by Matt Robesch
The Free Press
illustration by Ron & Emily Austin
V-chips that will automatically censor violence... TV ratings systems that categorize what one sees on the tube into appropriate age groups.... Why is it one doesn't come across anything like this when traveling in other countries? What is it that makes Americans so prone to inflict censorship upon themselves in the name of 'saving the children'? American society would be much better served by teaching children, and reminding adults, that what they see on television is simply not real.
Television is nothing more than a box in your living room, bedroom, kitchen, classroom, pub, wherever. It glows and makes noise when it's on and it does nothing but take up space when it's off. That is the reality of TV. Your household pets know this better than anyone and, as a result, they are probably in better touch with the true nature of broadcast media than most humans are.
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a writer, a cameraperson or a news anchor." |
When my sister returned to the states after a TV-less year and a half in Denmark, she noticed all of her friends here at home talked at length about TV: the "new season of this" or "last week's episode of that". TV has become a family member when it should be viewed strictly as an appliance, with no more social weight than a toaster. How many times have you heard someone say (or said yourself), "I saw it on the news","I watched this really great PBS documentary", or "Did you catch Seinfeld last night?" People do need to share common experiences, but c'mon, TV sitcoms?
"But wait!" you say. "The news IS real!" This is actually not true. The news is reality filtered into unreality, step by step, by dozens of people. Decisions are made as to where the camera will be pointed and what will end up in the final presentation. These decisions are made by people whose faces you'll likely never see. This is not a conspiracy, it's just a series of professions. You can learn the names of these people by reading the credits at the end of any show.
Reality does not have a producer, an editor, a writer, a cameraperson or a news anchor. Just walk down the street you live on and you will notice that none of these people are creating your surroundings for you, nor are they commenting on them, interpreting them for you as you go, or cutting away to loud, obnoxious commercials.
Aside from acknowledging the behind-the-scenes world of the TV images an audience sees, it is imperative for viewers to learn to scrutinize the framework of the finished product. Anytime a camera is pointed somewhere with tape rolling, everything to the left or right of it is obscured as is everything above, below and behind it. Even if a television show is presented as news, it isn't real, for this type of field-of-vision obscurity never occurs in reality. At any given moment, you can look in all directions around you and figure the difference out for yourself.
It doesn't take much effort to see the difference between everyday reality and media unreality. Yet this concept is rarely taught in public school. Some form of 'media scrutiny' should be a required course from kindergarten on. Regularly teaching this to American children, starting at an early age, would be far more beneficial to American society than any censorship chip or banal rating system.
When I was in public school, we watched films, slide shows, and videotapes on many occasions. Media scrutiny did not come into play until my junior year of high school. This was through an elective course on filmmaking, which never discussed television at all. Even if the class had delved into the scrutiny of TV, by then I was 16 years old. How many murders had I "experienced" through the glowing box in my family's living room? How had sexual images and innuendo influenced my perception of relationships between adults? More importantly..how many hours of my life had I spent uncritically staring at the tube?
Intense media scrutiny courses can be found at the college level, but only if that's the path a student chooses for his or herself, assuming he or she can afford or can get accepted to a college. What happens to the millions of non-college educated Americans who never learn to examine TV critically?
Attempts to deal with issues of TV violence in a non-academic manner are bad news. V-chips are dangerous because such technology represents a gross form of censorship, if not outright government intrusion into our lives. Silly rating systems displaying numbers and letters at the beginning of programs are dangerous because, at best, they attempt to dumb an audience down and, at worst, they acclimate viewers to a morality scale decided upon by corporate capitalists, the same people who are trying to sell them things like soda pop and bubble gum - stuff no one needs.
Assuming TV isn't going away, all America really needs is a majority population of critical TV watchers, possessing proper mental tools with which to deconstruct the media barrage they swim through daily.
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Contents this page were published in the May/June, 1997 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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Copyright © 1997 WFP Collective, Inc.