A "window on the world". That is how television has been described. In the book TUBE OF PLENTY - The evolution of America Television, author Erik Barnouw notes that by the early 1960's, "for most people television had become their window on the world. The view it offered seemed to be the world. They trusted its validity and completeness".
However, a mere window cannot select the view it presents you; it cannot determine the lighting or the angle of view; nor can it abruptly change the view just to hold your interest. TV can. Such factors dramatically shape your feelings and conclusions about what you are looking at, yet they are controlled by the people who produce TV shows. Even the most unbiased of newscast and documentaries are subject to such manipulation, however unintentional it may be.
TV, A Mater Seducer:
Most often, though, the people who control television are trying outright influence viewers. In advertising for instance, they have virtually free rein to use every seductive gimmick at their disposal to lure you into the mood to buy. Color, musical, beautiful people, eroticism, gorgeous locales. Their repertoire is vast, and they use it masterfully.
A former advertising executive wrote of his 15 years in the field: "I learned that it is possible to speak through media such as TV directly into people's head and then, like some otherworldly magician, leave images inside that can cause people to do what they might otherwise never have thought to do."
That television has such formidable power over people was already evident in the 1950's. A lipstick company that was making $50,000 a year began to advertise on US television. In two years, sales skyrocketed to $4,500,000 a year! A bank was suddenly avalanched $15,000,000 in deposits after it advertised its services on a TV program popular with women.
Today, the average American watches over 32,000 commercials every year. The ads play seductively on the emotions. As Mark Crispin Miller wrote in Boxed IN - THE CULTURE OF TV: "It is true that we are manipulated by what we watch. The commercials that pervade daily life influence us incessantly." This manipulation, he adds, "is dangerous precisely because it is often hard to discern, and so it will not fail until we learn how to perceive it."
But television sells more than lipstick, political viewpoints, and culture. It also sells morals or the lack of them.
TV and Morals
Few people would be surprised to learn that sexual behavior is depicted more and frequently on American television. A study published in 1989 in Journalism Quarterly found that in 66 hours of prime time network TV, there were in all 722+ instances of sexual behavior, whether implied, referred to verbally, or actually depicted. Examples ranged was masturbation, homosexuality, and incest. The average was 10.94+ every hour!
The United States is hardly unique in this matter. French TV movies depict explicit sexual sadism. Strip tease acts appear on Italian TV. Late -night Spanish TV features violent and erotic films. The list goes on and on.
Violence is another type of TV immorality. In United States, a TV critic for Time magazine recently praised the "grisly good humor" in a batch of horror programs. The series featured scenes of decapitation, mutilation, impalement, and demonic possession. Of course, much TV violence is less gruesome and more easily taken for granted. When western television was demonstrated recently in a remote village in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa, one bewildered old man could only ask: "why are whites always stabbing, shooting and punching each other?"
The answer, of course, is that television producers and sponsors want to give viewers what viewers want to see. Violence draws viewers. Sex does too. So TV serves up ample portions of both of them but not too much too soon, or the viewers will be repelled. As Donna McCrohan put it in Prime Time, Our Time: "most top shows go as far as they can with language, sex, violence, or subject matter; then, having gone to the edge, they take the edge off. Subsequently, the public is ready for a new edge."
For example, the subject of homosexuality was once considered beyond "the edge" of good taste for television. But once viewers got used to it, they were ready to accept more. A French journalist asserted: "no producer would ever dare present homosexuality as a deviation today... Rather, it is society and it's intolerance that are odd."
On American cable TV, a 'gay soap opera' premiered in 11 cities in 1990. The show's producer told news week magazine that such scenes were designed by gays to "desensitize the audience so that people will realize we're like everybody else."
Fantasy Versus Reality
The authors of the study reported in journalism Quarterly noted that since TV almost never shows the consequences of illicit sex, its "constant barrage of titillating sexual imagery" amounts to a disinformation campaign. They cited another study concluding that TV soap operas purvey this message above all: Sex is for unmarried partners, and no one gets a disease from it.
Is this the world as you know it? Premarital sex without teenage pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases? Homosexuality and bisexuality without the fear of contracting Aids? Violence and mayhem that leave heroes victorious and villains humiliated but both often strangely unbruised? TV creates a world where in actions are blissfully free consequences. The laws of conscience, of morality, and of self - control are replaced by the law of instant gratification.
Clearly, television is not a "window on the world" - at least not the real world. In fact, a recent book about television is called the unreality Industry. Its authors claim that TV has "become one of the most powerful forces in our lives. The consequence is that TV not only defines what is reality, but much more importantly and disturbingly, TV obliterates the very distinction, the very line, between reality and unreality."
These words may sound alarmist to those who think they are impervious to television's influence. 'I don't believe everything I see,' argue some. Granted, we may tend to distrust TV. But experts warn that this knee - jerk brand of skepticism may not protect us from the subtle ways TV plays on our emotions. As one writer put it: "one of TV's best tricks is to never let on just how much it affects our psychic mechanisms."
A Machine of Influence
According to the 1990 Britannica Book of the Year, Americans watch, on an average, seven hours and two minutes of television every day. A more conservative estimate puts the figure at about two hours a day, but that would still amount to seven years of television in a lifetime! How could such massive doses of TV fail to have an effect on people?
It hardly seems surprising when we read of people having trouble distinguishing between TV and reality. A study published in the British journal Media, Culture and Society found that TV does indeed induce some people to establish "an alternative vision of the real world," lulling them into thinking that their wishes about reality constitute reality itself. Other studies, such as those compiled by the US National Institute of Mental Health, seem to support these findings.
With TV influencing popular notions of reality, how could it fail to influence people's very lives and actions? As Donna McCrohan writes in prime time, our time: "when a top rated TV show breaks taboos or language barriers, we feel greater freedom to break them ourselves. Likewise, we are influenced when... promiscuity is the norm, or a macho character refers to his use of condoms. In each instance, TV acts on a delayed action basis as the mirror of who we can be convinced that we are, and therefore by and large become."
Certainly, the rise of the TV age has seen a corresponding rise in immorality and violence. Coincidence? Hardly so. One study showed that the rate of crime and violence in three countries increased only after TV was introduced into each of these countries. Where TV was introduced earlier, the crime rate rose earlier.
Surprisingly, TV does not even rate as the relaxing pastime that so many seem to think it is. Studies carried out on 1,200 subjects over a 13 - year period found that of all pastimes, television - watching was the least likely to relax people. Rather, it tended to leave viewers passive yet tense and unable to concentrate. Long viewing periods in particular left people in worse moods than when they began watching. Reading, by contrast, left people more relaxed, in better moods, and better able to concentrate!
But no matter how constructive reading a good book may be, TV, that nimble thief of time, may easily push books out of the picture. When television was first introduced in New York city, the public libraries soon reported a drop in book circulation. Of course, this is hardly means that mankind is about to give up reading. Yet, it has been said that people today read with less patience, that their attention soon flags if they are not bombarded with flashy visual images. Statistics and studies may not substantiated such vague misgivings. Still, what do we lose in terms of personal depth and discipline if we depend on constant pampering by a steady flow of TV entertainment that has been designed, moment by fleeting moment, to hold even the shortest attention span?
Let me know in the comment section how TV has turned your life upside down and made a big influence on you.
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