Elite Immersion

Elite Immersion

I admit freely to being a devotee of MSNBC. I understand that it subjects me to some derision, certainly from my conservative friends, but also from some moderate friends and even some more liberal acquaintances that consider it invasive to their peace and harmony to submit to the daily media barrage of any sort. And if you spend an entire day listening (as I do via Sirius radio at times like during a roadtrip as I’m on this week) or watching MSNBC, you will certainly hear/see the repetition throughout the day of the latest-greatest developing breaking stories viewed and discussed by all your favorite anchors and pundits, over and over and under and sideways from every imaginable angle. To me, the difference between that barrage on my senses and what I get from Fox when I very rarely tune in is the difference between reading the front page of the New York Times versus glancing at the cover of the National Enquirer. If that distinction sounds elitist, so be it, but I will stand by the predominant truthfulness and balance of the one versus the outrageous and crass sensationalism of the other.

This week of traveling, we are without access on our room TVs of MSNBC (not for lack of trying) and have had to use mainstream network news, which is fine. But I have also had the benefit of more time to scan other media (mostly by smartphone) that have fed me fascinating stories from very different themes than the mainstream political breaking news. And yet, they have all fed back into a strange vortex of thought that brings me back into my own elitist v. sensationalist arena that I find so compellingly interesting. Let me see if I can clearly delineate this.

I have been hearing all week on the Sirius radio feed about this new wiz-bang attraction by wunderkind Darren Aronofsky, the filmmaker who brought us the psychological fiction genre of Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler and The Whale, all fascinating and acclaimed works for people who enjoy thoughtful movies (versus, say, Marvel action flicks). That distinction seems very on-point with the elitist/sensationalist spectrum that is at the center of this discussion. This new attraction is The Sphere in Las Vegas. No place does sensationalism better than Vegas, do the juxtapositioning of Aronofsky and Vegas seems intriguing. Then, today I read about James Dolan of Madison Square Garden fame/infamy and how The Sphere is his new $2.3 billion bid to reinvent the immersive venue business. He has come to what I will call the post-billionaire realization that owning sports teams (think Rangers and Nicks) ain’t all its cracked up to be. Now sports teams are sort of the height of sensationalist spectacle by my standards with their raw and sometimes brutal physicality that the mob enjoys so much. But Dolan says that the business model of the professional sports team is pretty mediocre and uninteresting to him at this point. I say, what is sensationalism but something to grow bored with and need an ever expanding adrenaline rush to stay sated? As to the big venue business (Dolan owns Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and the Chicago Theater among other big venues), the only thing there that currently floats Dolan’s boat seems to be the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City (a show Kim and I have seen multiple times and a show we just once again bought $216 seats for our family Holiday Extravaganza in December). Dolan says he likes that business model because he can own BOTH the venue and the content since he owns the Rockettes and the other players in that show. I guess Dolan is an evolved billionaire who can appreciate the sensational and the elitist all at once if there’s a good buck in it for him.

Then I read an article from the L.A. Times (the west coast elitist version of the New York Times, I suppose) about why people are so drawn to Disney attractions. The writer we not through all of the hidden machinations and manipulations put to work by Disney in its parks to make your experience there so immersive and embracing that you simply can’t help yourself but to want to spend days and days there and then come back again for more as soon as you can. It seems that they have taken an approach that involves all of the human senses, including smell, by artificially creating an immersive experience that taps into our core brain stem desires weaknesses and makes us throw aside all other hopes dreams and even fears in favor of anything and everything Disney. It was really a helpful explanation for me as a father of some children and grandchildren that are pretty much Disney-obsessed as much as any Rangers, Nicks or Giants fans might be in their fandom. And this venue-merged view of how the spectacle in the arena and the arena itself combine to form the passions that drive otherwise non-thrill-seeking spectators and attendees to emotionally swell to and gravitate toward physically attending these gatherings and events is quite revealing. I have long wondered why people go to a 100,000-person stadium with gridlocked parking conditions and cold, hard seats to sit through something that they can see so much better on the home flat-screen mega TVs, and this is the first glimpse of a possible answer. It is all being engineered to succeed by way of immersive experience.

Who am I to belittle such immersion? I am right now sitting in a gazebo in the cold morning air on a spit of land that reaches out from the California coastline into the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean. I started looking forward to this moment yesterday when we arrived at the Heritage House Hotel here just south of Mendocino. I know I arise earlier that whatever crew I travel with, and I am into taking a morning constitutional walk and using it to sit down and write a story like this very one. Why do we come back to places like this dramatic coastal area? I don’t jump in the water and paddle a surfboard out to the point break. I don’t even put on hiking shoes and skittle down the cliffs to the rocky beach and hunt for hidden caves. I just walk on a nicely trimmed path out to a pre-determined viewpoint and sit with the crashing waves surrounding me on three sides, mesmerized by the sound, the smell and the even the morning chill as the sun rises over the hills. I could get all that on the Discovery Channel back in the room if I wanted to, but then I wouldn’t be immersed and alone with my elitist thoughts, out here in the wild, but still in my own head at the same time. That may be the ultimate example of elite immersion I can imagine. I may have little use for stadiums and arenas and I may not get engaged by football season or the sports saturation of March Madness combined with Stanley Cup dreams, but I have my own versions of sensationalism and I’m not so sure they are so different. My guess is that they work on the same receptors in my brain stem as they do for the guy with team colors grease painted all over his face. I will probably get tickets to The Sphere and go see what $2.3 billion buys you in immersive, sensationalist elitism as defined by Darren Aranofsky and James Dolan. After all, be we elitist or sensationalist, we all enjoy an immersive experience to transport us to a higher plane.