Representations of the Media in Tropic of Orange

Through the events of the disaster on the freeway and a narrow focus on several characters, Karen Tei Yamashita explores the role of the news media throughout Tropic of Orange.  The book’s spotlight, Gabriel, is a reporter who believes in doing things the old-fashioned way, through detective-work, while Emi represents a more modern, entertainment-driven news perspective.  Gabriel’s sentimentality, which also emerges in his Mexican abode, conflicts with Emi’s pragmatic sensibilities, but Gabriel secretly agrees.  “She was right.  News was the spice of life… News was change (155).”  A third symbol for the media arrives when Buzzworm encounters Emi at the freeway event.  Before him, Yamashita wrote of the media spectacle at the freeway that “The average citizen viewed these events and felt overwhelmed with the problems, felt sympathy, or anger and impotence.  There was also an imminent collective sense of immediate live real-time action better than live sports (122)…”  Yamashita frequently invokes this discussion of the huge distance between viewers, who only see entertainment, and the subjects.  She often mentions that the viewers are disturbed by the ongoing events but none of them take any action toward resolving the problems.  Meanwhile, Buzzworm essentially hijacks Emi’s media outlet in order to provide a more humanistic coverage of the disaster, and to alert people to social issues.  Viewers love his show, which could be Yamashita’s way of indicating that people do not only crave entertainment, they also want substance.  Furthermore, Buzzworm complains of the constraints he still feels once he has his coverage.  Speaking of commercial interruptions, Emi responds that “You don’t choose the commercials.  They choose you (189).”  Here Yamashita reveals the ways in which capitalism distorts true journalism.  Because commercials are essentially sold off to the highest bidder, news organizations lose responsibility for the content that they present, and they must be constantly slashing time for commercial breaks in order to maintain a profit and stay afloat.  The news as entertainment theme reinforces this critique of capitalism, because consumers of the news will want their programs to be entertaining, therefore the most entertaining stations win out while the ones with the true substance may fail.