Hey, TV haters — the ‘idiot box’ will actually save the world

 Posted by on 20 October 2009  Modern Life
Oct 202009
 

A great discussion broke out in the comments under my post about Balloon Boy (credit to Mike Waddell for elevating the level of discourse in such a capable manner). The emerging consensus seemed to be that television was a net negative to civil society.

Well, here’s some grist for the mill: Foreign Policy asserts that TV is a “transformative power for good.”

I’m dramatically oversimplifying, and I urge you to read the article in full, but it boils down to these essential points:

  1. People at home watching the boob tube are not out being criminal, violent, jihadists or otherwise insurrecting.
  2. Television lowers the birth rate (through either education or exhaustion) and lower birth rates tend to increase gender equity, and education/opportunities for girls and women.
  3. Audio/video is an unparalleled way to get important public health and public service messages out to low-literacy populations.
  4. The Western world’s cultural dominance means, along with the crappy reality TV, we also export the values that are embedded in our entertainment as basic assumptions. These would be the truths that our culture holds as self-evident — democratic, tolerant truths.

I’ve read previously that some violent movies and video games may serve to actually reduce the crime rate — because people who would tend to get off on crime are too busy getting off on Grand Theft Auto to bother to go out and steal a car. So negative culture can have a positive effect.

I’m curious what people make of this assertion about TV — that, despite its many failings, it is overall a positive force, especially in the developing world.

Grant Hamilton

  • thebanana

    To shamelessly steal from a blogger i read somewhere-”100% of the people who ate carrots in 1850 are now dead – fact”.

  • Mike

    What time do you live in?? The Internet is the real evil now!!!!

  • Colin

    The problem with this assertion is it ignores the fundamental motivation behind 99.999% of TV programming.

    Hint: it ain’t to export classical Western values.

    It’s profit. And the destructive effect of unregulated, unfettered pursuit of profit is actually endangering the world in a multitude of ways. Environmentally, socially, spiritually — it ain’t a net benefit and therefore I call hokum on the guy’s assertion.

  • http://www.absurdintellectual.com Grant Hamilton

    Sorry Colin, but you betray your own point — profit IS a classical Western value. And, even the most awful of television shows shares some basic cultural assumptions: namely, that women are educated and have freedom of action and that people live and work in a civil society.

    When a show like CSI gets popular in a war-torn country, you’re “educating” people about how a law-and-order society works. And, when they’re home watching CSI, they’re not out being brigands.

    And, while I will agree with your condemnation of the “unregulated, unfettered pursuit of profit” I think you have to see that, along with that profit, other Western cultural values are spreading.

  • Mike Waddell

    Before I put my two cents in I find it quite ironic that I was eating carrots as I opened up this post.

    Any “ism” taken to extremes or allowed to run rampant will cause problems.

    Some time ago a friend promised me a copy of ” The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” which they have not delivered. I would suggest that unless I can be shown otherwise there are few or no civilizations in history that have successfully weathered extended periods of prosperity. Our current society or group of societies is not likely to be an exception.

    While I am not advocating for or specifically predicting an imminent end to life as we know it I would suggest that the very fact that articles about TV as a transformative force are clear evidence that the world has lost its way.

    I also know full well that even Thoreau, who those who advocate for a simpler life love to quote, only lived at Walden Pond for a short period of time before he had to re-enter a so called normal life. Technology, to borrow from Jim Collins who wrote “Good to Great” and “Built to Last”, is not a cause of anything specific but rather technology is an accelerator of existing trends or patterns.

    If as the writer suggests, although I lean to Colin’s take that the writer is full of it, television can prevent all sorts of ills and promote all sorts of good then it is only because in many cases these trends may well be already in place.

    Again, “lies, damn lies and statistics” comes to mind due to the thought that every good idea about TV could be countered by a bad concept. The bottom line for me is that we really can only tend to our own household, influence those close to us by serving, and hope that in rare occasions our actions allow us to assert an influence in a greater sphere.

    Meanwhile, I will still not watch much television, I will not chastise those who do, and I will smile to myself as I hear people discuss so called “reality television” as if the people who we view are our own community.

  • Trent

    There are a lot of pros and cons. Even the most fervent defenders of the written word can’t deny the appeal of television. It’s just so fun and pleasurable, even if you’re laughing at it instead of with it. I wouldn’t quite refute it so handily as Colin has – it’s more complex than that. We have to be critical but it’s so pervasive that it can’t be pushed aside. If anybody is interested in an in-depth analysis/comment/diagnosis on why we have to take it seriously, I recommend DFW’s E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction. It’s tangentially related to this debate.

  • MPot

    Ha! It’s an interesting argument, anyway. I like it on principle.

    But its merits? Let’s see.

    Premise 1: I suppose, but since they aren’t doing anything useful, either, television isn’t helping. Of course, those watching ARE consuming a lot of electricity, and since watching TV correlates with overeating, perhaps they’re also endangering their health, the financial position of their families, and perhaps contributing to air pollution with their flatulence? But not killing people. Hmmm. Does it all balance out?

    Premise 2: Don’t know whether television lowers the birth rate, but the second assertion here confuses correlation with causation. Television use is high in countries that tend to favour gender equality (or something close to it), but that doesn’t mean one causes the other, nor that both share a common cause.

    Premise 3: Yes, A/V is good at sending messages, but it isn’t effective at facilitating learning which, in this case, means changing behaviour. Good for ‘awareness” campaigns, not so good at spurring action or personal transformation. Besides, most of the messages people get from TV don’t have anything to do with promoting public health or other such goods.

    Premise 4: Aside from the conflation of values with truths, I would agree that values are among the things being communicated. What values are they? Depends on what you’re watching, to an extent. If I’m watching the 700 Club I’m bombarded with different values than I’d get from Mad Men. But no matter what I watch, every channel shares the values of commercialism, credit-spending, and the accumulation of possessions (and perhaps profit, as Colin argues). Is the communication of such values a public good? Perhaps not. Though, due to the points made in response to premise 3, perhaps this doesn’t matter so much, either.

    I enjoy television, mostly crappy game shows (yes, I can spend many happy hours every week with 25-year old episodes of Family Feud. What of it? Richard Dawson is my idol), but I’m aware that, while I do this, I don not contribute to the world in any meaningful way. I fritter my life away in distraction. Another “western” value, perhaps.

    It’s interesting to me that we feel the need to import our values to other nations, whose values are clearly inferior to ours. Some will be, some won’t. Depends on the specific values we’re talking about. But there are no uniquely “western” values that I am aware of that are both a) worth sharing and b) not valued in most other cultures. Honesty, beneficence, non-maleficence, dignity – -these are some of the values that come to mind. These also tend to be the values to which we pay only lip-service.

  • Colin

    Grant -
    Pursuit of profit and economic growth is indeed a Western value. I won’t deny that but that’s not really at issue.
    What’s at issue is whether that sort of value brings about positive transformation. And it doesn’t. It just leads to consumption and mindless, passive consumerism.

    Modern-day China shows that result doesn’t bring about an enlightened society.

  • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

    @MPot, I was going to agree with/refute your post on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, but then I was so struck by the last half of your last paragraph. Too true.

    @Mike Waddell — You might be right in citing TV as an accelerating force rather than a force all its own.

    There’s only one way to solve this argument, and, unfortunately, I doubt we will ever be able to set up a double-blind study in two countries — one with TVs for everyone, the other with no TVs anywhere.