Chapter 36: Picking Up the Pieces: Baby

When we landed at SFO, we were intercepted by a production assistant working for Cassie Clark.  Cassie was waiting to interview us in a room at the small plane terminal.  All three of us agreed to do it.  Marc was interviewed first and then went to catch his flight to Hawaii.  During the helicopter flight, he’d told me about his ex-wife and kids.  He was going to just show up and see if he could work things out.  I thought he looked really happy for the first time since I met him, talking about them.  Aside from working things out with his ex-wife, he told me he’d decided he wasn’t going back to his job in corporate finance.  He said he’d been working for corporations for fifteen years and that was enough.  “On the island, I came to see that most of what corporations do is about making a few, powerful people, usually men, feel great by subordinating lots of other people who could probably function better in an environment where they had to rely on themselves instead of deferring to some boss.”

“You realized that on the island,” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said.  “To me, that’s what the whole survival thing is about.  Realizing where you really fit in your environment.”

“Which environment?” I said.  “The island or real life?”

“Both,” he said.  “So now, I know what I’m done with.  I’m done with the island.  I’m done with working for a big company, spending my time and energy making money for the company and more money for myself than I and my family need, but not taking care of what is really important.  I don’t know what’s going to come next, but I know what I want.  I want my family back.  That’s exciting.  It’s scary too.  What if they don’t want me back?”

I thought about giving him a hug.  Prior to what happened to me on the island, I definitely would have hugged him.  Instead I gave him a smile.  “That’s great,” I said.  “Good for you.”  It got the point across.

Marc caught his flight to Hawaii.  I was next.  Cassie said she didn’t know how to start the interview.  Then she asked me what it was liked to be raped on live television.  That question kind of threw me.  I didn’t know it had been broadcast live.  I was surprised and embarrassed.  Then I got angry, then upset, all in just a few minutes.  Cassie was good enough to turn off the camera and the audio and give me some time to work through it.  Once I’d collected myself, we continued the interview.  I think it went well.  After Cassie finished interviewing me and Daryl, a Moth Productions escort met us and told us they had booked a private jet to take us to Phoenix, where we’d have separate suites at a luxury hotel.  They didn’t say which hotel, but they said each of our suites had its own pool, and should make for very comfortable living for the next three weeks.

The flight to Phoenix was easy.  A limousine met us at the small plane airport.  It was night, by then.  The desert radiated warmth, completely different than what we’d been living in on the island.  The sky was clear, the stars bright.  The ride to the hotel took about thirty minutes.  My suite was as promised.  Large and airy.  I got in my private pool that night.  It felt great.  There was a case of DVDs by the television in the suite.  It held the “Soul Survivor,” episodes broadcast up to that point.  The bottom DVD was labeled “live broadcast.”  I put that one in first and made myself a margarita from the fully stocked bar in my room.  I watched the program that night.  The whole live episode.  Five times.  It was getting light out when I turned off the television.  I picked up the phone in the room.  I tried to dial, but there was no dial tone.  A female voice spoke to me.  “How can I help you,” she asked.  I couldn’t think of anything to ask for I was likely to get.  I knew at that point I couldn’t call anybody outside the production.  I hung up the phone.  I paced around the suite a few times and collected my thoughts.  I picked up the phone again, this time not even trying to dial.  “How can I help you,” the voice asked again.

“I’d like some newspapers and magazines,” I said.  “Can you get them for me?”

“I’ll see what we can arrange,” was the reply.

“Please do that.  And I’d like to order some breakfast,” I said.

“What would you like,” asked the voice.

“Eggs benedict, champagne and orange juice,” I said.

“Right away,” said the voice, warmly, as if glad to be able to easily grant my request.

“With the newspapers.  And the magazines,” I said.  I reeled off a list.

“I’ll see what we can do about those,” the voice said, not as confident of being able to deliver on my request.

“Thank you,” I said as nicely as I could.  “I appreciate your help.”  I smiled as I spoke so she’d hear it in my voice.

“You’re welcome,” came the reply, warm and friendly once again.

Half an hour later there was a knock at the door.  I opened the door to a woman dressed all in black, pushing a cart with a room service tray and a bucket of ice with a bottle of champagne sticking out.  Once in the room, she pulled a newspaper out from under the cart.  It was a copy of the New York Times.  I grabbed it out of her hands and sat down on the couch.  I paged through it as she set the dining room table and opened the champagne.  I didn’t notice her leaving, but looked up from the paper a little while later and saw the cart and the woman were gone.

The article was in the entertainment section of the paper.  It was entitled, “Reality Goes Too Far:  Will “Soul Survivor,” Survive the FCC?”

The problem with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is that any real problem the commission has to deal with has already happened.  By the time the FCC takes action, the damage has already been done.  The 2004 Superbowl half time show wardrobe malfunction was an instructive case in point.  By the time the FCC got involved, there was nothing left but the bad aftertaste of a tasteless performance.

In the case of the rape of Baby, broadcast live two nights ago, somebody should have seen it coming.  In fact, examination of previews that ran the week preceding the broadcast explicitly foreshadow “a crime to be committed on live television, never before seen in real action.”  In hind sight, that was an amazingly accurate prediction for a live episode of a reality program.  How is that possible?  Perhaps all is not as it seems.

Review of the live program as it was aired reveals the work of a highly professional team and the hand of an experienced director guiding the action of this “reality program” from behind the scenes.  The question of whether or not the rape scene was planned is an important one, because with it go questions about the players’ roles.  Was Baby a willing participant playing a part?  Or did Jack believe her to be?  And what happened to Jack?  Where is he now?  No one seems to know the whereabouts of either the supposed victim or perpetrator at present.  Was more than one crime committed, if any crime was committed at all?  These are the kinds of questions that will keep viewers coming back to see the season finale and whatever sequels follow, in hopes those questions will be answered, in addition to the question of who will win the million dollars by being the Sole Survivor.

In this sense, the FCC is a victim as well.  Its hands are tied.  In reality, the FCC  won’t prevent subsequent episodes of the show from airing, although it will likely subject them to a more rigorous advance review which may effect their content.  The only real penalty the FCC can impose upon Moth Productions, the company behind “Soul Survivor,” is a fine which that company and the program’s sponsors will consider money well spent.

A question for us to ponder as a society is what our role is in creating demand for the kind of programming “Soul Survivor” gives us.  Based on the ratings for the live episode, millions of us enjoyed watching a woman being raped on television.  In fact, as word spread from household to household of what was happening in the course of the one hour broadcast, more viewers tuned in to “Soul Survivor.”  The next episode’s ratings will give us a real indication of our national appetite for sex and violence, which is what “Soul Survivor” promises as its story line.

Women’s groups across the country are concerned by what’s happened, and rightly so.  The moral and social barriers that obstruct commission of a rape are weakened by watching a rape, as sociologists and psychoanalysts will attest.  How many heterosexual men felt their loins stir as they watched the broadcast?  Nine months from now, will there be an upsurge in the number of births versus the average, with babies being born as the result of passions unleashed by viewing the live episode of “Soul Survivor?”

Finally, how will the likely “Soul Survivor” sequel, the trial of Jack Callister play out, assuming he survives the program, literally?  Will we punish, pity or applaud the once promising young politician from one of America’s most prominent political dynasties.  If he has really perished, what then?  The answer to that question goes far beyond the scope of FCC authority.

Stay tuned.  Perhaps, in the meantime, the way the FCC can be of actual use is by getting to the bottom of exactly what the hell is going on out on the Farallone islands, so that, when the “Soul Survivor” DVD is issued, we, the audience, can know what was fact and what was fiction in what took place.

Baby put down the paper and walked over to the eggs benedict, still warm on the table.  She downed the mimosa already poured for her and refilled her glass with just champagne, downing that one quickly too.

“I can’t wait to talk to Marty,” she thought to herself, stretching like a cat.  “Let’s see what kind of bookings he gets me now.”