Television

Millions and millions of people worldwide will tonight be at home. They will remain indoors for hours, not moving, barely thinking, just relaxing and enjoying themselves. Before their eyes, images and voices of politics, commercials, debates, cultural travels, economic reports and entertainment will transfer them to a new dimension beyond reality. They have turned on their television.

Watching TV is much like entering a new world, but to understand how and why, we must first study the differences between TV and other forms of media. For a communication to take place between media and its receiver, one has to engage in it, one way or the other. Take books for example. To read a book you have to re-create images and feelings related to the symbolic value of each word put in its proper context. If you don't imagine what you read, the letters will remain small symbols on paper - this is why people with poor fantasy hate reading.

Television is a special form of medium, because it robs the individual of the freedom to re-create ideas related to what's being seen or heard. When we watch TV, we don't need the process of re-creating something, as the medium itself consists out of moving pictures in motion. Unlike visiting an art gallery, we cannot study the images like we might study a painting, because the images change all the time and our mind has to receive all information in order to understand it as something ongoing and happening. Therefore, while our mind is busy taking in all images on the glowing screen, we never reflect upon the meaning of the events that take place, nor we do further contemplate over the sounds, that become something which automatically accompanies the images. The conclusion is a scary one: television is not just a source of information; it also interprets it for us, leaving us at the mercy of whatever its message is.

Some people will disagree here and say that they are very critical towards anything they see. That might be true for most clever people, but consider this: if you watch four hours of TV every day after work, plus some extra hours on the weekend, where media channels repeat the same message over and over, you will be affected, one way or the other. Our brain unconsciously stores the information we've received from television, automatically connecting it with the information we receive outside in the real world, thus the idea that watching TV is an isolated process, is false. Since television isn't marketed as outright propaganda, and it cleverly slips in political messages into content that is seen as "entertainment," people think it's harmless.

If you think about what they actually show on TV, you realize you're not missing out on anything. The comedy shows repeat the same old practical jokes forever, the news repeat that we're losing our wars and that people in general are overweight and stupid, the music shows play the same standard pop songs about broken love and naive happiness, and the historical channels re-affirm what you learned in school: we stand for peace and freedom, all other forms of societies were Fascist, and thus, Evil. In between you're brainwashed with commercials about unhealthy but good-looking products, mass-produced for your pleasure only. If you're lucky, you might catch some fancy political slogan like "We're the People," and use that as motivation when the next year's election is coming up.

In the end, when you consider all the hours wasted in front of people living their lives, you realize that you have a life of your own to live. It's far more meaningful and fun to read an enlightening book and actually learn something, or taking your family out on a picnic a Sunday afternoon. Life is passing us by while we watch others have fun on TV, it's like giving up on our own existence by devoting our time to praise the shallow lifestyle of others. Massmedia, and television in particular, is the easiest way to control a people, because it's not as obvious as shooting people down or publicly suppressing them, and it's disguised as entertaining criticism of the current society. Looking twice, we understand that TV does not criticize the path that our modern society is taking. If you want to remain truly critical and get something out of your life before you end up in the coffin like the rest of us, do like all clever people do and turn off your TV - forever.

by Alex Birch

June 4, 2007