There seems to be a constant, throbbing, ongoing debate about "violence in the media" and how horrible it is for our children. How it's having all these negative effects on them, how SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE! in the form of legislation, v chips, new intricate technology that children can circumvent, new complex rating systems, and all out ban on anything interesting on tv. Try 500 channels of CSpan 24 hours a day! I wonder if that would actually make congress less stupid? If everyone watched their every word on television... but I digress.
People seem to have these huge debates about the best course of action for this problem we have with violence on tv. Because historically speaking, children have never, ever, ever witnessed wholesale violence, and violence has never been glorified or condoned in the past. This day and age is fraught with all kinds of new evils never experienced by humanity before! *cough* but seeing as our children are being harmed by television violence, obviously something needs to be done.
Well, through studying that debate, I have come up with a novel way of dealing with childhood exposure to violent media programs, news, crooked politicians, unfunny comedians, absurdist cartoons.... my solution would probably also help with childhood obesity to an extent, if implemented well.
Ready for it folks? It's called TURN OFF THE FUCKING TV!!!
Throw it in a locked closet if you must. throw it away even! buy some books, let your kids go outside and play, let your kids run around inside. Let them be obnoxious and scream and be add and be weird and... stop expecting kids to be adults, or docile sheep parked in front of the boob tube learning from others to be foul, violent, and unfunny. for fuck's sake, hire a fucking babysitter if you can't be fucked to pay attention to your own offspring.
But if you are worried about the effects of tv violence on your kid, or on yourself, Don't call your congressman, don't write a letter to the tv station, don't send an email to the CEO, don't start a lobby with your friends... Just turn the damn thing off and shut up already!!!
:lulz: :mittens:
Of course, if they turned the TV off and read something like Tacitus, or the History of the Third Reich, they'd soon realize they were whining anyway.
But that would involve, you know, reading. Books and stuff.
yeah... those books. dunno. they seem so threatening. you actually have to, like, engage your mind and stuff. most people enjoy being passive sponges cabbages. speaking of, I have some literature to attend to! :mrgreen:
wait wait wait... wait.
you mean, those kindling with the separate leafs of thin stuff in it is a book?
those things you used to read in school for projects you never did?
OMAI i didn't think those were still around!
well, you know, if parents were to turn off the tv, they may have to interact with their children. and if they couldn't complain about the thing that is now 'babysitting' their children, what would they bitch about? nothing that matters need come up in conversation with the tv as the subject!
BURN THE BOOB TUBE!
oman, they should take inactive subway tunnels and turn them into strip clubs. call them boob tubes. oman oman oman
someone get on that, now!
AT ANY RATE, tv must continue to scare and disgust parents into talking about it, lest the tv get too lax and start to bore us. we might die! (see: Tool - Vicarious)
aaaaand SCENE!
Television is a god-damned amusement park.
From a recent essay of mine:
QuoteDivide and conquer is a tested and powerful strategy. The most effective divisions cut the target precisely in half. If you can create a rift that separates your target neatly in two, they will be more than twice as easy to control. The logical choice for any corporation is gender. Thanks to our genetics, the universal ratio of men to women is almost exactly 50/50. Gender is the perfect linchpin on which to create a useful division. To whatever degree gender roles are genetically decided, media reinforces this beyond what could objectively be considered beneficial. Once men and women are differentiated enough, it is a simple matter to further compartmentalize the two. Women are only shown beautiful supermodels with perfect features, along with the products that promise aesthetic perfection, as with the Herbal Essences commercials, which feature pretty women with completely perfect hair. And men are not safe either. Are you a smart guy? That means you're probably not very cool. In the infamous "I'm a Mac" commercials, the archetypal PC user is characterized as good with numbers, but perniciously un-hip, so unlike like the laid-back carefree "Mac" guy. The dichotomies are endless and fake. They create niche markets that allow the media to employ targeted marketing strategies that minimize production costs and maximize sales. Divide and conquer is the watchword in the westernized world of cut-throat semiotic warfare.
To hell with broadcast. Torrent all the shows you want to see.
wow felix, that's a really nice quote. do you have the rest of that essay posted anywhere?
Check your PMs.
Quote from: Felix on February 10, 2009, 09:50:48 PM
Television is a god-damned amusement park.
JESUS SYNCHRONICITY CHRIST
I literally just watched that bit of "Network" on YouTube. Like 30 seconds ago.
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television was one of the most convincing books I have ever read.
It was so convincing that I don't watch tv anymore. I haven't watched a television for any (ie a 30 minute program) length of time for over a year now. I occasionally watch shows online. Thats about it...
Quote from: Cainad on February 10, 2009, 11:32:15 PM
Quote from: Felix on February 10, 2009, 09:50:48 PM
Television is a god-damned amusement park.
JESUS SYNCHRONICITY CHRIST
I literally just watched that bit of "Network" on YouTube. Like 30 seconds ago.
Hivemind. :)
Quote from: Akara on February 10, 2009, 07:09:00 PM
yeah... those books. dunno. they seem so threatening. you actually have to, like, engage your mind and stuff. most people enjoy being passive sponges cabbages. speaking of, I have some literature to attend to! :mrgreen:
Can you clarify how reading forces one to "engage the mind" ? It seems to me that some of the most successful books are the ones that do all the thinking (if any) for the reader. It's much safer to produce a knee-jerk reaction than to present all the facts available and hope readers come to the same conclusions you do.
Then again, maybe I'm just pissed because I read Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land," a so-called classic which was essentially the author
explaining asserting how gender and sex between genders was the BEST THING EVER, how pantheism (and sex) is the solution to all mankind's woes, how the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (strong version) is correct to the point where people have to learn an entire alien language just to be pantheists.
I think what i meant more is that reading does actually engage the mind more on a superficial level than television. Television is an entirely passive medium, whereas reading tends to engage your brain in to activity a lot more. I wasn't so much making conjectures as to the engaging (or not) nature of the material itself...
I definitely agree with you, some books can be almost as bad as television... but i still think reading, no matter how bad of material, is more engaging than television in general.
Quote from: Akara on February 11, 2009, 04:51:06 AM
I think what i meant more is that reading does actually engage the mind more on a superficial level than television. Television is an entirely passive medium, whereas reading tends to engage your brain in to activity a lot more. I wasn't so much making conjectures as to the engaging (or not) nature of the material itself...
I definitely agree with you, some books can be almost as bad as television... but i still think reading, no matter how bad of material, is more engaging than television in general.
Out of curiosity, where do you put comics in the "books good, TV bad" scale?
It's not a replacement media, it's just a different kind. Books can't tell the story of a movie the same way a movie does, and comic books are the same way. It's all a matter of right tool for the right job. As Hemingway said, "Prose is Architecture. " Comics are sculpture, to stretch the metaphor.
To paraphrase Stephen Fry, sure we can take violence and sex off the television, but we've still got the violence and sex, and we have to put it somewhere.
Quote from: Two Frame Animation on February 11, 2009, 05:21:12 AM
Out of curiosity, where do you put comics in the "books good, TV bad" scale?
Comic books to me represent just another type of written media. one where art and prose come together to give us a different sort of literature than normal novels. still way better than parking in front of the tv all day.
Depends whats on the TV and what the written/drawn media actually is.
David Attenborough's Wildlife on One > All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder by Frank Miller (unless your sense of humour is especially warped) and the Ragnar Redbeard's Might Makes Right.
For example. That's all besides the point however, since the original point was people whining about violence on TV and, you know, trying to ban it all in their ongoing attempt to ruin all sorts of fun everywhere for everyone. I just raised those books to reiterate the point that historically, and indeed presently outside of the post-industral world, violence has been a lot worse than what we see on TV. I have never seen, for example, a child soldier being raped and then told to kill other children on the Teevee, yet such things are a daily occurence in sub-Saharan Africa. I think that this continues to happen may be a bigger problem than Jack Bauer shooting someone in the head, at a time after which most kids are in bed anyway.
Quote from: Two Frame Animation on February 11, 2009, 03:17:41 AM
Quote from: Akara on February 10, 2009, 07:09:00 PM
yeah... those books. dunno. they seem so threatening. you actually have to, like, engage your mind and stuff. most people enjoy being passive sponges cabbages. speaking of, I have some literature to attend to! :mrgreen:
Can you clarify how reading forces one to "engage the mind" ? It seems to me that some of the most successful books are the ones that do all the thinking (if any) for the reader. It's much safer to produce a knee-jerk reaction than to present all the facts available and hope readers come to the same conclusions you do.
Then again, maybe I'm just pissed because I read Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land," a so-called classic which was essentially the author explaining asserting how gender and sex between genders was the BEST THING EVER, how pantheism (and sex) is the solution to all mankind's woes, how the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (strong version) is correct to the point where people have to learn an entire alien language just to be pantheists.
If I was put in a room and told that I had to choose to talk to someone who has read every Dan Brown and John Grisham novel, or someone who tivo'd every season of
American Idol, I'd choose the reader.
However, if the choice were between Brown/Grisham and
The Sopranos, I'd choose the HBO dude.
Just because the content of the medium is usually crap, doesn't mean that the medium is worthless.
Agreed!
I don't watch much teevee but I like the stuff I do watch. And, especially in the cases of commercials and biased journalism, often not in the spirit intended by the programme makers. I find advertisements fascinating, analysing the effects I can feel from different levels of persuasion. Then there's a sort of holistic view that I can take, a bit like ozzy in the watchmen, skipping through the channels, gauging the overtones of propaganda that permeate the whole thing, in a more general context. Like, right now, everybody is talking about saving moneys. The phrase "credit crunch" which is a much more cereal-sounding one than "recession" will be heard around every 5mins on most topical daytime shows. It's so hot-topic it's replaced "global warming/climate change" as the biggest meme on the box. And I'd be surprised if your average tv casualty would even be aware that oceana is still at war with afghaniraq.
The Politics Show is like The Wright Stuff on meth, essentially. And with about the same political nuance. Which is, of course, why I watch it.
Quote from: LMNO: Name Unchanged on February 11, 2009, 02:51:19 PM
Just because the content of the medium is usually crap, doesn't mean that the medium is worthless.
I agree with you here, and I'm not advocating never ever watching tv shows whatsoever for any reason. there is a value to visual mediums like television, etc. It just should not be a subsitute for actual life things, like reading, going outside, etc.
Quote from: Two Frame Animation on February 11, 2009, 05:21:12 AM
Quote from: Akara on February 11, 2009, 04:51:06 AM
I think what i meant more is that reading does actually engage the mind more on a superficial level than television. Television is an entirely passive medium, whereas reading tends to engage your brain in to activity a lot more. I wasn't so much making conjectures as to the engaging (or not) nature of the material itself...
I definitely agree with you, some books can be almost as bad as television... but i still think reading, no matter how bad of material, is more engaging than television in general.
Out of curiosity, where do you put comics in the "books good, TV bad" scale?
Comics to me seem to mostly fall into the same category as TV, the problem seems to be not the medium, but that such large productions (comics are a ton of work to make, and a fortune to print), require a corporate structure, and corporations figured out a long time ago that mindless crap sells consistently. Even the stuff that isn't mindless, still has to follow certain rules. You must have at least X amount of sex, and Y amount of violence and so forth.
Though now that I think about it, books mostly do the same thing, its just easier to get at the stuff thats actually worthwhile there. So they all suck.
Quote from: Akara on February 11, 2009, 07:34:59 PM
It just should not be a subsitute for actual life things, like reading
Wait, what?
You obviously have never met a literary escapist, have you?
Good point. Perhaps I am partially giving in to a knee-jerk reaction of "reading, good. Television, bad." In saying that. It is true that too much reading can be a bad thing as well. Viz. Don Quijote... lol
People probably said the same thing about books that we hear about radio, tv, movies, video games, et al.
Split to remove trolling.
good move.
like i said.
i don't think it's so much t.v.'s influence on kids as how their parents raise them to watch it. if you plop a kid down in front of the tubes without any explanation sure, they can let their imaginations run wild.
but if you teach them t.v. is crap, it's merely here for entertainment and question everything you see on it, they will do just that. they will ask questions.
to me, there's nothing better than my son picking apart a news story or t.v. show and asking everything his little heart desires about it. it helps with honest communication and a better understanding of who they are, as well as them understanding who you are.
teach them and learn from them. kids are fucking awesome and they'll prove it every time you speak to them.
i love my little dude.
the end.
My parents, especially my dad, raised me with a pretty healthy amount of skepticism. My dad never was (and is) never shy about being all :roll: whenever he hears a "too good to be true" claim.
In other words, I've been raised to think:
Being a buzzkill > Being a sucker
So yeah, you can raise kids to understand that the TV is merely a boredom-killing machine.
I'm with Howard Beale.
Quote from: Felix on February 15, 2009, 04:00:48 AM
I'm with Howard Beale.
That movie ought to be shown in school. Or at least that one rant that's always on YouTube.
Quote from: Cainad on February 15, 2009, 04:10:53 AM
Quote from: Felix on February 15, 2009, 04:00:48 AM
I'm with Howard Beale.
That movie ought to be shown in school. Or at least that one rant that's always on YouTube.
I was fortunate to have seen it in school, if memory serves.