Shows about Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from the Exorcist to Seinfeld by Thomas S. Hibbs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve had this book for about ten years, but it’s only in the last few weeks that I’ve gotten around to reading it. I’m sorry I waited so long, because this is a very good book. Hibbs shows how film and television have moved during the twentieth century from having a sense of truth, meaning, and morality to being ultimately “about nothing,” as the book’s subtitle indicates. Today’s TV shows and films often have an underlying assumption that God is dead, and that any sort of meaning is simply a construct of culture, so the here and now is all there is. We are in the age of nihilism.

Hibbs’s analysis is wide in its range. He begins with the films of Frank Capra, takes us through film noir, and on through the decades, finishing with films and television of the late 90’s such as Forrest Gump, The X-Files, and Seinfeld. Along the way, he compares these stories with Dante, Shakespeare, and other works of the past, showing how the moral framework of the classics was superior.

Although Hibbs’s analysis is insightful, what he shows us is very sad. Modern American films and television are in a state of profound despair, with no sense of transcendent truth or hope for meaning in life. Because Nietzsche’s “death of God” is now the common cultural assumption, all people can do is laugh about the futility of their lives (e.g., The Simpsons and Seinfeld).

As Hibbs shows, because of this shift in the way Americans think, people see nothing distinctive about human beings. Since Americans generally do not see human beings as created in God’s image, human beings are not seen as fundamentally different from the rest of the universe. As a result, in our TV shows and films, moral issues are often not a subject of serious reflection and concern, but material for comedy. For instance, Hibbs points to a Seinfeld episode where pizza is discussed in connection with the issue of abortion. The characters argue over “when a pizza becomes a pizza. [Is it] when you first put your hands into the dough or not until it comes out of the oven?” Hibbs points out that in this episode, as in others, “the underlying motif is that of morality as a farce. There is no higher or lower. Pizza, abortion—it’s all the same.”

As I read, I couldn’t help but grieve. Many Americans are filling their minds every evening with soul-killing stories, and our culture continues its descent into increasing boredom, numbness, and evil.


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