It's not just that films cost a lot to watch; a horrifying percentage of them are simply moronic. They don't offer escape, release or inspiration; they merely give us a glimpse into the dark souls of producers who have dispensed with filming the actual world, and instead spend their days and nights hunched in front of computers, manufacturing exotic movie sets, and creating lifelike, surreal creatures who leap and slink through the computer-generated landscape.
Even when Hollywood tries to connect with the lives of lumpenAmericans, it misses. For instance, the entertainment industry has whiffed entirely on the subject of religion, except for of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" and some minor-network forays into the topic of faith. Writers and producers approach the topic as if someone had asked them to manipulate some highly radioactive compound — or commanded them to capture on film the juiciest dishes from the Hannibal Lecter cookbook.
Closer to the point at hand, whatever happened to functional marriages? Did they die with Ward and June Cleaver?
It's hard to overlook the gulf that separates people who tote up their marriages from moms and dads who spend their summer evenings attending kids' softball and baseball games. If Tinseltown doesn't want to become a ghost town, some studio bigs might want to stop mocking Main Street and start living there. And a tiny, smart first step might be to inform publicists to include in all matrimonial notices the following sentence: "The couple hopes this will be the only (or last) marriage for both."
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Comment on JWR contributor, and syndicated talk show host, Tony Snow's column by clicking here. © 2005, Fox News Channel |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
