Connect, conform, and consume. That is the mantra which television preaches. Billions of people across the world turn on, tune in, and drop out into the temple of light and sound. With its phony sitcoms, competitive reality shows and 24-hour infotainment news networks, the hyper-real world of television is an escape from the economic realities of alienation and oppression. In The Golden Apples of the Sun, Ray Bradbury sums it up quite nicely as he writes:
The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.
This evil Siren is major conversation topic at the office. I usually hear co-workers mumbling about who won on American Idol the previous night or if they remembered to tivo the fifth Law and Order spin-off. Television may have great entertainment value yet there is a dark side. The more we watch, the less we think.
Connect
We're all tuned in. I myself don't watch that much television yet I am still connected just like everyone else. I manage to tivo The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Real Time with Bill Maher, and PBS Frontline. I also try to catch the good documentaries shown on the Sundance Channel or The Discovery Times Channel. I can't stand the big networks with their silly sitcoms and horrid reality shows. The bottom line is that everyone is connected:
Today, at least one TV is in 98.2% of American households. (Television Bureau of Advertising, 2001)
Today, most viewers (with cable or satellite) have access to an average of 202.6 available channels. (Television Bureau of Advertising, 2001)
By age 18, the average American teenager will have spent more time watching television--25,000 hours-- than learning in the classroom. (American Academy of Pediatrics)
American children ages 2-17 watch television an average of 25 hours per week. One in five watch more than 35 hours of TV each week. (Gentile & Walsh, 2002)
Conform
The media is one of the most powerful instruments of social control, a powerful weapon in the arsenal of the ruling class. It can be used for positive endeavors such as educating the public and likewise for negative causes such as spreading misinformation. A news media which focuses on celebrity scandals, political punditry and selling consumer goods as opposed to muckraking journalism is purely defunct. The purpose of journalism is to question, to speak truth to power. Democracy thrives on the free flow of accurate information. The media engages in a systematic effort to dumb down the public and reinforce the values of the system.
In their propaganda model theory, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky argue that the systemic biases of the mass media are rooted in structural economic causes. In other words, the media is another part of the ideological superstructure of capitalism which reinforces the dominant paradigm:
First presented in the book Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media, the theory views private media as businesses selling a product — readers and audiences rather than news — to other businesses (advertisers). The theory postulates five "filters" that sort out the type of news that finally gets published. These are: ownership, funding, sourcing, flak, and anti-communist ideology with the first three being the most important.
They wrote this during the Cold War when anti-communism was still a big deal. Today I would replace anti-communism with uber-patriotism. In the post-9/11 world you are labeled unpatriotic or even pro-terrorist if you question authority or oppose war. Regarding ownership, the news media is controlled by a few conglomerates which filter information and reinforce the ruling class reality. The idiot box just happens to be the wonderful medium which brings the filtered corporate news to the public.
How does television control us if we willfully choose what we watch? Corporations use the ethos of individualism to sell their products. There are a variety of channels that cater to specific interests (food, hunting, sports, etc.) yet they are all part of the same ruling class order. The option of having hundreds of channels is not freedom, it is merely the illusion of choice. The views and opinions expressed by these networks are the same. How many times have you surfed across every channel only to discover that nothing is on? This illusion of freedom and choice not only pacifies us but also hides the fact that we are the commodity being sold.
Consume
The business of the advertiser is to see that we go about our business with some magic spell or tune or slogan throbbing quietly in the background of our minds. --Marshall McLuhan
When we turn on the idiot box we submit ourselves to mind control. We are rapidly assaulted with ads for detergent, pharmaceuticals and silly products. My favorite are the "we're a nice company" propaganda ads in which Walmart or Shell will try to show how they are not destroying workers' rights or the environment, respectively. Television is all about selling us useless shit. We are the target market. We become the product that is sold to large corporations when we buy into the consumerist ideology and go purchase their products. The public exists to provide ratings which in turn provide advertising revenue to the media companies. More commodities purchased by television views equals more advertising which in turn equals more commodities sold. The capitalist ethos is alive and well as the endless cycle of buying and selling continues.
Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out
Television is not one monolithic leviathan of social control. It operates in the democratic tradition by offering many choices instead of just one. It may appear to be a free system yet it serves one purpose--to maintain the current hierarchy and social order. Unless we become the media in a radical act of popular revolt, television will continue to create ruling class reality and the news media will define what is true. News outlets filter their content and would rather cover stories about runaway brides and fingers in chili as opposed to covering the Iraq War. Now the Republicans who control all three branches of government want to exercise political control over public broadcasting stations.
Will PBS become like Fox News Channel? Will Sponge Bob be burned at the stake for his latent homosexual tendencies? Will the Bible replace the United States Constitution? Stay tuned for next time my friends. Same Agitprop time. Same Agitprop channel.
