The Media in Room

It's been a hot minute since we talked about Room as a group, but to be honest, it's still on my mind. What I want to talk about in this post is the final question Mr. Mitchell left with our class, is that are we just some twisted form of the media? In class, we were criticizing the media in Room for being overly interested in Jack and Ma's story, but aren't we kind of in their head, intruding in their private thoughts? Put it simply, are we the asshole?

We find Jack and Ma's story just as interesting as much of the American public does. Although it's objectively an interesting story, I found myself wanting to know more and more about Jack and Ma's situation, and part of the page-turning pull of the novel was that there were just so many questions that were left unanswered on every page. Even after I finished the novel, I was left with questions. And then I truly understood why the media was so eager to chase Jack and Ma around, and why the ladies in the department store were so eager to get Jack's signature. Although I might be able to physically restrain myself from chasing these poor victims, undeniably I would read up on the news for the story, and be grateful to whatever information they could discern.

This puts me in a weird moral situation. On one hand, how can you possibly not be curious about this story. On the other hand, you read first-hand what negative impact it has on Jack and Ma, and it sucks. What are you're guys thoughts?

Comments

  1. David SunMay 9, 2019 at 11:00 AM

    That question is extremely hard to answer. I think that we, as readers, have a different intention than the media. The media (as in the industry) knows that Jack and Ma are a rare case and want to make as much profit from it as possible. We just want to know how the story turns out, but at the same time, we are very interested in their story and want to find out as much as possible.
    In today's world we also are very interested in other people's lives. For example, the lives and actions of celebrities are followed almost religiously by many people. Although Jack and Ma aren't necessarily those types of celebrities, they are still famous in a way.

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  2. MitchellMay 23, 2019 at 10:45 AM

    One aspect of the novel that ameliorates this feeling for me is Jack's narration, which seems deliberately constructed by Donoghue to avoid the icky exploitative approach to a potentially sensationalistic story. As a narrator, Jack always sounds so *voluntary*--he is eager and excited to tell his story, and there's no sense (as in the interview) of it being solicited or crafted in a way that will make money for some mass-media company. Donoghue is fully aware of the potential pitfalls of a "true crime"-type story (as reflected in multiple interviews around this novel), and she writes this media critique into the story. Our interest in and analysis of Ma and Jack's story isn't *the same* as that of the interviewer, or those guys who "spent too long in college" at the roundtable discussion--and that's partly because we can feel smug and critical of how this media stuff works as we read--but extended reflection suggests we're maybe not *as* different as we'd like to think.

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