Blessing or menace.
Entertainment or mass hypnosis.
Art form or psychotoxin.
These are the questions we ask in the debate over television.
Opponents are polarized in their beliefs about the state of the audio visual
broadcast presentations we call TV.
Only religion and politics inspires more debate. I might suggest that
a discussion of television must include both of these phenomenon, as they
seem to have embraced the medium tightly.
What is it about this medium, functionally less than 50 years
old, that has so galvanized opinion. Over the history of mankind there
have been invented, ever more ingenious methods of communication. But for
most of time, the bulk of all non verbal communication required a special
effort by the receiver to understand the transmission. Only the arts of
performance and illustration attempt to make connection without first preparing
the receptor. Even these arts often prepare the receiver by presenting
in a formalized setting. All the arts have striven to get their message
across more easily and pervasively. The first motion pictures had
a profound effect on the first audiences. The large, lit sight of an approaching
train frightened some of the members of that early audience into reacting
as if a train was actually about to overrun them. An early viewer of footage
of a train robbery pulled out his own pistol and traded shots with the
flickering images on the screen. Even with our suspension of disbelief,
our bodies still react, if only subliminally, to the images we watch
in the darkened theater, or the flickering blue firelight of our
televisual hearths.
An avid amateur scientist, I enjoy
learning about all the newest discoveries. It took me a number of learned
articles, magazine offerings, textbooks and conversation with the wise,
for me to come to a fair comprehension of the methods and functions of
the human immune system. Yet I lately watched two hours worth of documentary
television that would have given a good understand of immune response to
a twelve year old. Using voice over, film, animation and the other tools
of the trade they had condensed a small college course into two hours of
intense instruction. And it was even easy to understand. Equally, an equivalent
exposure of two hours worth of carefully placed and crafted advertisements
can make that same twelve year old unable to go to school without the socially
correct corporate logo on his shoes.
Television has the distinction of coming almost
unbidden into our homes. When we go the a movie, or even rent one, we are
making a conscious decision to watch. We know we are to be affected,
and are even seeking it. Yet television pervades to such an extent,
that we blithely let it’s messages wash over us without choosing that message.
In these days of a plenitude of channels and the ease of switching, we
often just let the damn box play. The mute button alone still leaves the
visual impressions intact. In fact a casual attention to soundless
commercials may tell you what they are really selling. The images taken
soundlessly suggest that social and sexual popularity is the most frequently
offered commodity today, regardless of whether it is in the shape of an
automobile or the next anti-perspirant.
But television is not bad. No inanimate thing is in and of itself
evil. It is guiltless. only an ill use makes an ill effect. Whether
selling cheap gee-gaws or imparting enlightenment, the effect is profound
and pervasive. Like a powerful narcotic, we must dispense it carefully
to our children if we wish it to help and not harm them. Restriction of
content is an argument that has passed into history. The content cannot
be controlled . We have had a tradition in America of freedom of expresion,
and television is just another means of expresion. We cannot hope to put
that genie back in its bottle withoug trying to cram the whole of jounalism,
literature and private communication in there with it. It has become
like weather. Wear the apropriate mental apperal for the climate and don’t
send the kids out in it without a hat and coat.
As a media to become involved in, you better
be satisfied to be like the oil painter. Work on the product that most
pleases you, or find yourself embroiled in a feeding frenzy of deal makers,
risk takers, favor peddlers, predators and parasites to dazzle the most
cynical. The good news is while the slime is fighting over the big money
turf, there is a lot of room for more benign uses. Traditional entertainment
fare is a mine hardly tapped. Nobody has yet committed all the Shakespeare
plays to video, much less the bulk of western performable literature. And
print has made an entry, classics as teleplays ect. Instructional and curatorial
work is still an open field, and the trade of journalism can still be plied
should such persons ever be rediscovered. And there is more yet untouched.
With technological refinement we could see video as painting, works
that we not meant to be watched so much as contributing to the environment.
Sculpture with faces and voices, Perceptual extensions that may change
the very ways we think.
Broad cast gave us three or five channels.
Cable, thirty or sixty feeds, Satellites have hundreds and the internet
promises nearly as many channels as there are viewers. We can follow the
examples of history and flood the medium with countless base impusle stimulations
or proliferate into a renaissance. It is my belief that we will do both.
Sex channels and deep education , destructive brainwash and comforting
instruction, High art and low blows will all be represented in this ever
widening environment. We are left only the weapon and defense of
choice. The revolution WILL be televised, and so will every thing else.