Television reinforces many social stigmas

a July 1996 speech, President Bill Clinton stated that "a child watches approximately 25,000 hours of television before his or her 18th birthday." Recent studies by the Center of Media and Public Affairs have shown a growing concern about television's responsibilities to its audience.

Different from the moral endings of stories by Phaedro or Aesop, television shows a fantasy version of society where particular social groups are ridiculed or stigmatized: Italians are inevitably connected with the Mafia, Hispanics and African Americans are gangsters and so on. Unfortunately, the fates wanted me to be Italian, and not involved in the Mafia, and so it happened to be for many of my friends, relatives and colleagues. Dichotic feelings arise when I am asked in a whispering tone of voice, "Are you in the Mafia?" by seventh- and eighth-graders. These are the victims of Hollywood's nightly fantasy version of reality and social classes, the victims of a society that passively accepts the television "news," whether it comes from a news report or from the latest movie with Al Pacino.

"Oh, that's ridiculous! Television is only entertainment," some say. But the CMPA reported that we spend an average of five to six hours a day watching television. Inevitably, new images and new data are absorbed during the hours of tele-dependency; new data affect behaviors and attitudes toward things, people and situations. Television is not only entertainment, but a dangerous tool of miseducation. Research has demonstrated that children are the most exposed to the tele-machine; they are often left alone with the TV-babysitter, and their choice of programs is not scrutinized nor elaborated upon by proper parental explanation. Whatever the child is exposed to he or she is going to accept as a real data and use to enrich the luggage of knowledge he or she is trying to acquire.

If I am not mistaken, the purpose behind repetitive commercials is to convince the audience of the higher efficiency of one product compared to another. The more frequent the commercial rate, the higher the chance to persuade a buyer.

Television is an advertising company on a bigger scale that is trying to sell prejudicial positions toward certain social groups or minorities in order to get people to laugh and, therefore, watch a specific channel. The more the audience is exposed to images of Italians as Mafia members or of Hispanics as inner-city gangsters, the more negative the effect of the network message will be on people's believes.

The line between entertainment and miseducation was crossed when producers stopped considering that television is a significant sensory experience. The colorful box of images has a hypnotic power on people' s and, in particular, children's minds. What is seen, whether or not it's real, is assimilated as truth by many.

Television obviously has its positive effects, too. It has connected opposite parts of the world, has opened the doors to unknown worlds and has given the chance to fly on the wings of a cable net - but we are now talking about the non-fiction television, the television of documentary and CBS news; we are talking of the television that is followed by a low percentage of Americans, according to the CMPA, and which is definitely unchosen when challenged by movies or other fictional programs.

Television is like a rose, but with thorns. Audiences have to learn to cut the thorns off and consider television as the fastest visual tool of information, not as a babysitter or an indisputable truth-teller. Television is made by human beings to be used by other human beings; it cannot be in control of personal, moral and social beliefs. After all, it is just a box.

Lucia Pesce is a junior majoring in public relations.

Copyright 1999 by the Daily Trojan. All rights reserved.
This article was published in Vol. 138, No. 60 (Tuesday, November 30, 1999), beginning on page 4 and ending on page 6.