REALIZATIONS: Television, Also Known As 'Commercial Mass Culture,' is reprinted & distributed as a public
service by the Society for the Eradication of Television, Box 10491, Oakland, CA 94610-0491. The e-mail edition is distributed by propagandawar@yahoo.com
This is from pages 18 - 20 of "Realizations (after 20 years of talking with people in Northfield)," by Bill McGrath. Bill says, "All statements in this book have two things in common: (1) I agree with them (2) They originally came from conversations I had with people in Northfield. I'll be interested in your reactions. Thanks for reading it." Northfield is in Minnesota in the United States.
Permission to post, reprint, forward, or otherwise distribute REALIZATIONS is hereby granted.
REALIZATIONS: Television, Also Known As "Commercial Mass Culture"
Bill McGrath
TV was fairly benign in its early days. Now it's our
main source of delusions.
The term "television" as used here refers not only to
the material that is presented on the TV itself, but
also to movies, magazines, celebrities, fads and
related throw-away products that are sold to us.
Most forms of technology are neutral, like a photocopy
machine. TV is not a "neutral" technology. Getting a
message onto network TV is so expensive that only the
wealthy really have access to TV programming or
advertising.
Ownership of TV networks is becoming steadily more
centralized. Messages on TV tend to be those of the
wealthy people, including the evil wealthy people.
If we get our sense of reality from TV, wealthy people
ultimately are controlling that sense of reality. With
special effects and enough money, it is becoming
possible for the media to fool all of the people, all
of the time.
TV has become the dominant factor in America's sense
of reality. The prevailing messages coming from TV are
"Worry" and "Consume."
The people on TV do not care about us one bit, except
for our ability to consume. They are taking up our
most valuable resource -- our time -- which we could
be spending with people who DO care about us.
Messages that TV brings us:
(1) If you are not happy, something is wrong with you.
(2) If you buy certain products, you will be happier.
(3) The world is full of violent poor people.
Protect yourself.
(4) Best thing for you to be doing with your time
right now is watching TV.
Like other drugs, TV destroys identity, intimacy and
community.
The CONTENT of television is not the real problem.
Even if TV could be made perfect, it would still be a
box that people sit around, without talking.
TV can not be "improved" or "reformed." People have
complained about crap on television since it was
invented. It has been investigated and regulated. It
gets worse and worse.
TV is indirectly responsible for our level of
consumerism, unnecessary stress, inadequate nurturing,
environmental destruction, unfair concentration of
wealth, demise of neighborhoods, crime and unwarranted
fear of crime.
TV encourages us to be constantly comparing ourselves
to others. TV tells us there is something wrong if we
are not like the people we see on TV. It tells us that
we don't smell right, we don't look right, we don't
eat right, we don't drive the right car and we don't
live in the right kind of household.
TV would have us believe that we should be vacationing
in Cancun on our credit card, that our sixth-grade
daughters should be dating and wearing make-up, and
that it is normal to NOT know the names of people
living next door.
TV is the ideal tool for evil people. They hide behind
its impersonality.
Some people say, "There is good stuff and bad stuff on
TV." To that, I say, "There is good stuff and bad
stuff in rat poison. Most people know what rat poison
can do to a person, and so they act accordingly. But
most people are only starting to catch on to the
damage that TV has done to our society."
Everything good that you can learn from TV, you can
learn some other way.
Adults are too busy for their kids because TV tells
the adults that they must be buying things constantly,
and therefore working constantly. Kids are too busy
for the adults, because TV tells them that adults are
boring and stupid.
Even public TV is supported largely by oil and
chemical companies.
TV is good at expressing hate, fear, competition and
violence. TV is great at presenting wars, cars and
angry fanatics.
TV is great for products, very poor for ideas. It's
not good at expressing warmth, cooperation, empathy,
nurturing. TV cannot convey subtle complexity.
TV leads you to believe that there should be a car
chase, orgasm, murder or joke every minute. Teachers
say that kids today have almost no attention span.
TV distorts nature and history. Showing wildlife on TV
tends to make people LESS concerned about the
environment, because on TV the environment seems to be
doing just fine.
In a few years, much of what people will know about
history will be from sound bites they have seen on TV.
Fictionalized historical drama will pose as fact.
The media is constantly trying to divide us into age
groups. Then it's much easier for the media to sell
products to us.
TV removes the frame of reference -- personal
experience -- with which people have traditionally
viewed reality.
Televisions are being installed in airports and
grocery stores. A TV company, Whittle, broadcasts
commercial messages at students in many public
schools.
The mere presence of a TV within a household changes
everything. Absolute worst places for television are
the kitchen or the parents' bedroom.
TV is like exposing yourself everyday to a Ripley
Believe-It-Or-Not museum.
Very few households with children can "limit" or
"monitor" the TV-viewing habits of the kids. It's too
much work for the adults to do this monitoring, unless
the children themselves are convinced of the value of
such rationing.
Your dreams at night are actually more relevant to
life than what you see on TV. Yet everyone talks about
TV. Very few people talk about their dreams.
TV says, "If you are experiencing pain, you must be
doing something wrong."
Most problems come from inadequate nurturing. TV
causes inadequate nurturing.
Americans ages 12 to 25 are watching much less network
TV than were their counterparts 10 years ago. Instead,
they now watch computers or rented videos.
In April, 1997, five million Americans stopped
watching TV for one week, according to a Washington DC
group that coordinates this annual effort.
If you're not sure how to get rid of your TV, call me
at (507)645-7660.
Permission to post, reprint, forward, or otherwise distribute REALIZATIONS is hereby granted.
Also available by e-mail from Propaganda War: A Brief History of the Society for the Eradication of Television & 'How to Do It' Guide. Send E-mail
For a printed copy or to contact the Society for the Eradication of Television, write to
Society for the Eradication of Television
Box 10491
Oakland, CA 94610-0491
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