No News is Good News

Everyone had a lot of great things to say about the news today. One of my favourite things someone said (though I cannot remember who it was) was that the news is full of depressing stories. Every day we hear lots and lots of bad news. People are sick and dying and killing each other, the world is going to hell, and mostly that people are sick and dying and killing each other.
This made me think of The Nightmare Before Christmas. If you remember in this story, there is a part of the movie that everyone thinks that Jack Skellington is dead. Jack Skellington is loved and admired by everyone in the community. They look up to him. It is even inferred that he is the most important person in Halloween Town. Not even the Mayor knows what to do without him.
But then something horrible happens. While Jack is trying to make his own Christmas by flying across the world as Santa Clause, there is a misunderstanding and the police shoot him down. BOOM! His sleigh looks as if it has been blown to smitherines. This is obviously horrible news. And when the Mayor finds out he takes what struck me as the most absurd and ridiculous action ever when I first saw this movie.
The Mayor hops into his little vehicle thing that has a loud speaker on top and begins driving around Halloween Town to announce Jack's death. And in the most agonizing and greif-stricken voice, he cries out,"Terrible news, folks! The worst tragedy of our times! The King of Halloween has been blown to smithereens! Skeleton Jack is now a pile of dust!"
I absolutely could not believe it. In my mind, that was not how news is to be delivered. There was way too much emotion in that report. The news itself would be startling and upsetting enough without such emotional emphaisis. And his choice of vocabulary? Inconceivable. You can't say that he has been blown to smitherines and is now a pile of dust. Please say, "We have just received word that Jack Skellington has been killed," or something along those lines.
In our world, news is usually delivered in a emotionless tone of voice. It's informative-sounding and matter-of-fact. But whether we are hearing good news or bad news, it is usually delivered in mostly the same kind of voice. Imagine if there was emotion behind every news report. I don't think we could bear it. By the end of the hour our hearts and minds would be so heavy with greif that we'd probably collapse.
I used to spend a lot of time hanging out at the Repository. I would attend "budget meetings" (which has nothing to do with money) where what news would go where in the newspaper was decided. This is where I learned the term "gallows humour." It means being able to joke about things that would normally be viewed as morbid and unfunny. People who work in news do this because they encounter so much bad news on a daily basis and that can really make a big impact on a person. "You have to laugh or you'll cry," one of the editors said to me when explaining it.
I actually don't have much more to say on the matter. I just had to get the thoughts in my head into some sort of blog form while they thoughts were still fresh from class.
~Nadia
PS I love Tim Burton