What Are We Learning From Cable Shows? -- II

White House Press Secretaary Jen Psaki, an upper-class white woman with The Look, acknowledged the importance of the most-watched cable shows a few weeks ago, when, implying that white conservatives were somehow lagging behind in getting their vaccinations, she said,

“We’ve run PSAs on the ‘Deadliest Catch,’ we’re engaged with NASCAR and Country Music TV,” Psaki added. “We’re looking for a range of ways to get directly connected to white conservative communities. . ."

I found a 2014 piece in Variety that gives an indication of Deadliest Catch's continuing popularity:

The show, which tells real-life stories aboard fishing vessels in the Bering Sea during crab fishing season, averaged 3.02 million viewers in the 9 o’clock hour, according to Nielsen, its largest audience in five weeks. It finished close behind TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting” (3.03 million) as the most popular cable series overall on the night.

It’s in key demos, though, that “Deadliest Catch” is especially potent. Its 1.2 rating/4 share in adults 18-49 was tops on cable for the night, and even beat programs on Fox and CBS (a repeat) in its time period.

But it's beyond oversimplification to say it's a show about white guys, which is certainly what Jen Psaki suggests it is. From my time in the insurance industry, I know that Bering Sea crab fishermen are among the very few occupations for which insurers will not underwrite life insurance policies, period. The show gives a very clear picture of why this is. Not only are the workers routinely subject to injury and death while on deck, but whole vessels simply sink and disappear with some regularity, losing most or all of their crews.

Among other things, the show doesn't romanticize or sugar-coat any of this. It does strongly suggest that highly capable captains and crews can minimize the chances of these things happening, which is a theme we've learned since Melville and Conrad, and it's sometimes the focus of action in particular episodes.

In fact, I would say that this is a strong factor behind the show's ongoing popularity: there's an admiration for competence, experience, and job knowledge. Among the crews, on one hand, there's a sense that going crab fishing may be something of a last chance in a life headed toward the bottom, but clearly the job demands the ability to do exhausting physical labor for 24 hours and more at a stretch, in extreme cold, with ocean water pouring over the deck.

By and large, the ones who wittingly accept those conditions rise to the challenge, and this is something the episodes often reflect as well. And while some scenes in any cable show like this are scripted beforehand by the producers, or editors stitch individual scenes to imply a continuity that wasn't originally there, the fact that the episodes are filmed on deck and in the pilot house from day to day as the voyages unfold means there's a core of experience that can't be faked, glossed over, or moralized.

Jen Psaki strongly implies that the shows are about, and appeal primarily to, white people. The first impression I have is that if you watch the show or others like it, this simply isn't the case. Just earning a living in a place like Los Angeles, or for that matter a place like Alaska, people run into such a wild mix of populations that it's hard to tell who's what -- and that's because you're running into different people all day, every day, and let's face it, you're busy.

In our Roman Catholic parish there are Anglos, people of African descent, both from the US, Africa, and wherever else, people of South Asian descent, Filipinos of Chinese descent, Filipinos of Filipino descent, Koreans, Vietnamese, Latins from anywhere, and so forth, to the point that nobody from any group is entirely certain who's what. At one point, we had two priests from India, but the Filipinos were convinced that one of them was Filipino, which both the Indian priests enjoyed greatly. The fact is that in the real world, nobody has time for who checks what box.

The impression I have from watching Deadliest Catch is that the crews are inevitably going to be that sort of mix. Some are whites, some are Native Alaskan, some are going to be Russian, Hawaiian, Japanese, or Chinese. They're all filthy, unshaven, wearing rain gear with hoods, waves pouring over them. Nobody, on deck or at home, has time to worry over who's what, too much is going on. This is much of the world in the 21st century.

The issue is getting the job done and getting home safely with a big reward. Clearly this sort of thing resonates with the plebs. Jen Psaki, an upper class white woman stuck in a bubble, hasn't a clue.