Sea changes, transparency, and antagonism
I can count on one hand the number of episodes of Cold Case that I’ve watched, but I happened to catch it the other night and it set me thinking.
The episode was about a girl who dressed and acted like a boy in the Sixties. She was killed, but not before being institutionalized and given electric shock therapy to ‘cure’ her.
Fast forward to the present day. A woman who had been in our hero’s class, who had been at that time as feminine as Tinkerbell and as mean as Lord Sauron, is now an enlightened university professor. Cue montage scene in which one of her students is a girl with a boyish haircut, covered in tats and wearing a t-shirt that says, “Queer Nation.”
I know, I know. It’s just a silly TV show. But I will take lessons wherever I find them, thankyouverymuch. And this particular silly TV show got me thinking about the relationship between how transparent something is and how much public antagonism is acceptable.
It’s a similar concept to the one in the movie Amazing Grace, about abolition in the UK, and I think it speaks to the nature of societal sea change.
Phase I: Opposition to slavery is considered to be deviant, and so it remains deeply hidden. Because it is not a subject for polite conversation, any antagonism towards the behavior was also driven underground:
Total secrecy of behavior = Minimal public antagonism
Phase II: The first few begin to go public with their beliefs, giving people in opposition equal freedom to make their opinions more public:
Partially transparent behavior = Partial public antagonism
Phase III: A critical mass of people join to make the issue totally public, arguing their cases with lifestyle and voices and votes and pocketbooks. Those who are opposed join together in outright war, fighting desperately to retain the status quo:
Totally transparent behavior = Total public antagonism
Phase IV: The argument has long since been resolved, and people can’t believe this used to be an issue:
Totally transparent behavior = Non-issue
I don’t think this is any sort of universal truth, but those fighting for a cause—whether it’s slavery or gay marriage or the environment or DRM-free music—may be comforted by the hope that Phase IV is possible.
Thoughts?
