Has Society Gone Too Far?

Would you ever eat a plate of worms? Or perhaps stay trapped in a box and let rats crawl all over you. If that is not intense enough for you maybe eating buffalo testicles would be more pleasing. These are just some of the horrific stunts television is showing on a variety of shows. Ask yourself the question is TV really good or bad? There have been articles debating this subject such as Steven Johnson’s "Watching TV Makes You Smarter" who is pro watching TV and encourages it. He feels that it gets peoples brains to work and they draw some sort of connection to the people on the show. Then there is Dana Stevens who writes an article called "Thinking Outside the Idiot Box" who makes it seem as if she is also against watching TV, then at the end of the article she says, "....watching television is definitely a smart thing to do- I get paid for it"(Graff 234). She is a big supporter of TV Turnoff Week and thinks that turning off the television would not make a person any dumber. This gives me the impression she may be neutral about TV only because watching it, is her source of income. There was however one article that stood out to me. That was "Reality Television: Oxymoron" by George F. Will. He is definatly against television. He thinks that some shows have gone too far as to what they portray as entertainment. Will feels as if these shows are degrading our society. Reading Will’s article, it made me think about what kind of extremes networks are willing to go to as the competition becomes more fierce to be number one.

In June 2001 there was an intriguing article published in the Washington Post. This article was called “Reality Television: Oxymoron” by George F. Will. Will, in his piece, starts by talking about a guy named Fred ...

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...op priority for networks even if that means having to degrade our society in the process. Because of these shows our culture is being looked down upon. People need to be alerted to what some television is really doing to them. The least we can do is get rid of the bad shows, because I know that not every show is driving our society to the bottom. Not all shows are horrific like the ones I have just described in my paper, but watching television is not entirely good either seeing it is not the most active things a person could be doing. Hopefully our next generation will not be corrupted with this same kind of entertainment. If society is not careful or does not start doing something about these kinds of shows, pretty soon they are going to be laughing and finding pleasure in someone killing themselves. Is that what kind of future you would really like to live in?