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joebordenrebel Offline
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Post: #1
 
Unplug your television. For a week. For a month. For a year. For a lifetime.

Can you do it?

Unplug your brain



by Jerry Mander




Tom Hayden once said to me that television "is the biggest subject in the world that we have stopped talking about." He's right, because TV is the most efficient medium ever invented for cloning corporate consciousness.



Let me give you a sense of its scale and impact by repeating some astounding statistics from the United States. Similar patterns can be found all over the world. In the US, 99.5 percent of all homes have television sets, and 95 percent of the population watches television every day. The average home has a TV set going more than 8 hours per day, even if no one is watching. The average adult viewer watches TV more than four hours a day. The average child aged 8 to 13 watches about four hours per day. At age two to four, they watch almost three hours.



In the US, television is the main thing people do. It's replaced community life, family life, culture. It has replaced the environment. In fact, it has become the environment that people interact with every day. It has become the culture, too-and I'm not talking about so-called popular culture, which sounds, somehow, democratic. This expresses corporate culture, and damned few corporations at that.



Ours is the first generation to have essentially moved its life inside media; to have replaced direct contact with people and nature with simulated, edited, recreated versions. Television is the original "virtual reality."



This situation is really weird. It's almost sci-fi in its feeling and in its possibility for autocratic control-the few speaking to the many. If you were an anthropologist from the Andromeda Galaxy sent to study Earth people and you hovered over the US, chances are you'd report back something like this: "They're sitting night after night in dark rooms. They're staring at a light. Their eyes are not moving. They're not thinking. Their brains are in a passive/receptive state; we've measured them as 'alpha' waves (which, by the way, heavy viewers get into), and nonstop imagery is pouring into their brains-images coming from someplace they're not, thousands of miles away. These images are being sent by a very small number of people, and the images are of toothpaste and cars and guns and people running around in bathing suits. The whole thing looks like some kind of weird experiment in mind control." And that is exactly what it is.



In the US, the average television viewer is seeing about 23,000 commercials every year. The specific content of those messages may vary, but the intent is identical-to get people to view life as a nonstop stream of commodity satisfactions. Buy something! Do something! Commodities are life! And this message is the same everywhere.



Even in places on Earth where there are no roads-tiny tropical islands, icy tundras of the north, or log cabins-people are sitting, night after night. They're seeing "Baywatch," the most popular show in the world. Life in Texas, California, and New York is made to seem the ultimate in life's achievements, while local culture-even where it's still extremely vibrant and alive, as it is for a fair number of people-is made to seem backward, unworthy.



The net result is that a handful of media billionaires in New York, Hollywood, London, and one or two other places are implanting the brains of the entire global population with fantastically concentrated and nonstop doses of highly powerful images that tell them to hate where they live, worship McDonald's and Coca-Cola, and believe that corporations are the answer to their problems. Why are we not on the street about that? Why are we not in front of Disney? Why are we not in front of Time Warner?






Jerry Mander is president of the International Forum on Globalization, senior fellow at Public Media Center, and author of Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television and In the Absence of the Sacred.

<a href='http://www.futurenet.org/19technology/discussguide19.htm' target='_blank'>More to Consider</a>
05-05-2004 01:35 PM
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Dorothy Parker Offline
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So, does this mean I'm not the only person in the so-called free world who doesn't give a damn that Friends is about to depart the scene, who doesn't have a "favorite friend?" Dear God! Monica, Joey, Chandler, Rachel, ad nauseum, they're all SO darling, how could one choose? :laugh: :snore: :drink:
05-05-2004 07:45 PM
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Wryword Offline
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Here, JBR and Mrs Parker, we are all of one mind. I haven't watched any television this week, and I don't miss it a bit. I consider tv to be an IQ reducing device. I suspect that Repubs and Demos are behind it.
05-05-2004 07:51 PM
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Dorothy Parker Offline
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Wryword Wrote:Here, JBR and Mrs Parker, we are all of one mind. I haven't watched any television this week, and I don't miss it a bit. I consider tv to be an IQ reducing device. I suspect that Repubs and Demos are behind it.
See, I knew we all had a common ground somewhere! 03-wink
05-05-2004 07:58 PM
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HuskieDan Offline
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My problem with TV is so-called reality TV. No writers, no paid actors, just a bunch of dumb-****** premises not remotely based in reality and frequently revolving around eating maggots or singing like one. At least try to entertain me with intelligence, even if you fail.
05-05-2004 09:35 PM
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Motown Bronco Offline
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Quote:In the US, television is the main thing people do. It's replaced community life, family life, culture.

Culture isn't exactly the word to use here. Culture describes the current norms and values of a given 'society', therefore culture can change, but cannot be "replaced". In essence, television (like the Internet) becomes part of culture.

Quote:In the US, the average television viewer is seeing about 23,000 commercials every year. The specific content of those messages may vary, but the intent is identical-to get people to view life as a nonstop stream of commodity satisfactions. Buy something! Do something! Commodities are life! And this message is the same everywhere.

Those commercials keep your network television free, and cable costs low. Without commercials, there would be no free television, and all broadcasts would be pricey. Of course, this would lead to politicians and other pundits playing the class-warfare card claiming that "only the wealthy" can afford television.

Quote:The net result is that a handful of media billionaires in New York, Hollywood, London, and one or two other places are implanting the brains of the entire global population with fantastically concentrated and nonstop doses of highly powerful images that tell them to hate where they live, worship McDonald's and Coca-Cola, and believe that corporations are the answer to their problems.  Why are we not on the street about that? Why are we not in front of Disney? Why are we not in front of Time Warner?

This passage bothers me most. "In the street" about what? To "shut 'em down"? Why doesn't Mr. Mander simply turn off his television set, and just let others decide for themselves what to watch, how much to watch, etc? Or is he trying to save the world from evil McDonald's, a corporation that employs hundreds of thousands of workers globally? Frankly, Mander is just as bad as the so-called religious right. But instead of being freaked out over Janet Jackson's bare funbag, he's upset about cheeseburger commercials and images of Life in Texas. How is this different? I shudder to think of a loser like Mander in any position of power in the FCC or similar federal organization where he can wield power over an industry.

I'm additionally amused by his "implanting the brains" and "doses" phrases, painting consumers as an anonymous group of robots who are forced, by the gun, to run to the nearest store and purchase whatever they see on the screen. Let me guess... this author would support the fat guy suing McDonald's, claiming the restaurant chain literally forced him to buy biggie-sized burgers four days per week.


Those who complain that television only consists of mind-numbing reality shows and sitcoms just aren’t trying hard enough. Most of those 99.9% who own TV sets also have basic cable. Turn on the Discovery Channel. Animal Planet. The History Channel. C-SPAN. Educational Access. A&E. The Learning Channel. Discovery Health. Court TV. Even the Weather Channel has interesting programs about meteorological events now.
05-05-2004 10:31 PM
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Lethemeul Offline
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Quote:Those who complain that television only consists of mind-numbing reality shows and sitcoms just aren’t trying hard enough. Most of those 99.9% who own TV sets also have basic cable. Turn on the Discovery Channel. Animal Planet. The History Channel. C-SPAN. Educational Access. A&E. The Learning Channel. Discovery Health. Court TV. Even the Weather Channel has interesting programs about meteorological events now.

But you're still not safe from the corporate boogeyman when watching those networks, either. He's still going to be pushing mouthwash, fancy cars, and making you wish you had another life. :rolleyes:

Intellectuals like to say that TV is killing our culture and sucking the brains out of our heads. They act like before TV, everybody was Henry David Thoreau contemplating the wind and writing epics about a blade of grass. Or was downtime pre-TV better because the 'corporations' weren't in the house with us?

Hey, if I watch HBO exclusively am I safe?
05-06-2004 12:14 PM
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