THE STARS DOWN TO EARTH
Within this general pattern of the happy ending, however, there is a specific difference of function between the column and other mass communications. Soap operas, television shows and above all movies are characterized by heroes, persons who positively or negatively solve their own problems. They stand vicariously for the spectator. By identifying himself with the hero, he believes to participate in the very power that is denied him in as much as he conceives himself as weak and dependent. While the column also works with identifications, they are organized differently. There are no heroic figures in the column, and only general hints of charismatic persons such as the mysterious creative and powerful people from outside who occasionally crop up and tender the reader invaluable aid. By and large, people are taken for what they are. True, their social status is, as will be demonstrated later, vicariously raised by the column, but their problems are not hidden behind an imagery of ruggedness or irresistibility—in this respect, the column seems more realistic than the supposedly artistic mass media. For the column, the hero is replaced by either the heavenly signs or, more likely, by the omniscient columnist himself. Since the course of events is referred to as to something pre-established, people will not have the feeling, still present in hero worship, that by identification with the hero, they may have to be heroic themselves. Their problems will be solved either automatically or with the help of others, particularly of those mysterious friends whose image recurs throughout the column, provided one only proves confident in the stars. Impersonal power thus replaces the personalized one of the heroes and is transferred to his more powerful superiors. It is as if the column would try to make up by its identification with the reader’s actual psychological and reality situation of dependence for the unrealistic element of the dogmatic reference to the stars. The column indulges in a symbolic expression and psychological fortification of the pressure that is being continuously exercised upon people. They are simply to have confidence in that which is anyway. Fate, while being exalted as a metaphysical power, actually denotes the interdependence of anonymous social forces through which the people addressed by the column will somehow “muddle through.” The semi-irrationality of “everything will be fine” is based on the fact that modern American society in spite of all its conflicts and difficulties succeeds in reproducing the life of those whom it embraces. There is some dim awareness that the concept of the forgotten man is outdated. The column feeds on this awareness by teaching the readers not to be afraid of being weak. They are reassured that all their problems will solve themselves even if they feel that they themselves are unable to solve them. They are made to
56