Everything Is Bought And Sold And Owned
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» beercrack replied on Thu Jun 17, 2004 @ 10:17am |
 Coolness: 71635 | Review of Jerry Mander's
Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television by Ron Kaufman -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely . . . Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen." -- from 1984 by George Orwell -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Television is advertising. It is a medium whose purpose is to sell, to promote capitalism. In 1977, Jerry Mander, a former advertising executive in San Francisco, published Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television. In the book, Mander reveals how the television networks and advertisers use this pervasive video medium for sales. Four Arguments talks about a lot more than just advertising. Mander attacks not only the contents of the television images, but the effects television has on the human mind and body. His discussion includes: The induction of alpha waves, a hypnotizing effect that a motionless mind enters. How viewers often regard what they see on television as real even though the programs are filled with quick camera switches, rapid image movement, computer generated objects, computer generated morphing and other technical events. The placement of artificial images into our mind's eye. And the effects that large amounts of television viewing have on children and the onset of attention deficit disorder. However, at the heart of Mander's arguments, lies advertising. In the words of writer Charles Bukowski: "[America is] not a free country -- everything is bought and sold and owned." Sales, by definition, is the process of convincing someone to purchase what they don't need. Advertising tries to convince someone that the solution to a problem or the fulfillment of a desire can only be achieved through the purchase of a product. "If we take the word need to mean something basic to human survival -- food, shelter, clothing; or basic to human contentment -- peace, love, safety, companionship, intimacy, a sense of fulfillment; these will be sought and found by people whether or not there is advertising," Mander writes. "People do need to eat, but the food which is advertised is processed food: processed meat, sodas, sugary cereals, candies. A food in its natural state, unprocessed, does not need to be advertised," he says. "Hungry people will find the food if it is available." Television commercials and television shows both promote the purchase of commodities. Advertisers and television networks don't want viewers to go out and search for the answers on their own. They want to provide the answers on television. If your head hurts: buy Advil (or some other pain relieving drug). Is your stomach growling? Drive your Pontiac to Taco Bell or Burger King. Are your dishes dirty? Get some lemon-fresh Joy. Every guy wants a fast Acura and every girl wants to look like the women on the NBC television show Friends. Watch the Dallas Cowboys' Deion Sanders score a touchdown, watch the replay (Sponsored by Coors Light), then watch Deion do an advertisement for Pizza Hut. Television is promoting a lifestyle. It is a virtual reality that advertisers and networks seek to promote in order to gain additional revenue. "Perhaps there is a need for cleanliness. But that is not what advertisers sell," Mander explains. "Cleanliness can be obtained with water and a little bit of natural fiber, or solidified natural fat. Major world civilizations kept clean that way for millennia. What is advertised is whiteness, a value beyond cleanliness; sterility, the avoidance of all germs; sudsiness, a cosmetic factor; and brand, a surrogate community loyalty." While watching television, the viewer is not seeing the world as it is. He or she is looking at a world created by advertising. Television programs are put together with the conscious attitude of promoting a consumer society. "If forty million people see a commercial for a car, then forty million people have a car commercial in their heads, all at the same time," Mander says. "This is bound to have more beneficial effect on the commodity system than if, at that moment, all those people were thinking separate thoughts which, in some cases, might not be about commodities at all." But what makes television different from other forms of advertising, is that the viewer has absolutely no control over the images. Sure you can change the channel, but you're really only watching more of the same. The images come at you at the pace of the advertiser; the viewer just watches passively. While reading the newspaper, you don't have to look at the ads, you can turn the page. In that same newspaper, if you want to find a coupon for Ranch Style Black Beans, you will look and seek it out. You can read the first few lines of a billboard sign, then turn away. However, when you watch television, the only way to escape the images is to turn the machine off. The medium of television is controlled by the sender, not the viewer. Images just flow, one after the next. "If you decide to watch television, then there's no choice but to accept the stream of electronic images as it comes," Mander says. "Since there is no way to stop the images, one merely gives over to them. More than this, one has to clear all channels of reception to allow them in more cleanly. Thinking only gets in the way." The multitude of technical events and special effects that saturate the viewer throughout an average dose of television occur with such rapid frequency that any response is essentially eliminated. "Since television images move more quickly than a viewer can react, one has to chase after them with the mind," Mander says in the book. "Every advertiser, for example, knows that before you can convince anyone of anything, you shatter their existing mental set and then restructure an awareness along lines which are useful to you. You do this with a few very simple techniques like fast-moving images, jumping among attention focuses, and switching moods," he explains. Television watching is not active, it is passive. Both the viewer's mind and body do not react, and cannot react. Mander calls television imagery a form of sleep teaching. One researcher interviewed by Mander explains: "The horror of television, is that the information goes in, but we don't react to it. It goes right into our memory pool and perhaps we react to it later but we don't know what we're reacting to. When you watch television you are training yourself not to react and so later on, you're doing things without knowing why you're doing them or where they came from." Mander published Four Arguments almost twenty years ago. I believe his main theme then (and the one I hope you are getting from this essay), is that advertisers and networks don't want the viewers to think. They want them to just be good consumers and spend money on their products. On May 10, 1995 at the National Cable Television Association convention in Dallas, John Malone, president of Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), the nation's largest cable operator, was speaking about the future of television. "There's no question machines will be smarter than people," Malone said. "And we won't have to think so hard." Critics of television have often noted that what is shown on the networks, the programs, are of a low quality. The entire television industry has never seemed able to shake off the words Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow spoke in 1961, that television is "a vast wasteland." It is the quality of the shows that are often criticized. However, this is missing the point. Television shows are not supposed to be thought provoking. You are not supposed to question the images you see on TV, only believe in their prima facie existence. Television programs, commercials, news reports and talk shows are all designed toward blind acceptance by the viewer. Because, after all, if you see it with your own eyes, it must be true. It must be real. Flashing images on the video screen. Reality inside a box. "Television offers neither rest nor stimulation," Mander says. "Television inhibits your ability to think, but it does not lead to freedom of mind, relaxation or renewal. It leads to a more exhausted mind. You may have time out from prior obsessive thought patterns, but that's as far as television goes. "The mind is never empty, the mind is filled. What's worse, it is filled with someone else's obsessive thoughts and images." Why do you think they call it programming? Mander goes into great detail discussing the physical effects television viewing has on the human body. His analysis is excellent. [ turnoffyourtv.com ] [ turnoffyourtv.com ] |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» beercrack replied on Thu Jun 17, 2004 @ 10:54am |
| Coolness: 71635 | more:
An Exhortation On Values A Review Of Media Violence Alert By Erica Albanese -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "TV violence is everybody's problem. You may feel assured that your child will never become violent despite a steady diet of television mayhem, but you cannot be assured that your child won't be murdered or maimed by someone else's child raised on a similar diet." -- Dr. Brandon Centerwall, from the book Media Violence Alert -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First of all, if you're getting ready to open up your mouth to discredit what you haven't even read yet, what you are certain is going to be yet another crusty, dry, treatise on censorship by some stuffy republican who finds Air Supply "cutting-edge", please hear me out before doing so. And you can relax for the time being, too----nobody here is trying to take away your "rights." In Media Violence Alert (2000), an informative and concise collection of five essays by a variety of insightful contributors that was put together by the Center For Successful Parenting [ www.sosparents.org ] Dr. Brandon Centerwall, M.D., M.P.H., documents in his essay "Television Comes To South Africa and Mcbride, Canada" that it has been proven in every single society in every single country in the whole wide world---from India to Indiana---that crime rates more than double within ten to fifteen years of the introduction of television to any society. Wow! Why the fifteen-year delay, you ask? Because crime---rape, murder, assault---is an adult activity, and since television's greatest influence is on children, the time frame is indicative of the gestation period between when violent images are first perceived until when violent action is conceived. Basically, it's the length of time between how long it takes for the brutalization of a three to five year old to reach prime crime age. It's common knowledge that children learn by mimicking, so it shouldn't be surprising to find out that within two years of introducing television to any group of children, two things will happen: the children's creative capacity will decrease by at least 22 percent and rates of biting, kicking, hitting, etc., will more than double. (Gee, I bet a third thing will happen, too. I bet a new strain of "learning disorder" will evolve out of virtually thin-air. And that a ton of parents will eagerly medicate their children with a chemical compound strikingly similar in make-up and effects to that of cocaine …...) The most effective essay in Media Violence Alert was Lt. Col. David Grossman's twenty-six page opus entitled "Stop Teaching Our Kids To Kill." Grossman, a former army ranger, West Point professor, and the author of On Killing: The Psychological Cost Of Learning To Kill In War And Society , drops the metaphorical bomb in an utterly brilliant presentation of the shared paradigm between the military's conditioning process and that of the media's. In a nutshell: after the first few major wars the United States military was simply aghast at man's inherent lackthereof ability to just simply kill another man upon command, a "flaw" that was indicated by a scant fifteen-percent firing rate among soldiers and one that prevailed even after informing the troops that they were in fact only shooting at designated "bad guys." Apparently, just as "pesky" environmentalists are destructive to the lumber industry, a respect for life is destructive to the death industry, so since humans aren't born with an innate instinct to murder the military constructed one to install. And instill it they did: the firing rate by the time of Vietnam was well over 90 percent. Grossman attests that militaries use one of three types of conditioning to train a man to kill: brutalization, or inculcation of values; classical conditioning; or operant conditioning. In brutalization, or the inculcation of values, a person's existing norms and values are broken down so that a new set of values, which embrace destruction, violence, and death as a way of life, can be accepted. To the young soldier this is more commonly known as boot camp; to the young child, unable to discern between their reality and media reality, this comes in the form of any violent or graphic media footage in scenes from cartoons to "E.R." to video games. Classical conditioning, once best demonstrated by Pavlov's dogs, who learned to salivate from the sound of a ringing bell, can now be illustrated just as well by the student's reactions at Jonesboro high school upon being told that someone had just shot a bunch of their little brothers, sisters, and cousins in the middle school: they laughed. We have a generation of people who associate violence with pleasure, and no, not because they're parents didn't love them or they listen to Judas Priest: these kids were conditioned ten to fifteen years ago in a culture that propagates it, long before they were old enough to buy albums. Operant conditioning is a very powerful procedure of stimulus-response that is responsible for 75-80 percent of the shooting on any battlefield. When people are frightened or angry, they will do what they are conditioned to do, hence life-saving procedures such as fire drills and self-defense courses for women featuring simulated attacks. It should be of great interest to know that the United States Military has licensed a slightly modified version of the Super Nintendo game "Doom" and are calling it MACS, Multipurpose Arcade Combat Simulators. To train people to kill. Is it effective? You tell me: Michael Carneal, a fourteen-year-old from Paducah, KY, had never fired a pistol in his life when he stole a .22 pistol from a neighbor, took it to school, and opened fire on a prayer group as they were breaking up. Firing at a group of screaming, running kids, he hit 8 of them with 8 shots---5 in the head, 3 in the upper torso. Grossman, who also not only trained the Texas Rangers, but the Texas State Patrol, the California Highway Patrol Academy, and a battalion of the U.S. Army Green Berets, reported that when he informed the Green Berets of this child's "achievement", they were stunned: nowhere in the annals of military or law enforcement history can an equivalent accomplishment be found. Witnesses testified that Michael stood and shot with a blank look on his face, never moving his feet. He was playing a video game. Michael came not from a "broken" home but rather an affluent family, where "combat simulators" played a common role in his childhood curriculum. Grossman aptly calls this conditioning and desensitization AVIDS---Acquired Violence Immune Deficiency Syndrome, which works a lot like AIDS: it alone does not destroy you, it destroys your defense against otherwise non-fatal situations that come across your path. In fact, he often testifies as an expert witness in cases where kids are facing the death penalty, fighting for mitigation on behalf of that child. To paraphrase, his expert ass can be found trying to convince ignorant you not to sentence a child to death since the culture that you propagate actually conditions kids to kill, but since you consider yourselves to be such "experts" on the matter yourselves---so "morally" convictive about what's "right" and so truly abreast of what is "really" going on with people these days (when you're not glued to your TVs, that is)---that you can't see the forest for the trees. Other noteworthy contributions to Media Violence Alert were "Surfing The Dark Corners", an epistle on moderating adolescent internet exposure by John Lovin, a representative of Medical Society Alliance and Global Electronic Marketing, and "Protecting Our Children From Frightening Mass Media", by Dr. Joanne Cantor, Ph.D, professor and author of "Mommy, I'm Scared", the latter of which I found to be particularly interesting. "Protecting Our Children" explores the psychological effects imaging can have on children, stating that even a brief exposure to a single disturbing television program or movie can instill intense fear in a child, producing severe anxieties and often long lasting psychological scars. (Additional testimony from both my sister-in-law and I strongly indicates that it really, really cannot be stressed enough how much the scene in "Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan" where the slug-like creature slithered into some extraordinarily unenviable man's ear would have looked better on the cutting room floor. Neither she nor I can recall anything else about a movie we each separately saw almost twenty years ago except for that one beyond disturbing scene. In fact, let's just move on, shall we?) And I'll just somehow try and squeeze Dr. Cantor's crucial warnings that a scene doesn't have to be necessarily violent to frighten and scar children, that news programs are often the biggest culprits of this crime, and that parents should utilize the site [ www.moviereports.org ] for a complete content review on video games and movies in somewhere else. In the least compelling piece of all, the "Honorable" James Payne, a juvenile court judge, manages to lump a whole bunch of information that feels redundant at this point in the book into a paltry five-paged essay entitled "Surveying The Long Term Effects Of Media Violence". Payne bears witness only to his own broad generalizations as he trumpets the obvious as if a personal discovery: believe it or not, but teen offenders tend to watch violent movies, play violent movie games, and listen to violent music. Initially I wasn't even going to dignify this comment, but then in the back of my head I vaguely recalled that Dr. Centerwall had laced his sermon with a dig on "gangsta rap." Yes, as powerful and influential as music is, music is characterized not by blindsiding the subconscious with crippling images and doctored associations, but rather by statements, poetry, exclamations, confessions, stories, thoughts, and rants set to various sounds. Therefore music is more akin not to visual media but to written media (except for crappy MTV), and likewise cannot be categorized as a conditioning agent just because the words aren't pretty or you don't agree with what the artist is saying---which appears to be the real "problem" behind our media's periodic witch hunts. (Why, when I'm not busy muckraking I listen to tons of music----folk, gospel, industrial, blues, disco, pop, "gangsta" rap, you name it, from Celine Dion to Eazy E. Unlike imaging, which inhibits creativity and has scientifically proven in study after study to impair imagination (among other things), songs are like books in that they are metaphors and that they challenge the parameters of the imagination.) When "parents" argue that their kids won't be desensitized by Mortal Kombat just because they themselves weren't desensitized by Pong twenty years ago, it is a psychological "code blue" that someone's careless and lazy. Such a parent generally shirks situations requiring education and personal discipline, deeming the underlying theology of anything that requires such an unwelcome behavioral change "heretical", and in the most pathetic cases, "unconstitutional". Logic unfortunately dictates that such desensitization---chiefly characterized by the act of rewarding participants for head-shots and other bloodshed in life-like (or "virtual") scenario---simply wasn't occurring twenty years ago, hence negating any "historical proof" that such games have no impact on the players. Sadly, this myopic "argument" usually only reveals a parent's personal lack of desire to grow up and to put the welfare of their child first. And none of this even addresses the myriad other areas of desensitization, especially the blatant objectification of women in these video games, let alone the media at large. Which brings to mind the first of two remaining serious faux pas that the Media Violence Alert committed: First, the damaging effects of media violence is only a small part of the big picture. We currently have a nation full of "depressed", weight and youth obsessed, materialistic druggies and trendies who were---"crazily" enough---raised on a media that has steadily informed them that they are not good enough on their own, that to be "fat" or "old" equates being systematically ignored, unloved, or mocked, that everything is a "need", and that not only is alcohol simply mandatory for a "good time" but smoking is forever cool even though it's (of course!) "not". And the kicker: you will still be forever defective no matter how much you "smoke" or "buy" or "diet" etc., which is why even celebrities confess to suffering from this epidemic dis-ease. Second, the media is multipotent in it's exertion of mind control and it's power to desensitize, and simply removing violence (or even just it's connotation with pleasure) isn't going to solve much of anything except that people won't physically harm each other as much. They may be "alive" but they still won't like themselves, which hardly constitutes living; Hell, just look what our culture has done to the female population (or let me guess -- that's just another made-up problem, too, right?) In fact, in college I socked it to society in yet another one of my mesmerizing, incendiary discourses, this time on the relationship between pornography and the desensitization of it's viewers towards the issue of sexual assault. In the studies, rape scenes were thought to be "exaggerated" by the commentators after viewing the porn, although "totally disturbing" upon just viewing the crime alone. To summarize the issue, in an increasingly global society the supposition that we are in control of all of our thoughts is becoming more and more doubtful (of course they're "ours", but who put them there? Here's a good exercise: find out what three-year olds think is really important, then backtrack to when you started to stray from that.) After all, if the media didn't affect us then why is Superbowl Sunday notorious for being the "busiest" day of the year for domestic abuse centers? My former co-worker once said it best when she mused that if the overriding consensus was really that 'television can't possibly affect people', then "why would so many companies pay out the ass for commercials?!", to which I say "touché!" Whether this conditioning was intentional or not is irrelevant at this juncture. We have pinpointed the most influential source of the problem: there's no need for this toxic hysteria to continue. © 2001 Text by Erica Albanese [ turnoffyourtv.com ] |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» neoform replied on Thu Jun 17, 2004 @ 11:51am |
 Coolness: 339865 | you DO realize no one's gonna read all that. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» beercrack replied on Thu Jun 17, 2004 @ 12:04pm |
| Coolness: 71635 | Hi. My name is Jennifer Love Hewitt. When men see me, they want to have sex with me. They all do. I've got a really small waist and big boobs and a thin face with a little button nose and great skin and long straight hair. I AM the total package. And I know it. My whole career is based on the fact that men want to have sex with me as soon as they see me. I mean, instantly. They see me . . . then men want to have sex with me. I like, know all these really caddy girls who, like, always tease me that I'm untalented. But does it really matter? I mean, I'm famous and I'm on TV and in movies. Women shouldn't hate me because I'm beautiful. They should just acknowledge the fact that all men love me. That's why my middle name is Love. So thanks for watching television. I'm on TV a lot and I'm glad I am. It gives me the exposure I desperately need. So keep watching guys.
 |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» beercrack replied on Thu Jun 17, 2004 @ 12:29pm |
| Coolness: 71635 | Reality is too intense for TV. Although, perhaps it can handle a Britney Spears reality show . . . we can only hope.
Shouldn't the United States' unparalleled military buildup be a top story? 
These facts are NOT being investigated by the national media. Where is ABC, CBS and NBC News? Where is Fox, CNN and MSNBC? Since NBC and MSNBC are owned by General Electric, a major defense contractor, it makes sense for those networks not to bring such an explosive story to the national stage.  |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» beercrack replied on Thu Jun 17, 2004 @ 12:31pm |
| Coolness: 71635 | caption reads (for the background color impaired)
(missiles) or (britney spears' boobs)? which pair of thermonuclear missles do you think a TV producer will pick? |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Zz.ee.vV replied on Fri Jun 18, 2004 @ 6:25am |
 Coolness: 194225 | they just keep looking bigger and bigger..yikes. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» cloak replied on Sat Jun 19, 2004 @ 5:35pm |
 Coolness: 57625 | i watched TLC because i wanted to learn.
they taught me that americans had saved the world. and not only was it instructive, it was very entertaining. followed to by a ''caught on camera'' drug bust to keep me hooked. now that's what i call education! |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» neoform replied on Sat Jun 19, 2004 @ 8:21pm |
| Coolness: 339865 | TLC can have good documentaries, but most of their primetime shows are crap.. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» michaeldino replied on Sun Jun 20, 2004 @ 12:01pm |
 Coolness: 69175 | like my penis |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» cloak replied on Sun Jun 20, 2004 @ 1:02pm |
| Coolness: 57625 | hurray for the children of the learning channel.
if it wouldn't be for them we'd all be alarmed by a society in crisis and rising climate changes. but i agree that documentaries on whales mating are much more interesting. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» neoform replied on Sun Jun 20, 2004 @ 1:34pm |
| Coolness: 339865 | uhh, no.
documentaries on stuff like the science behind how the WTC buildings collapsed.. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» michaeldino replied on Sun Jun 20, 2004 @ 7:46pm |
| Coolness: 69175 | oh yeha... cause theres a "science" behind why the WTC towers fell...
TWO PLANES CRASHED INTO THEM!!! BAM! |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Screwhead replied on Sun Jun 20, 2004 @ 8:17pm |
 Coolness: 685790 | Dino's right, I saw it on the television. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» little_sarah replied on Mon Jun 21, 2004 @ 1:33am |
 Coolness: 121640 | bam- hahaha that's fucken funny |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» neoform replied on Mon Jun 21, 2004 @ 2:06am |
| Coolness: 339865 | uhh, if you notice the buildings stood for an hour after the planes hit. obviously it wasn't the planes that knocked em down genious. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Screwhead replied on Mon Jun 21, 2004 @ 2:41am |
| Coolness: 685790 | You mean they'd have fallen on their own that day, regardless of the plane hit?
Wow. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» neoform replied on Mon Jun 21, 2004 @ 2:49am |
| Coolness: 339865 | the action of the plane crashing into the building wasn't what caused em to fall, otherwise the moment they hit the towers would have fallen.. not an hour later.
the fire cause them to fall. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Screwhead replied on Mon Jun 21, 2004 @ 3:10am |
| Coolness: 685790 | ...so they were gonna have a fire that day anyways, regardless of the planes crashing into the buildings? |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» neoform replied on Mon Jun 21, 2004 @ 3:15am |
| Coolness: 339865 | you do realize the futility of this line of questioning right?
no matter what i say your going to keep saying that. |
Everything Is Bought And Sold And Owned
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