We
Are Television _files/image001.jpg)
Todd Kappelman
www.probe.org/docs/we-are-tv.html
"The TV generation finds itself in a never-ending quest to be remade into
the image it sees on the television screen."
Introduction
In 1977 Jerry Mander wrote Four Arguments for the Elimination of
Television, a work that has since gained a cult following. It is a voice
for all of those who know that something has gone terribly wrong, and that the
television is a major part of the problem. It is not, as one might suppose, the
ramblings of a Luddite or lunatic, but the careful considerations of an
economics major who spent fifteen years as a partner at the prestigious
advertising firm Freeman, Mander & Gossage in San Francisco. He has an insider's perspective
on the advertising business and how it relates to television and the culture at
large.{1}
Mander says that according to statistics in the 1970's
ninety-nine percent of homes in the country already had at least one television
set. On an average evening more than
eighty million people would be watching television and thirty million of those
would be viewing the same program. During special events approximately 100
million viewers would simultaneously be tuned in to the same broadcast.
These millions of individuals believe they
have blissfully escaped into their own unique ideal world in the comforts of
their living rooms, isolated from interaction with the rest of society. Mander claims that this
notion is an illusion manufactured by the television industry. In reality, each
individual has been manipulated into a group activity mechanically lured into
the same identical viewing experience of their peers, yet isolated from all
spheres of influence outside of the staged television performance. He believes that this phenomenon, which
he calls the unification of experience, is a strategic tactic created and skillfully
used by the advertising industry to maneuver people
into a controlled environment where they can be indoctrinated with the gospel
of consumerism. The individual experience dissolves into the melting pot of the media's manufactured virtual
world where they visually ingest their false idea of reality and accept it as
the really real. A strategy this
powerful and potentially destructive certainly merits our attention as our
future individuality will be altered by our participation in or resistance to
the media's attempt to dominate our minds.
In this article we will examine Mander's four arguments for the elimination of television
to determine the relevance for our current culture and some possible responses.
The first section considers how the media impacts our perceptions and
interpretations of life experiences. The second and third arguments focus on
the role of advertising in television programming and how it affects society
and culture. The fourth and final arguments looks at
the advertising industry's method for usurping our attention in order to
dominate collective consciousness. The conclusion will challenge Christians to
consider a fast or hiatus from television as an act of moral responsibility.
The Mediated Environment
In his first argument Mander asks us to examine the implications of the
television viewing experience as man's removal from his natural environment to an artificial one. He holds that television programming
inherently deprives man of his natural sensory experiences of taste, smell and
touch, replacing them with an artificial visual and auditory experience capable
of capturing our attention and altering our desires and self perceptions.
The medium of television is psychologically
programmed to isolate the viewer into a kind of sensory deprivation chamber
where the experience of nature is recreated into the pixel-points on our
screens. For example, we "see" the grass moving but do not experience
the sensations of the wind on our skin, the gentle rustling, the dampness of
the ground or the scent of the blades and decomposing material underneath.
Television facilitates only a visual experience that is a highly reinterpreted
experience from an artificial perspective. This simulation becomes our own new
reality. We abandon the natural world created by God in favor
of the one recreated by man. Rather than turn off the virtual reality machine
to return to the natural world and walk barefoot in the grass, we choose to
return again and again to the artificially simulated sensory deprivation
chamber. Outside influences are illuminated and our environment is
strategically replaced by the new television world. It is not long before the
only world we know is the television world. The television news becomes our
source for information, the nature program our new environment, and the sit-com
and serial dramas our entertainment. The knowledge we once gained through
personal experience has been reformatted into outline form, psychologically
modified, packaged and delivered with a smile by the most beautiful host the
advertising dollar can buy. Mander's sarcastic list
of the things we learn from television will serve as an illustration of how
absurd and horrible things have become.
"Mother's milk is unsanitary. Mice like
cheese. Mars has life on it. Technology will cure cancer. The stars do not have
influence on us. A little X-ray is okay. Mother's milk is healthy. Mars has no
life on it. Technology will clean up pollution. Preservatives do not cause cancer.
Swine flue vaccine is safe. Swine flu vaccine causes paralysis. Humans are the
royalty of nature. We have the highest standard of living. Touching children is
good for them. And so it goes."{2} After sustained
quantities of television viewing it is very likely that we may find ourselves
people who are blown about by every wind of doctrine and unable to distinguish
fact from fiction.
Television and the
Commodity Man
The television is extremely
instrumental in our understanding of our natural environment. It frequently
satisfies us with artificial experiences of our world and drives us to
understand reality as it is spoon-fed to us through images. We know that
mother's milk is good for infants not because we made our own comparisons, but
because the lead story on the evening news has assured us of this fact based on
the latest study from the most prominent universities and specialists.
If our understanding of the external world
has been significantly altered we should also suspect that television is
capable of altering our self-perspective. In Four Arguments for the
Elimination of Television Jerry Mander argues
that we have for some time treated the individual as a commodity, and now
television allows this to be accomplished with an amazing efficiency.
Under a kind of spell, adults see people on
television who are beautiful, driving fancy cars, live in magnificent homes,
wear the best clothes, and live every imaginable life style in full autonomy
and frequently without condemnation for any behavior.
Adults and children both ingest media images that dictate what they should
want, however it is the adults who have the power to go out and transform the
world into a reality that will deliver the goods. Who it may be asked has the
greater responsibility here? Television
is used by the advertising agencies to create value by portraying human nature
as something artificial and constructed rather than created by God. The
natural state of man is characterized by those who would, or at least could, be
reasonably satisfied with family, friends, and modest living accommodations.
The unnatural man is a new standardized individual who wants the same cars,
homes, and clothing that everyone else wants. We not only want to keep up with
the Joneses who live next door, we now want to keep up with the Joneses who
"live" in the television world.
The only problem with this scenario is that
the real family must earn a living and pay the bills, while the television family
is provided with a new Ford, clothes from The Gap, and a beautiful home that
they did not purchase. We literally cannot win against, or catch up with these
people. The TV generation finds itself
in a never-ending quest to be remade into the image it sees on the television
screen. Although it is cliche to say that
"we are what we eat," it seems necessary to remind ourselves that we also are what we watch.
Man Made into a New Image
In the third argument Mander argues that the television media uses the power of
the image to transform an individual into a copy of what he or she watches on
television.
In a section titled Imitating Media Mander recounts an early experience on a first date when he
kissed a girl. Having witnessed very little real life kissing, and using the
television as his only guide he imitated what he had seen.{3} The media kiss became the primary model for the real. The
result is that the imitation and mastery of television behavior
becomes the standard by which we can judge success and failure. If a man can
kiss a woman like Tom Cruise, or shoot a gun like John Wayne then he has passed
the test for what a real man is according to television standards.
Like the child, the adult sees people on
television who are beautiful, drive fancy cars, live in magnificent homes, wear
the best clothes, and again the list continues. Adults and children ingest
media images that dictate what they should want, however it is the adult that has
the greatest moral responsibility and the power to initiate change.
The desire for all of these possessions is
bought at a price far greater than the mere dollars used to purchase them.
Parents frequently work long hard hours at jobs they dislike in order to
provide such luxuries while they drown in massive consumer debt. This
workaholic syndrome leads to strained family relationships and divorce. The failure to achieve the kind of
computerized synthesized beauty found in the television world is viewed as a
tragedy so profound that young and old alike resort to eating
disorders, develop neurosis, and practice self-medication in order to
cope.
As children watch television they become
products of an image factory that tells them how to behave toward their parents
and peers. They are also told what to want, what to ask for, what to expect,
and even what to demand from others. It is no wonder that young people have
such a profound sense of entitlement. They have come to believe the world
should give them many luxuries as a birthright, that parents should pay for
cars, clothes, and college, that only the latest fashion is really fashionable,
that the beautiful people are inherently more valuable than the average, that a
good Christian really can look and act like Brittney Spears, Tom Cruise, or
"gangsta" rappers without any moral
dilemma, that junk food is the primary food group for most people, or that a
happy meal will make you happy.
Television Biases and the
Culture of Death
Mander's thesis throughout the book is that television is
basically an irredeemable medium, and the belief that this particular
technology is neutral (an idea popularized by the late Marshall McLuhan) is erroneous.{4} We realize this is extreme, and would like to acknowledge
that television can be used in a variety of ways that are believed to be good
and profitable. However, Mander points out that in
the thousands of books he consulted regarding television, he only found one
that actually advocated abandoning the medium altogether. His thesis is a
minority opinion but worthy of attention.
Mander's background is in advertising, and while working on a
campaign to promote awareness of the redwoods that were being cut down in
California he noticed something that we all seem to be aware of, but are not
certain why. Death is the world's number
one bestseller. This conclusion was drawn from the fact that when
television pictures of redwood forests were shone in an effort to promote
awareness of the problem and gain sympathy for the cause, few people responded.
However, when pictures of acres and acres of stumps from a clear cutting were
shown people wanted to know more. The same sympathy resulted with respect to
the civil rights movement and
Businessmen, television executives, and
advertising people learned a valuable lesson; death sells. Negative emotions, violence, and carnage get the viewer's attention
faster and hold it longer than the positive, the peaceful, or the beautiful.
When we add to this the fact that the corporate structure behind television
exists to make money through selling advertising space, we see that it is only
a secondary concern, if it is a concern at all, that the viewers become
enlightened about the humanities, the natural environment or religion. The
purpose of the advertising is not to pay for the programming, as we are led to
believe. The purpose of the programming
is to isolate people in their living rooms in order to show them commercials in
the hope that consumers will rush out to buy the products they have seen.
The conclusion of this examination should
lead Christians, and all people, to seriously consider the cost benefit ratio
of the medium. Mander may be correct in thinking that
the elimination of television will have only beneficial effects.{5} We could do little harm by calling for something along the
lines of a television fast, remembering that the purpose of fasting is to
mortify the desires of the flesh.
Notes
- Jerry Mander, Four
Arguments for The Elimination Of Television,
(New York, N.Y.: Quill Press, 1978), 13-28.
- Ibid., 85.
- Ibid., 236.
- Ibid., 347-357.
- Ibid., 356.
© 2002
Probe Ministries
About the
Author
Todd A. Kappelman is a field
associate with Probe Ministries. He is a graduate of
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is Probe?
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