THE OBSTACLES THAT IMPEDE THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRAZIL IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA A...
Television Culture
1.
2. What is television?
Television is an electric broadcast system in which special
providers transmit a continuous program of video content
to the public or subscribers by way of antenna, cable, or
satellite dish, often on multiple channels. (American
Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition)
4. Television is…
«…the first truly democratic culture, the first culture
available to everyone and entirely governed by
what the people want. The most terrifying thing is
what people do want.» (Clive Barnes)
5. Television is…
“…real. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells
you what to think and blasts it in. It must be
right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so
quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't
time to protest, 'What nonsense!'.” (Ray
Bradbury)
6. Television is…
«… of great educational value. It teaches you
while still really young how
to (a) kill, (b) rob, (c) embezzle, (d) shoot, e) poi
son, and generally speaking, (f) how to grow
up into a Wild West outlaw or gangster by the
time you leave school.» (George Mikes)
7. Television is…
«…is a medium of entertainment which permits
millions of people to listen to the same joke at
the same time, and yet remain lonesome.» (T.S.
Elliot)
8. MASS COMMUNICATION MEDIA
Print (books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, etc.) from
the late 15th century
Recordings (gramophone records, magnetic tapes, cassettes,
cartridges, CDs, DVDs) from the late 19th century
Cinema from about 1900
Radio from about 1910
Television from about 1950
Internet from about 1990
Mobile phones from about 2000
9. Television:
Prime medium for,
molding public opinion
sharing morality and dispersing the mores
Communicates less didactically and more effectively
than other media,
Has a unique style and flow of content,
11. Television actually…
Conveys thoughts&ideas
Reaffirms social conventions
Communicates subtle meanings
Presents the version of reality that the dominant ideology
represents as the norm
12. What do we watch on TV?
Movies
Reality Shows
TV Series
News
Documentaries
Cartoons
Commercials
14. «Survivor» Communicates That…
Only the fittest of the fittest shall survive!
Homo Homini Lupus : Man is a wolf to (fellow) man
People are competitive, violent, fundamentally self-interested.
People aspire to power usually at the expense of others.
All these writers and thinkers somehow suggest that there is something seriously wrong with TV. But what is it? We’ll get to that question later. Let’s continue with exploring what television is in a cultural context. Television is one of the «seven mass media», significantly the most featured of all. And, despite changing industrial practises it somehow remains a ubiquitos media form and technology widely owned and used in many industrilized nations. Why is so?
Television has been the main medium for molding public opinion since the 1950s
the general ways of being and acting throughout a culture,
Which enables the mores and ideas to be “absorbed without conscious understanding."
Dominant ideology, the one of western capitalist societies, represents. That is how we conclude that poverty and social class inequality are natural and inevitable, or how we all accept paternalistic principles and practices without much questioning.
Yet, still the largest amount of time devoted to one single activity each day by citizens of developed countries is given to watching the television.
Well it seems whatever we watch on TV is designed in a way to manupilate our subconcious. I’ll further explain it to you with an example. Let’s take this highly popular reality Show «Survivor»
What do you see when you look at these pictures? Young testosteron-charged, virile men with their well-built bodies? healthy, energetic, beautiful human beings everywhere?… It is like they are the survivors of an actual disaster and now they are expected to survive the post-disaster conditions. The Show is highly appealing to some just because the «survivors» do live in a complete state of nature. And if you want to survive in the nature, you have got to be ,the fittest of the fittest, competitive, violent, fundementally self-interested, you must even aspire to power at the expense of others.
It is suggested that these traits are products of our biology, not of the cultural and historical situation we live in despite lack of scientific evidence to prove it. For instance, one may see a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk and assume he is a failure at life because of his genes, or say that women are incapable of being serious scientists because of their sex, or that all men must harbor aggression because of their biology.
I guess now we have found an answer to the initial question, I mean, «What is wrong with TV*» therefore I can finish my presentation. And I’d like to end it with a quote from a German playwright Heiner Müller. He writes in his brillant work called The HamletMachine that «television is daily revulsion!» . This one is my favourite as it is quite expressive and it says a lot with just a few words.
