according to postman what is the danger of depending on tv as a myth
Storytelling is the bang-up process that makes the states recognizably man. A story is an effort to brand the invisible visible — information technology has to do with relationships, with intellectual connections. We have to have some device to brand the visible, dramatic, revealing and embodied in human beings whose characteristics we know and whose actions we tin understand. We alive our lives in terms of the stories we tell.
What are these stories? How do nosotros weave them into the very complicated uniquely human construction called civilization? Basically there are three kinds of stories:
- In that location are stories substantially nearly how things work. Stories that make the inner dynamics of life visible are typically chosen fiction and drama, sometimes mythology. There is no other way to tell the truth virtually how things work except to construct the facts of the case so as to pb to the natural development of the underlying message and significance of how things really work.
- Into that context will fit the 2d kind of story – a story about what things are. It is a kind of factual story: the legend of yesterday or the news of today. It has no meaning by itself, it only has meaning when nosotros fit it into an immensely complex structure nearly the pregnant of it all.
- A third kind of story is a story of action. It's really a story of value and option, the prerequisites for action. If this is how things work and this is what things are, we and so contemplate a complex of choices, and do something. A story like this presents a desirable goal within a lifestyle. Information technology tin exist an instruction or a sermon, only mostly it is a commercial — a story of value and choice with which nosotros are surrounded all the time. We happen to live in a culture which offers many, many things to obtain, presumably desirable goals. This is what y'all ought to practise, ought to buy, ought to vote for, ought to consider.
The three kinds of stories take always been woven together in many intricate combinations in a seamless fabric of civilisation, in different ways at different times. Humankind has woven together the stories that we tell, every bit nosotros humanize our children and ourselves, in three different means: the Pre-Print Era (30-fifty,000 years long), the Print Era (300 years long) and now the Historic period of Telecommunications.
Basically the age of telecommunications is the age of telly. And television is the fundamental cultural instrument, the historical predecessor of which is non print or even radio, but pre-impress religion. Television is that ritual mythbuilder — totally involving, compelling, and institutionalizing as the mainstream of the socializing procedure.
Five Functions of Television every bit Myth
Equally in pre-print cultures, boob tube (or storytelling) provides five functions for society.
Outset of all, television is ritual. Information technology is very different from print and motion picture considering information technology is less selectively used. Most people don't watch television receiver past the program, just by the clock. In the average domicile, the television is on more vii hours per day. It has its own rhythm, oft governing the rhythm of the home.
Secondly, television is highly institutionalized. There are basically only a few major sources of television programme production. A grouping of about 100 people in Hollywood produce more than 95 percentage of all the programs and essentially decide what most Americans will see.
Furthermore, television receiver is an establishment that is in the concern of assembling people and selling them to advertisers at a price. There's an overall concept of programming (storytelling) – whether it is news, drama, talk shows, audition participation, daytime serials, whatever — predicated on the formula of "price per yard." The bones formula that determines whatsoever programming is "how cheap can we provide this without offending likewise many of the people who will tune in anyway?"
"Those who tell the stories hold the power in social club. Today television receiver tells almost of the stories to about of the people, most of the fourth dimension."
— George Gerbner
Telly is also total in its grasp of an otherwise heterogeneous mass audience. Only near 7 per cent of children's viewing time goes into "children'south programming" and then most children watch what adults scout. Of class there is very lilliputian regional, ethnic, religious or other carve up programming. So there is a totality of audition and a uniformity of programming concept and program structure.
Needless to say, television is entertaining (compelling) considering it is predicated upon giving some kind of apparent advantage all the time. Nosotros can argue about the quality of the reward; nosotros cannot argue that no one is driven to spotter goggle box, yet people scout information technology a great deal. Why? Because it brings, I believe, some sense of instant satisfaction. It is the offset musical instrument of humankind to bring the millions of people who accept always been "out of it" into the mainstream of cultural life. It has brought the famous, the powerful, the cute into the lowliest homes.
People picket goggle box because no one is going to accept it abroad from them. And they will watch it until and unless something more than bonny can be provided in their everyday lives. Television is a groovy bond among otherwise very heterogeneous and diversified groups.
Finally, television is the overall socializing process superimposed on all the other processes. By the time children tin speak (permit alone go to school and perhaps learn to read), they will have captivated thousands of hours of living in a highly compelling world. They see everything represented: all the social types, situations, art and science. Our children learn—and we ourselves learn and maintain—certain assumptions most life that carry the impact and the imprint of this most early and continued daily ritual. In our historic period, it is idiot box mythology we grow upwards in and grow upwards with.
Our studies for over xiv years testify that television basically keeps those who are already in the mainstream more embedded in it by helping them hold its tenets more rigidly. Then, television set brings members of those groups that have less, or more, than television offers into the mainstream, likewise.
What is the mainstream like? Allow me pick out some of the more salient features on the basis of some 4,000 programs and l5,000 characters that nosotros have analyzed.
First of all, TV is a earth in which men out number women at least three to one. This male cast makes the world revolve mostly around questions of power. That is
Why television is and then violent: the best, quickest demonstration of power is a show-down that resolves the event of who can go abroad with what against whom. On goggle box, at that place is an incident of (this kind of) violence on the average of five times an hour.
It is too a world in which a few professions (doctors, lawyers. entertainers, law enforcers and lawbreakers) far outnumber all other working people put together. It is a mean and dangerous world, and we discover that those who watch more boob tube are more than insecure and apprehensive. They demand more protection. They are more likely to even approve of, if not welcome, repression, if it comes in the name of security. This is a unsafe syndrome we call the "hateful world syndrome." It is potentially highly volatile, both politically and morally.
The Need for Media Literacy
There seems to be no dubiety that television's appeal is based on its intimate connection with viewers' needs and aspirations. Although we may amend its content, we certainly volition not suspension that link, and nosotros definitely will not abolish television set altogether. At best, we tin can merely teach people how it works and how to use it in ways that are healthy for themselves and for the club.
Our sense of powerlessness virtually television is devastating and mystifying. To accept it is to accept disenfranchisement. Television is a hidden curriculum for all people, financed by a hidden tax without representation, paid past everyone regardless of whether they use the service or not. You pay when you launder, not when you lookout. Every time you buy a bar of soap a fraction of that toll is a taxation levy for TV advertizing. The total tax amounts to betwixt $55-65 per household a year depending upon the market place in which you live.
What then should be the terms of our appointment? That there is an appointment is clear. Information technology has to do with very bones conceptions of life and the dynamics of our society. The more than explicit we can make the date, the better we can address it.
Bringing these terms of engagement to consciousness is the number one task of instruction today, which is no longer in the business organization of dispensing cognition, but rather instilling proficient habits for managing knowledge. Pupils today learn nigh of their data from idiot box before the teacher can teach it, and they bring it with them to school. This is a greatest challenge for education today.
Information technology is also very important, I believe, for traditional religions to address explicitly and specifically the consequence of television as a cultural machinery. Taking a position, or some combination of positions, already is an important step toward beingness in command of our own world, of our own perspective. Whether or non your awareness activity is formal media literacy training, any steps toward critical interaction with the television you see represent huge steps forward.
Above all, turning off the set is not liberation, but an illusion. You can plough off the set, simply you still alive in a world in which vast numbers of people don't. If you don't go data and ideas through the 'box,' yourself, you get them through the cultural "environment" created by the millions of people who are watching.
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Source: http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/societys-storyteller-how-tv-creates-myths-which-we-live
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