Word: self-help
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...presented so quickly as to defy cognition. "Presence," in which the audience sits on a bench in a dim room while an audiotape of a woman's fretting over her childhood is played at varying levels of volume and clarity, is a tribute to the most banal of self-help confessionals, rather than focusing the audience's attention on a little examined sense, the nature of sound. "Interval", on the other hand, strips the audience bare of its expectations of cognition and easy assumptions. A video of a man bathing and one of unidentifiable, feral activities are played in alternating...
There is no conscious movement here, just a work in progress. Yet combined, these disparate voices reach a mighty throng. Sociologist Paul Ray, who has been studying the makeup of the self-help and healing movements for eight years, calls the eager listeners "Cultural Creatives"--some 44 million strong, 60% women, mostly middle and upper class, with auxiliary interests in ecology and women's issues. Others suggest that they have already been named: they are the baby boomers, who happen to have begun turning 50 this year and are looking for ways to face their mortality...
...right with Melrose, and it only got better. During the 1994-95 season the story lines became more and more compellingly ridiculous. Former porn star Traci Lords showed up to lure Sydney into a polygamous cult, while nutbag Dr. Kimberly Shaw joined a paramilitary self-help group featuring Mackenzie Phillips...
Even the track "Rilkean Heart", with gorgeous vocal harmonies and exquisitely timed instrumental accompaniment, is marred by Fraser's lyrical weaknesses. The song manages to sidestep the bottomless well of self-pity into which most breakup songs plummet, but Fraser still sounds as though she's reading from a self-help book: "I looked for you to give me transcendent experiences... I'm so sorry...
Unfortunately, Americans have started seeking out the same kind of miracle cures for emotional illnesses, particularly in relationships. Instead of soothing gel-caps, heartache medicines come in either hardcover or paperback. The popularity of self-help books on relationships and the mysteries of man-and womanhood has certainly served to entertain, but at the same time, it has also over-simplified and limited people's conceptions of love and gender...