Looking to television to quell active children, sedate the senses after the long days at your desk and riding a tsunami-sized wave of channel surfing might be making you more like a zombie than you think.
Looking to television to quell active children, sedate the senses after the long days at your desk and riding a tsunami-sized wave of channel surfing might be making you more like a zombie than you think.
Consider the physical effects of television watching. Your brain waves fall close to the alpha variety, which are the kind we experience during sleep. That means when you watch TV, your body and mind enter a catatonic-like state. There is reasoning behind this: the specific physical state TV watching induces is perfect for all those visual messages 'they' want to implant into your life mental experience. You're relaxed and paying your utmost attention to the material being broadcast, which means you've let your guard down as to what you ingest on TV. And that could be anything.
'But that's the point!', you say, and I hear you loud and clear. Humans are image factories- they like to identify with the images they are partial to. Do you try to act like Jim Carrey after you watch one of his movies? Do you get excited and aggressive when you watch the football game? It's quite easy to get emotionally involved in dramatic programs, especially since your state of mind prioritizes feedback from the tube. Working with only two of our five senses, TV certainly is effective in evoking emotional responses from us. Television also mirrors and exaggerates the false truths of the reality we place ourselves in. That's what it's for. If it wasn't we'd be watching people watching TV on TV, recognizing problems and seeing how lazy TV-watching really is, and where's the fun in that?!
'Fun?', you say. 'TV is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to tell me the bad news and then quickly bring to me back to my favorite program. Bad news happens all the time, big deal.' If it bleeds it leads, right? Think back to your television watching experiences. When you watch the news, how long does each segment spend on the important issues? Maybe 3-5 minutes? Hardly enough time to sell all sides. But which 'side' is the news show taking? Should you agree with their stance? And who decides what are the most important issues that get broadcasted, anyway? Where did the material come from? Who wrote it? How credible is it? (gasp!) Who is paying for this material to be broadcasted? The power of the press is limited only to the depths of the owner's pocketbook, and whatever they pay for gets shown.
'So this material', you ask- 'are you saying that when I watch TV, I slip into a voluntary sedentary state and ingest images that become part of my life exprience?' Yep. Not only that, but you're being appropriated and manipulated to 'feel' what you see, too. We're barraged with images on cable news networks of war, for example. As far as TV-watching goes, what's the difference between actors playing war and real war coverage? Oh, now don't cringe. I know that's a hard one. Most people don't want to take the Pepsi challenge of real and fake war on TV. However the fact is that television violence breeds disinformation about its purveyors, hence establishing paradigms that in turn cultivate and create trends of thinking in a culture glued to the tube. It builds tolerance to violence. What does that mean? A news show broadcasts a murder, and they say that their suspect is a black male. First they show the body or the crime scene (fear- basing). Then they show the survivors. Then they show the sherriff who says, 'It was a black man...'. Then after the segment the newscasters reiterate that the suspect is a black man, and to be on the lookout for this particular black man. Eew! Change the channel. Sure. Block it out. Black men aren't all violent. Oh, look- 'Cops' is on! Even better. In the first sequence the cops apprehend a black man. Oh, good justice is done there. In the second segment some meth parents are nailed at their home with oblivious and innocent children meandering about. Wait, hold on. Is that justice? I just watched 3 people get arrested in ten minutes. Notice how they always show the most action-packed scenes? Of course they do, or else no one would watch it! Someone once said that every broadcast is a moral act. So, that means when you watch the bombing of Bagdhad, or the cops on 'Cops' make arrests, it's really a series of decisions and programming and technical events controlled by the people who film these events, who then send it to run on the stations, who edit it and make the content 'watchable', and who in turn were paid to obtain this information to give it to you. They are moral actions. Is the showing of a suicide bombing a good or a bad moral act? What about only showing it in thirty seconds (to make room for other important topics or even ads)? How does it get shown (flashy, quick, or long and informative)? Is capitalizing on it moral? Is incessant advertising a moral act? Questions...
'Oh, stop it. You're making me think too hard', you say. 'I want my quality programming! If I have that, I won't see any of these travesties you're shoving down my throat!' Then perhaps you shouldn't listen to me.
Yet the question remains: is this the 'quality programming' we've to come to expect? And just what committee is deciding that what's shown is in the 'public interest'? Most people believe the fabricated realities that TV perpetuates. It's an escape world. You say, 'well, the news shows are real'. Yes they are, but they're still just TV shows. They affect you no more or less than a dramatic procession on a regular TV show. They have writers, producers, actors and specific alloted time slots. And inbetween these shows are the ceaseless ads. Here's a question: what do you think the difference is between being bombarded with ads on TV, and letting a solicitor into your living room to sell products to the inhabitants of your house? Each daily time frame caters to its own special target audience. An example would be the demographics which participate in certain programming. They know that children watch cartoons on Saturday morning, so inbetween them are ads for kids' products. It's like letting in salespeople into your living room to solicit to your kids. These advertisers spend billions examining our television watching and spending habits in order to keep the revenue flowing. Of course, the number one product of all of these is... you guessed it! TV sets! The advertisers know they have made you and your kids ever so need that product. Yes, you do because corporations know that they can make lots of money by taking your image, altering it in creative ways and selling it right back to you on the tube. Thanks to those advertisers, you now have had specific fears and anxieties placed into your mind about the way you live your life... compared to the beautiful people on TV who don't have these problems. You'll be just like those hipsters drinking Bud Light on the billboards, and you'll have all the recognition the Gap studs and hotties emanate on the commercials. Except up to a certain age, children cannot distinguish the TV-reality from the actual one, and the influence of the unity machine is maximised.
If you watched TV a lot as a child, then this definetely happened to you.
'But I watch PBS and public-access TV! Surely you're not going to tell me that those are dangerous to watch!' No, not really, but whether you watch a nature show on PBS or Animal Planet, you're still not experiencing those parts of nature. They sent camera crews out there to do that for you! All you have to do is sit back, relax and watch the Crocodile Hunter explain croc eating habits. All you have to do is sit back and watch exotic birds and animals in their native lands. You might be learning about nature, but TV magically replaces that direct experience with indirect image implantation for you. Pictures of cats and plants instead of real cats and plants. This fits in perfectly with our obsession to allow technology dominate our means of communication, education and daily life. The Native Americans didn't learn how to hunt game from watching Animal Planet, they were out in nature examining it first-hand. But you can watch how Native Americans hunt game on TV. Don't have enough drama in your life? TV'll get that going for you. Think nature is boring? Fire up the Animal Planet! Are you a hapless hopeless romantic? Daytime TV to the rescue!
'Sounds controlling', you say. Wow, you have been paying attention. What better way to reach millions of people simultaneously than through TV? What if you had that power? Think about it. What would you say? Sell?
Television is fondly referred to as Auntie in the UK. Ever think about why?
It isn't enough that people are aware of the effects of television watching- they must become responsible for the kind of mental environments TV implants in their self-image. People voluntarily do this when they watch television because they're already in a vulnerable state. If people were more aware of how advertisers create askew views of culture, then people would resist appropriating themselves to fit those ideals and be more aware of their own individuality. They would also be more prone to acknowledge the prevalence of corporate media's disinformation, advertising's fabricated utopian gloss, and be more adept to separating those appropriated TV-watching experiences from how real-life affect their lives.
'But I can turn off the TV anytime'.
Can you?