Notes on a Scandal: Why Do We Like SCANDAL?

This review was published originally on cinekklesia on July 14, 2007.

Scandals make me giddy. I suppose that I'm a boor for feeling this way, but when powerful people fall due to their own errors, I take great pleasure. I like seeing them sweat under television lights, watching them run from the relentless press. The threat of having one's embarrassments exposed is, of course, a risk inherent in a public life. However, what about the scandals that beset the previously unknown, the people who—if not for some court case or other public event—would not have attracted any media attention? Do they deserve the same derision of the masses, or should they be left alone?

These themes form only a small part of Notes on a Scandal (2006), Richard Eyre's masterful portrayal of British schoolteachers gone wild. Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) is married to a significantly older college professor (whose prior marriage she helped to dissolve) and has spent the past decade taking care of their developmentally disabled child. She finally feels able to get a job in the outside world, so she takes a position as an art teacher in a local high school. There, she meets a 15-year-old boy who, quite simply, lusts after her. Does she resist his advances? Does she report him to school administrators? Ultimately, no! She begins to have an affair with the lad, to meet him in secret, unseemly locations for sex.

Enter Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), an older history teacher at the same school, who finds out about the illicit hanky-panky. Does she follow proper administrative protocol in handling her misbehaving colleague? No! She keeps Sheba's secret and uses it to her own scheming advantage. As we see later in the movie, Barbara has her own skeletons to hide. Naughty! Bad teacher!

As I mentioned, I love scandals, and fictional ones are no different. I absolutely enjoyed watching how Sheba kept making stupid errors and how Barbara kept making matters worse by not following through on her responsibility to "protect" students. From a narrative perspective, scandals are a great means by which to build suspense, to elicit that sense of "Oh, oh: this is going to end very badly." Few cinematic devices are more effective than the ticking time bomb, whether literal or metaphorical.

Yet, is there a higher purpose to scandal than the simple, giddy excitement of the masses? On a more ideal plane, perhaps scandal serves the same purpose as shame: it should lead one to repentance. A person gets caught with the proverbial pants down, is shamed by his/her surrounding community, and then repents. (Whether the offending party is brought back into the fold depends, of course, on the community's temperament.)

It seems, however, that if scandal ever really served the goal of repentance, that function has now been lost. Do we really want repentance, or do we just want to mock those who have embarrassed themselves in public? Besides, in some cases, scandal produces no ill effect. The first time I ever heard of Paris Hilton was when news broke out that her now-infamous sex tape was being distributed online. Even though that was "scandalous," she nevertheless ended up with her own television show and has been the focus of media attention ever since. There's no such thing as bad publicity, after all, and we have entire networks devoted to A-, B-, and C-list celebrities.

One doesn't even have to be rich to profit from this phenomenon. One could argue that Jerry Springer, with his obnoxious and bawdy talk show, has helped to democratize scandal. Anybody engaged in (real or fictional) taboo behavior can go on the air, bare all (perhaps literally), and talk back to the audience members, who jeer with their faux righteous indignation. Everyone benefits: the subject of the scandal gets to be on TV, the audience gets to feel better (with the "at least I'm not as bad as that person" mentality), and Springer gets to make a living.

Thus, it seems that scandal has become simply aesthetic. We really don't care about moral lessons that can be learned from shaming people (if shame still exists), and a scandal is simply one more item in our long list of entertainment options. Do I want to listen to some Beethoven or catch up on the latest Britney Spears debacle? At a basic level, it's all the same. Even political scandals, which theoretically serve some material purpose, ultimately prove aesthetic. After all, does the average voter really gain more utility from following "issues"—over which he/she has almost no control—rather than the illicit sex lives of Members of Congress (which, if nothing else, prove entertaining)?

A note of caution should be raised here. As mentioned earlier, not all scandals are the same. Those which affect previously obscure, "unknown" people who have no desire to expose themselves to the spotlight should give us pause. To relish in the embarrassments (self-inflicted or otherwise) of ordinary people is cruel — especially when they probably need time to process the recent events and to figure out how to move forward. Folks in such positions (which, it seems, would include Sheba Hart) should be left alone.

Anyone else, however, is fair game. "Ordinary" people who desire the spotlight at whatever cost, along with celebrities and politicians (who, by definition, seek attention), should realize that they are easy fodder for our multi-media culture. Perhaps it shouldn't be this way, but it nevertheless is. It might have something to do with the fact that there is something within us that enjoys a good scandal.