Thus was Lance Armstrong pilloried in our virtual town square. The disgraced cyclist sat with Oprah, the infallible high priestess of our national church, to be rehabilitated by her divine grace. But Armstrong didn’t play by the rules; he apologized without submitting. This is just not done: we want icons to fall into abject ruin and then plead for redemption – to throw themselves on the mercy of the court so we may assess their bathetic supplication. The initial transgression that lets us show our generous clemency must, for this reason, be forgivable. But we cannot forgive the real transgression: the false confession or suspect apology.
A notorious recent non-apology illustrates this pattern. Summoned to the couch after his 2011 hookers’nblow blow-up Charlie Sheen also goes off-script. Refusing to play his part, he fully inhabits his excess, “owning” his narcissistic indulgence, even upping the ante. He baffles his inquisitors, intensifying their lust to repress him. One exemplary interview shows Sheen riding the tense line between assimilation and expulsion:
Sheen’s chirpy but steely-eyed interviewer leads off with: “Your anger and your hate is coming off as erratic.” But Sheen quickly corrects her: “My passion, my passion.” Wait, what? You’re not confessing? She bears down: “When’s the last time you used?” she demands. Sheen scoffs, “I use a blender, I use a vacuum cleaner.” “You’re clean right now, and so is this better now, your life now, clean, with your children?” At least denounce drugs – tell the nation you prefer your children to drugs! Admit you are better sober, concede you were insane before: confess! “It’s not about better,” Sheen calmly explains, “it’s just different. It doesn’t compare, they’re different realities.” When he explicitly endorses his experiences with drugs and gives his reasons, she ignores him and vertiginously asks, “When you look back on the last time you used drugs, are you disgusted with yourself?” This is the non sequitur of the fundamentalist deafened by her cause. Sheen replies: “I’m proud of what I created, it was radical.”
So the script got cracked, shredded by an ad-libbing lunatic, the nation’s confessional desecrated. This is not to endorse Sheen; the domestic abuse is odious, the one-man show abysmal, the sitcom an idiotic self-parody. Rather, this interview is what happens when the role of the propitiator is miscast. Sheen’s recalcitrance exposes the spectacle of social repression, his psychosis explodes the charade, turns it inside out: he can be neither normalized nor dismissed. Sheen stalks a tenebrous boundary: he must feel the repressive-generative public desire bearing down on him, forcing on him the stark choice: insanity or clemency.
Hardly just some occasional, amusing pop-cultural publicity stunt benefiting captor and captive alike, this failed confession recapitulates the logic of the police station. One typical how-to textbook on criminal interrogation, echoing Sheen’s cross-examination, “describe[s] in vivid detail a nine-step procedure designed to overcome the resistance of reluctant suspects:
Using this procedure, the interrogator begins by confronting the suspect with his or her guilt (Step 1): develops psychological “themes” that justify or excuse the crime (2); interrupts all statements of denial (3); overcomes the suspect’s factual, moral, and emotional objections to the charges (4); ensures that the increasingly passive suspect does not tune out (5); shows sympathy and understanding and urges the suspect to tell the truth (6); offers the suspect a face-saving alternative explanation for his or her guilty action (7); gets the suspect to recount the details of the crime (8); and converts that statement into a full written confession (9).
The coerciveness of the process is transparent when someone rebels, as Sheen did. But it is more insidious and layered when someone like Lance Armstrong complies. His ambivalent, semi-deferent apology exposes the paradox of the public confession. The accusation, inquisition, confession, and pardon must be grave enough to raise and satisfy our demand for retribution, but vacuous enough to remain a ritualistic ethical performance. The sin must be offensive enough to call for real punishment – and not some measly admission – while the confession must be vapid enough to prevent critical resistance. Hence the symbolic process is perverse: it must be heavy enough to coerce but light enough to entertain. The absolution process has the discipline and tact to shield the brute venality of the interrogation – that is, to focus only on the sinner’s discrete violations. Oprah plays her part, but Lance cannot rise to the occasion, and hence risks exposing the entire charade.
by Elliott Prasse-Freeman and Sayres Rudy, The New Inquiry | Read more:
Image: uncredited
