Just after eleven A.M. on Thursday, March 9, 1995, a twenty-four year old waiter in a Detroit suburban restaurant drove to the nearby apartment of acquaintance Scott Amedure and killed him with two gunshot blasts to the chest. Fifteen minutes later, Jon Schmitz called 911 to report the murder he had just committed, saying, "I just walked into his house and killed him."
A senseless, random act of violence? One of those unexplainable crimes with which the news seems recently to be so replete? Not quite.
Three days earlier, Jon Schmitz and Scott Amedure had appeared as guests on the Jenny Jones Show, one of those expos style network television talk shows. In a sequence entitled "Secret Admirers," Schmitz was told -- along with the entire national viewing audience -- that he was the object of Amedure's homosexual affections. Despite his shock that the secret admirer he had been told he would meet was not a woman, the heterosexual Schmitz tried to behave like a good sport for the cameras. But, apparently, Schmitz -- whether as a result of homophobia, humiliation, or both -- cracked. Now, Scott Amedure lay dead on a kitchen floor and Schmitz faced life in prison without parole.
This bizarre tragedy has been viewed by many commentators as the logical extension of the exploitative fervor which accompanies the talk show genre. Syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman remarked that the show ". . .was rigged against real life. Rigged to treat emotions like entertainment. . .And now with this gruesome murder, we know also that the show was rigged for disaster" (9A). But it is far too easy to point fingers at talk shows as being the scourge of society. The shows' popularity and abundant supply of guests are perhaps symptomatic of a national fascination with humiliation and conflict, but are not the cause of that fascination and its potentially tragic consequences..
Implicit in much of the criticism of the Jenny Jones incident is a call for some form of regulation -- be it self- or externally-imposed -- on the talk show genre. There is, however, rich, long history providing that inconvenience, disappointment, and humiliation do not justify censorship.
Schmitz, judged by the outcome of the events following his appearance on the Jenny Jones Show, is not the typical talk show guest. A few years ago, the mother of an aspiring cheerleader attacked the mother of her daughter's competitor. At the conclusion of some athletic events, major brawls break out. Neither of these incidents provides satisfactory evidence that competitive athletic endeavors should be further regulated. The fact that there have been political assassinations is not evidence that politics should be abolished. Similarly, the psychosis and aberrant behavior of one individual participant do not provide prima facie evidence that the activities in which he engages -- appearing on talk shows or otherwise -- are dangerous.
Talk shows are proliferating by the second. Many new talk show personalities have recently proved formidable in the ratings war (e.g. Ricki Lake, Charles Perez, Gordon Elliot) and many more are waiting in the wings. This competition motivates more gimmicks to up the dramatic ante to corral viewers away from a competitor. The tactic which has been broached by the Jenny Jones Show is often referred to as the "ambush" maneuver; that is, placing people in unexpected situations and watching them react. But many people question the ethics of deliberately setting someone up for humiliation and concomitant ratings. Time writer Gina Bellafante notes, "The event. . .has turned the spotlight on the lengths to which talk shows. . .will go to catch people off guard and encourage guest warfare" (77). The possibility that the producers dealt unfairly with Schmitz is the most hotly contested point by both sides of the issue and has been regarded as focal. Schmitz's camp contends that he was misled by the show's staff. In fact, another neighbor, Donna Riley, was on-stage as Schmitz made his entrance. Believing her to be the secret admirer, he hugged her, much to the audience's tittering amusement. Jones, on the other hand, claims that "We have no responsibility whatsoever because Schmitz was not misled. All the guests knew that it could be a man or a woman -- it's very clear from phone logs and producer's notes that he did know" (Green 42) .
But, even if he were deceived, we must ask ourselves if he really had a right to be. We live in a world where talk show hosts and their shows are looked upon with a generous amount of sneering disdain. "Trash TV" it is often called. This genre of television is thought to be exploitive, much in a league with tabloids found at grocery store check-out lanes. But there is a difference between exploitation -- which we will define as using the handicapped for advantage --and, as in Schmitz' case, pushing the envelope of surprise. These shows do not exploit people. If anything, they exploit arrogance. The legalization of gambling does not exploit the poor. It simply gives them an opportunity to display their own arrogant short-sightedness. Because addictive personalities will get hooked on gambling does necessitate that everybody be deprived of the opportunity to gamble. People go on these shows like gamblers. This is their chance to win. A mother and daughter brawl, for example, is approached by both participants with hope that the audience will "side with me." Everyone wants to be liked and their fantasy is that the shows will make life better for them because audience sentiment will cause their desires to be met. Contrary to the analysis of Jon Schmitz, who melodramatically claimed that he got "fucked on TV" (Green 41), it is more probable that his downfall was an excessive dose of Oedipal pride. He set himself up.
The producers, contrary to what Schmitz and some commentators are suggesting, are not the real agents of deception here. Schmitz himself is to blame. The most fundamental question to be asked is "Why did Schmitz go on the show in the first place? Even assuming that the talk show producers did cut loose in the tradition of shoddy used car salesmen and that their pre-show promises were as ambiguous as Schmitz claims, did Schmitz really believe that the Jenny Jones staff would be champing at the bit to sponsor a show on which a woman tells Schmitz that she had a crush on him? Did he really believe that talk shows -- which, by the way, Schmitz admits to watching and enjoying -- are likely to gain popularity by showing America what shy but enamored woman in town had a crush on a waiter named Jon Schmitz? If the answer is yes, as it very well may be, we are witnessing a compulsive desire for ego-enhancement. This is not the way talk shows work.
Jon Schmitz was not playing according to the show's rules; he was playing according to his own, and he responded psychotically when no one else chose to play out his schema. There is a parallel here with athletic contests. Nobody really believes in committing fouls in basketball. Yet, traditionally, players are not ejected from the game the first time they commit a foul. There are even leagues in which there is no such thing as " fouling out." Likewise, it's legal to "stall" for advantage in a basketball game. However, there are always those people who excoriate the stalling team and cry "foul" when their own team is the recipient of a stalling maneuver, wanting suddenly for the rules not to be the rules. In the Jenny Jones case here, Schmitz -- and many commentators -- are crying "foul" because a talk show behaved like a talk show.
There is ample evidence to suggest that Schmitz realized that this form of entertainment depends on surprise. It is inherent in the genre. As controversy is the life-blood of any talk show, the people behind the Jenny Jones Show were clearly counting on a twist to move the "crush" sequence beyond the realm of the predictable. Clearly, the alleged homophobia which caused Schmitz' embarrassment is not an evil machination of the show's producers.
The show was a contest of gamblers. Schmitz believed that he could emerge untainted by any surprise that might confront him. The producers gambled that he could not. After all, the show might have resulted in Schmitz himself turning out to be gay and responding positively or negatively to Amedure's advances. Or perhaps with Schmitz' not being phased at all by Amedure's declaration, but saying, "Even if I were gay, you're not what I'd pick." In the former instance, gay relationships presented in a "positive light" would, no doubt, have inspired a strong negative reaction against the Jones show from the family values-protecting Far Right. The latter instance may have elicited yelps from Gay and Lesbian advocate groups, protesting that something unkind was said about a gay man. There is always risk, both for the guest and for the show's producers. The talk show engages itself, by its very nature, in high risk competition and, in fact, is watched not because of the issues it presents, but because people want to see just how big a risk the show will take.
There has been much praise for Oprah's non-sensationalistic modification of the talk show format. On Oprah, there is no pandering to base instincts and little or no guest manipulation. Essentially, it is "the talk show equivalent of 'Up With People'" (Lorando 1E). But even Oprah is really doing the same thing as the others. While she is not chronicling the elasticity of dwarf genitalia or featuring teenage women who are carrying the love children of serial killers, Oprah is gambling that people will respond to a different kind of manipulation -- a controversy-avoiding manipulation which guarantees that nobody will be offended. Both Saint Oprah and the purveyors of sleaze are manipulating for audience -- and thus ratings -- approval. Although she is still number one in the ratings, her numbers have fallen, and her competitors are siphoning off those viewers who still desire a good old-fashioned visceral thrill. If American people really yearned for good, wholesome talk shows without degradation, Oprah's ratings would be soaring.
Ultimately, Schmitz went on the show posing as a good sport. He entered the Jenny Jones Show arrogantly believing that he couldn't be outwitted. He believed that, in an environment fraught with risk, he was invincible. When he lost in the gamble, he asserted that the show was at fault ironically for not making the gamble to appear on Jenny Jones risk-free. Tragic as the results of the gamble were for both Schmitz and Amedure -- and important as it is that future talk show schemes take care to minimize the long-term negative effects of their pranks -- those who would censure or censor talk shows because of this single aberrant tragedy miss the real cause of such tragedy: a tendency for individuals to react to all discomfort and inconvenience with violence and, afterwards, to rationalize blaming others rather than taking responsibility for their on actions. It is that tendency which advances greater danger for modeling and justifying violence in America than Jenny Jones and others of her ilk could ever hope to have the power to incite.
