Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
Television technology has been a controversial issue since its debut in the early 1940s. In order to fully understand any controversial issue, one must be presented with both the pro and the con sides of the issue. One must understand and be able to argue both sides of the issue in order to become a successful and well-educated person. Being a member of the pro-technological society, one is well educated on the pro side of this issue. That is, the positive effects that television technology has on society: Television's entertainment value, the ability to get "up to the minute" news coverage from around the world, and the uses of television as an educational tool. In order to understand the con side of this issue, one can look at the work Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, by Jerry Mander. This work provides four strong arguments against the television technology and gives reasons why the technology should be eradicated. Through the study of this work, one can become better equipped to argue the con side of the issue, thus becoming a well-educated member of society, conscious of the effects that television has on him/her.
Mander was a poor child growing up in the Lower East Side of New York City. His parents were immigrants who had escaped from pogroms in Eastern Europe. His father did many odd jobs during their initial years in America. He worked hard at anything in order to keep life together. His father's success came to him during World War II. He was beyond the draft age, and so he was able to do successful trade business in manufacturing uniforms for the military.
When it was time for Mander to pick a career, he saw something "flashier" for himself. He did not find that following in his father's business would fulfill this criterion. When Mander thought "carrier", he saw images of "big cars, white yachts, the polished people on them and the life of leisure and pleasure: The Dream." (Mander, 15) Since many of these images were presented to Mander through the use of advertisements, the world of advertising seemed like a good choice. By 1966, much of Mander's "Dream" was realized; By then he had become a member of a fairly large advertising firm in San Francisco: Freeman, Mander and Gossage. This firm had many "class" clients which included: Triumph, Land Rover, Paul Masson, KLH audio equipment, Scientific American, and Random House publishing. Mander was able to "commute coast to coast weekly, take five-day vacations in Tahiti, eating only in French restaurants, jetting to Europe for a few days' skiing." (Mander, 15)
In 1968, during a trip through the Dalmatian Straits, while observing the beautiful scenery, Mander came to a horrifying revelation; He felt nothing. He was unmoved by the spectacular scenery. At this point, Mander realized that the fast paced lifestyle he was living caused him to become "bored" with nature. The fraudulent happiness he found through living the "Dream" has caused him to be segregated from natural happiness, true happiness. After this revelation, Mander attempted to repent his acts by quitting Freeman, Mander and Gossage and aiding non-profit organizations with their advertising needs.
The second revelation that Mander had come to was that advertising, specifically television advertising, was an unreformable, unchangeable medium of commercialism. He suggests that television is created for one thing, the distribution of advertising for the corporate world. Thus, he started his fight against television technology by writing this book and started it with these famous words: "To speak of television as 'neutral' and therefore subject to change is as absurd as speaking of the reform of a technology such as guns." (Mander, 47)
The first argument found in this text is entitled The Mediation of Experience. In this argument Mander analyses how the people in society have migrated from being surrounded by the natural environment to an artificial one (an urban society). He argues that people today have numbed their senses of the natural environment by building artificial ones where humans control the environmental changes, or lack thereof. By doing so, Mander suggests that humans and human science now replace the mystics of nature. Thus, when his child asks "who made the mountains?" (Mander, 54), Mander was shocked that a child thinks that any human being can create such a masterpiece of nature. Other consequences of drifting away from nature are that people lose their natural ability to learn what is good and what is bad; That is, which plants are okay to eat, their medicinal value, and which plants are poisonous. Society compensates for this loss by substituting artificial "book" knowledge to actual experience knowledge.
This leads to Mander's second point, that humans have replaced common sense with scientific facts.
For example:
* In 1973 The New York Times spent $50,000 (US) to discover the best bait for mice is cheese.
* Another study found that a mother's milk is better for infants than commercial formulas, goat's milk, or a cow's milk.
* A third study found that walking is healthier than riding in a car.
* Fresh orange juice is more nutritional than canned or frozen orange juice.
* A fifth study proved that an infant who is touched frequently grows into adults with greater self-confidence and has a more integrated relationship with the world than those who are not touched. The same study also found the children and adolescents who are touched seemed to be heathier and better mental development than those who are not. (Mander, 53)
These studies support that society is doubting their own common sense, thus they need to reinforce their beliefs with scientific fact. By becoming dependant on scientific fact only, society is creating a generation of mindless drones which believes what science tells them without skepticism. If this trend were to continue, the effects would be detrimental; politicians, corporate giants, anyone can use scientific facts to prove themselves right and "good". Thus, propaganda will run rampant, uncontrolled, and unquestioned.
Mander's second argument, The Colonization of Experience, speaks of television's ultimate reason for being: Advertising. Mander explains: "Advertising exists only to purvey what people don't need. Whatever people do need they will find without advertising if it is available." (Mander, 126) Actual needs that human beings require to live, such as: food, shelter, clothing, peace, love, safety, companionship, intimacy, and a sense of fulfilment, can be acquired without the aid of advertising. Advertising separates people from their actual "needs" and urges that they can find satisfaction in acquiring the product(s) they advertise. Advertising, therefore, creates an artificial sense of fulfilment, which will subdue very quickly causing the people to acquire more "needs". An example of this is processed food; That is, processed meat, sodas, sugary cereals, and candies. Food in its natural state does not need to be advertised. Hungry people will find food if it is available. A need must be created in order for people to buy processed foods which are often more expensive, less naturally appealing, less nourishing, and often harmful. (Mander, 127)
Mander's second point focuses specifically on television advertising. Mander suggests that the two primary mediums for advertising before television were print and radio. Print advertisements allow for advertisers to implant images into the minds of their viewers. By doing so, the viewer has a permanent image embedded into his/her mind which may be accessed when triggered. The audio element of radio advertisements gives the advertisement a more personal touch. This allows the audience to relate to the voice on the radio advertisement. The introduction of television enabled advertisers to combine the effectiveness of both print and radio advertisements. Mander suggests that television is the optimum medium for the deliverance of advertisements for this reason and the following nine reasons.
Television is itself a commodity, and an expensive one too. Therefore, it is physically consistent with the prevalent reality. Its purchase gives the commodity system a boost.
* Television changes the nature of artificial environments from passive to active. Unlike buildings and machines, television literally enters inside human beings; Inside our homes, our minds, our bodies, making possible the reordering of human processes from the inside.
* Television is an experience that can be had by virtually everyone at the same time. By substituting for a greater diversity of experiences and unifying everyone with it, it aids commercial efficiency. With all people confined to the mental and physical condition, a single advertising or political voice appropriate to the common mood can influence everyone.
* Once diversity of experience is reduced to television, a relative handful of people can control everyone's awareness. Luckily for advertisers, in a capitalist system, whoever is in a position to pay for the technology has primary access to it.
* Television is unique in that it smooths out any furrows in the commodity system. Dormant anxieties can be dulled by the television experience. Beyond being a delivery system for commodity life, it is the solder to hold that life together, the drug to ease the pain of confined and channelled existence.
* Television is anti-experience. Its interaction with the human body and mind fixes people to itself, it dulls human sensibility and dims awareness of the world. This enhances the commodity life by reducing knowledge of any other.
* By focussing people on events well outside their lives, television encourages passivity and inaction, discourages self-awareness and the ability to cope personally, both of which are dangerous for advertising.
* By speaking in images, television adds a dimension to the mirror-image process. Unlike radio or print media, advertising can now implant internal movies, forever available for self-comparison.
* Television encourages separation: People from community, people from each other, people from themselves, creating more buying units and discouraging organized opposition to the system. It creates a surrogate community: Itself. It becomes its own feedback system, furthering its own growth and accelerating the transformation of everything and everyone into artificial form. This enables a handful of people to obtain a unique degree of power. (Mander, 131-133)
As seen, Mander strongly believes that there is a corporate conspiracy to brainwash the more developed western societies. He believes that television technology gives a small group of people the ability to influence the general population in a short time. Since television technology is a one way communications device, there is little to no objection to their influence.
The third argument Mander poses are the effects of television on the human being. In this argument, Mander discusses the physiological, psychological, and emotional effects that television has on humans. Many studies have been conducted to determine the damaging effects which television has on the human body. Currently, it has been proven that television causes low amounts of radiation which may cause cancer during long term exposure. Similarly, television is also known to cause damage to the retina, and erratic heart rates due to television content. Mander explains that: "Television technology produces neuro-physiological responses in the people who watch it. It may create illness, it certainly produces confusion and submission to external imagery." (Mander, 155). A television image is a concatenation of many tiny lights that produce three different colours (Red, Green, and Blue), these tiny flickering lights are known to cause epileptic seizers in those who suffer from epilepsy. Likewise, the flickering lights are also said to have a hypnotic effect on the human mind, which slows down the neurons in human brains. Thus, when a person is "spoon-fed" a large dose of television every day since childhood, one's mental pathways are retarded in its growth.
Psychologically, television causes people, especially young children, to become passive, incommunicative, paranoid, and have low self-esteem. Many people believe that the act of watching television is a relaxing activity which helps them "forget about the world". In reality, television constantly "pours" images into people's minds, always having it filled with unless, obsessive thoughts. Worst of all, this inhibits one's ability to think by exhausting one's mind with someone else's obsessive thoughts. Television content also manipulates your emotions thus, over stimulating them. Television programmes have the ability to activate strong and volatile emotions within the viewer. Emotions such as sadness, joy, anger, fear, sympathy, and passion are common emotions that are brought up when watching a dramatic television programme. By going on this emotional "roller-coaster" ride, where the fore mentioned emotions are activated one after the other in less than one hour, television severely hinders one's mental stability.
Another effect television has on humans is its ability to cause people to imitate the images they see on television. One of the most basic learning methods any living creature is by imitation. People learn basic skills through imitation; For example, survival, communication, social, and mobility skills are learned through imitation. As people grow up, more advanced skills are also learned and performed by imitation. Skills such as martial arts are learned my watching the master perform an action and then imitating that action. Eventually, the actions performed by the master are implanted in the mind of the pupil. Thus, when the pupil wishes to conduct the action, he/she recalls the implanted image and imitates it. Similarly, people "learn" actions as they see it happen on television repeatedly. By this method of recalling and imitating the images in one's minds, one is been programmed to do what characters in on television do. Thus, Mander explains, "when women carry inside their heads the image of the idealized subservient housewife- mother-secretary, they tend to imitate the image. This continues until the moment when they say, 'Wait, I didn't create this person in my head; who did?'" (Mander, 238)
This is the fundamental question which all television viewers should ask themselves as they, consciously or unconsciously, emulate the characters seen on television.
Mander's fourth argument, The Inherent Bias of Television, speaks about the predetermined limits of television. Mander states the following: "The technology of television predetermines the boundaries of its content. Some information can be conveyed completely, some partially, some not at all. The most effective telecommunications are the gross, simplified linear messages and programs which conveniently fit the purposes of the medium's commercial controllers. Television's highest potential is advertising. This cannot be changed. Therefore the bias is inherent in the technology." (Mander, 261) One of the "inherent biases" of television is that it must get and keep the attention of the viewer. Because television is a passive activity, people tend to lose interest in sitting idly and watching a glowing box. Thus, television content must obtain and keep its viewers in order to fulfill its corporate responsibilities. To do this producers of television programmes use the L.O.P. (Least Objectionable Programming) method to produce their programs. L.O.P. is the theory that people are addicted to television, therefore they will watch what ever is least objectionable. Thus, television producers no longer need to focus on specific interests that people may have. Instead they can create mediocre programmes that are least objectionable to the general audience. This method produces cheap, poorly written, poorly casted programmes that make lots of money. As a consequence, television must present its information in the least amount of time as possible. Thus, information must be edited and re-edited until this condition is met. The quality of the information suffers because of this.
As one can see, the argument against television is as strong, if not stronger, then the arguments for television. As a result, one can now better understand both sides of this controversial issue and make an informed argument for or against television. At this point, one is conscious to the many manipulations of television, advertising, and corporations. Being aware of these factors, one is now equipped to ask themselves "why do I do the things I do?". The answer being: Television.
Works Cited
Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. New York: Quill, 1978.
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