Television has been used for decades to shape the human psyche. It has also played a major role in the development of American lives, and at times we fail to notice. “People are sheep. TV is the shepherd.” (Jess C. Scott, Literary Heroin (Gluttony): A Twilight Parody). Often times we use television as an escape route, a tube to pull us away from the pains of our true reality, but what are we escaping? TV is a hypnotic box of propaganda, used to program American morals and values. Negative images in Technicolor has blurred the lines of our perceptions. TV is the piece of technology developed to control the minds off the masses through social, economic, and political order.
Since the inception of television, obesity rates have increased dramatically
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Commercials which prey on our five senses, and sway us to buy products only the TV predicts we can’t live without. It's a tragic day when the state can monopolize on the enslaving and the imprisonment of a population. Hollywood will continue to frighten us with films on the mafia, gangsters, and the corrupt blue collar criminal whose stupidity and greed get them caught. In the end, our minds are already pre conditioned to accept living in a police state economy and society because we read it in the paper, saw it praised on the news and talk shows, or saw it in a movie. TV has influenced the brands we wear and trust, also it has shaped what we believe in. It has influenced our culture, values, upbringing, experiences, politics, knowledge, the bible, education, our ability to see right from wrong, and what should be perceived as good or bad. “The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many” ― Michael Parenti, Against Empire. This scenario sounds similar to a popular movie we know as “The Wizard of Oz” The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity …show more content…
It's a world where Hollywood can make you believe anything, even that you are free. It's a world in which the prosecutor and the judge share the same side of the bench. The most obvious reason that our minds are being controlled on a massive scale psychologically, is because our culture has been conditioned by the television, radios, and newspapers. We are given world reality through a screen, some ink, or radio waves. The truth is hiding in plain sight. The indoctrination through these mediums warns us that views other than those presented by them are unimportant and too be condemned. This presidential administration and media monopoly have a carefully crafted dehumanization program for anyone that dissents the official version of events. If you choose to travel the road to the truth, then you must be prepared for the obstacles that await you. You may be condemned or criticized by your family, your friends, your lovers, even your co-workers. This is their programming that began at birth that is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. We have to be mentally stronger than past generations. We must realize that there is a reality that exists outside of this controlled artificial
Due to censorship, the government provides technology to distract the ignorant society. The television or “parlor wall” is used as a replacement for real conversations with friends and family and according to Schmoop, “TV is the enemy” It’s meant to make people happy by “replacing literature, intellectualism, and curiosity” (“Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury”). Television also offers “happiness” because it blocks thinking, and most people are unaware of their happiness because of the distractions.
The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that 's power. The article “Reality TV Goes Where Football Meets the Hijab”, published in the New York Times in November 2011, introduces how the media controls the minds of the masses. Media has become a major issue in our daily lives. We live in a world that we cannot have access to what is going around us, unless we refer to the media. For instance, in our daily routine we usually listen to the news in the morning or at night before we sleep. The news has already been reported and its being delivered to us that fast, but how do we know if what is being said is what is actually happening or if it has been manipulated for political/social reasons? In the beginning of the article, Porochista Khakpour the author of the article, Iranian born American reared, mentions: “If anything made me, an American, it was televisions.” TV, especially the reality TV, resembles the characters and movie stars the way they want to not the way they are. Khakpour said, "Darkness-dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin-always equaled trouble, as if it actually implied a dark side". When we watch TV, most of the movie characters are labeled, either by their gender, religion, or color. Khakpour reaches out to the "outcasts", to prove her point on reality TV shows shaping our beliefs towards each other, especially the "freaks”.
The broadcast of television and its contents have influenced society as a whole. Whether it being commercials or news incidents, the television covers it all. With the vast amount of information being introduced to a wide span of audience, the television has altered the way a person takes in the given info. Despite all the advantages of the television, it generates bias amongst its viewers and converts their attentions on a certain issue, such as politics, for better or for worse. Although the invention of the television ventures to address political issues to the world, the television manipulates information so that a negative outlook would be pronounced on a particular candidate for a presidential election.
Barbara Ehrenreich expresses her utter distaste for television in The Worst Years of Our Lives based in the 1980’s. Ehrenreich writes numerous assertions in regard to television’s unrealistic portrayal of every day life. She raises a valid argument when she points out that TV watchers will never see the commonplace facets of human life depicted on their TV screen. Instead, they watch shows filled with fake people, plastic smiles, ungenuine conversations, and unrealistic tasks all combined into a program that epitomizes the way in which we don’t live. Television distracts people from actually living their lives so instead they live vicariously through TV shows, wasting their lives away.
Television is incorporated into my daily routine whether it is watching the news in the morning or a movie at night. When I watch the news in the morning I catch up on current events and other news. On the other hand. At night I watch movies for entertainment and enjoyment. Television is not just changing people into couch potatoes by watching “chasing fast cars, drinking lite beer, shooting each other t close range, etc.”, it also can be a daily tool to learn new things and catch up on current events.
“The social fact of television is the glue that holds together and undermines American public life” is completely true, for it reflects our society on how it presents itself. Television was an extension of radio, in that it was created to show a story to the masses.
“Television is providing some sort of compensation for the social atomization that it itself has contributed to , and thus , all the simulated conviviality , while being a pleasant “dream,” is “pure wish fulfillment,” indeed, rather “phony,” and, perhaps, sad”(315).
Noel Murray, a writer in TheWeek.com, published a nonfiction article on February 15, 2017 called, “TV’s Callous Neglect of Working - Class America”. Murray wrote this article to convey the fact that television series now don’t exemplify the realness of how most people live. To exhibit his views he uses a powerful structure, metaphors and oxymorons. Murray’s reveal that television does no unite us as one since the shows don’t even display the real daily life one may live. Murray establishes a informal tone for young adults watching television.
First of all, television has corrupted American culture by influencing our values. This is most prominently seen with the portrayal of gender roles in television programs, especially where women are objectified sexually. Such an environment is extremely dangerous
Another way television misleads its viewers is by the way that they present candidates for an election of politicians. They spend all their time and money trying to put together a commercial that only puts down the other candidate. How are voters supposed to know whom to vote for if all they are presented with is negative ideas about each candidate? Television also tries to persuade us to vote for a certain proposition. Voters are also lured into voting for or against a proposition by listening to the music being played in the background of the commercial. An example of this type of situation may be the campaign on proposition 5 dealing with the Indian Casinos. They play sad, and convincing, music in the background of their commercial so the viewers can soften their hearts and vote “yes” on their proposition. Television is powerful enough to make our shopping easier. Actually, it is making us lazier. TV stations such as the Home Shopping Network make shopping as easy as dialing some numbers on a touch tone phone. People are also convinced to buy a certain product because a celebrity is presenting it. For example: if supermodel Cindy Crawford presents make-up, ladies will buy it and wear it because they believe that it will make them look like her.
Television, more so than any other form of communication, has been the ultimate tool of the propaganda effort. It is the trustworthiest
It was found that at each hour of TV watched by a 5-year-old child their chances of obesity would rise by 7%. Whilst studying 8000 children who had watched 8 or more hours per week, all age 3 it was found that by the time all those children were aged 7, every single one of them were at higher risk than average of obesity. (Pediatrics, 2011). Television on its own shows from 4400 to 7600 fast food commercials a day. Those statistics don’t include what is shown in magazine, billboards and so on. The number of health promoting adverts shown is 165 a day its no wonder today’s children are at higher risk. Speaking of which, the number of children under 5 effected worldwide by obesity found in 2013 was an astonishing 42 million. Its predicted that by 2025 this number will rise to a huge 70 million. (Bupa,2016) The media has fooled people the way never use overweight or unhealthy looking people In adverts, how often do we see obese people on our televisions? Especially when we are trying to be sold something. More often than not in movies fat people are portrayed as unattractive and unpopular and the laughing stock. Society seems to find it difficult to sympathise with obesity as a disease as many see it as self-inflicted issue. (Teaching tolerance, 2016). ) it was found that by 2006, obesity was responsible for 10 percent of media
What can be the effect of television on people’s lives? People living in these days are addicted to watching TV. However, it is true that watching too much television makes people lose touch with the reality of their lives; they start to see the TV “world” as the real world instead of the world they are living in. This situation divides their loyalties, and all of this is controlled by the people who control the media. Many examples exist in the world that we live and in the world of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. For example, the way the media lies people proves that people are not in the “real” world when they are watching TV and being taught to what had been told to them. Or, people are hooked on television so much that they neglect and
In an article ' The Plug-In Drug ' the author Marie Winn discusses the bad influence of television on today's society. Television is a ' drug ' that interfere with family ritual, destroys human relationships and undermines the family.
The television is also a very important aspect of popular culture that affects the American Identity. Watching television is such a common part of contemporary society, that most Americans adopted it as a part of their daily routine and watch television for at least an hour a day. Stanley Crouch, a poet, music and cultural critic, writes that whenever people pretentiously and proudly announce, “I don’t watch television,” they should follow it up with “I don’t look at America either” (Masciotra 79). Television has become a part of many people’s lives. When the mass population watches the same TV shows, movies, etc. they can all relate to each other, and thus unite them as an American. We look to TV shows to see how other people like us act