It's Simple Really...

[Akara]

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!!!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

 

[Cain]

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.

[Akara]

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! 

[Manabu]

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!

[Jasper]

Television is a god-damned amusement park.

From a recent essay of mine:

Divide 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.

[Akara]

wow felix, that's a really nice quote. do you have the rest of that essay posted anywhere?

[Jasper]

Check your PMs.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Television is a god-damned amusement park.

JESUS SYNCHRONICITY CHRIST

I literally just watched that bit of "Network" on YouTube. Like 30 seconds ago.

[Kai]

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...

[Jasper]

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.

[Golden Applesauce]

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! 

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.   

[Akara]

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.

[Golden Applesauce]

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?

[Jasper]

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.