Content must conform to the medium through which it is delivered.
Over the last 100 years America has shifted from typographical to pictorial communication. Because of this shift we have become culturally obsessed with entertainment. Even topics of great importance like politics, religion and education have been reduced to entertainment ploys.
Political debates have become boxing matches. News shows handpick eye-catching hosts to attract viewers. Social issues that were once hotly debated become the focus of reality television.
Before 1947, the number of televisions in homes around the U.S. was in the thousands. According to Nielsen Media Research, the average American home has more televisions than people. The average American spends over four and a half hours watching television per day.
This has contributed to an epidemic of cultural illiteracy. Not because we cannot read, but because we choose not to. Instead, we trust television as a sound source of information.
In 2011, a Newsweek survey with 1000 participants revealed that 81 percent of Americans could not name a single expression of power within the Federal Governments. Forty three percent of people polled were unfamiliar with the names of the first 10 amendments. Twenty-nine percent did not know the name of the vice president. The survey was quickly picked up by comedians and spun into a source of entertainment. This allowed us to escape careful reflection about unnerving the state of education by laughing it off.
Our obsession with entertainment has damaged our ability to think critically. Studies have shown that television lulls the viewer into a state of near-hypnotic relaxation. Yet, we still use the television as a medium for public discourse. The problems inherent to the use of television for serious discussion became glaringly obvious during last week’s presidential debates.
Presidential debates were once taken seriously. Candidates came with written and articulate arguments and talked for hours, often breaking for dinner and returning, in order to clarify the nuances of their political policies. We haven’t the attention span for that.
Modern presidential debates are clocked boxing bouts. No substance necessary. The candidate who throws the most punches is declared the winner. Romney exemplifies the logic behind the scorecard of American debate. Despite denying his own tax plan and spewing a multitude of untruths, Romney was declared the winner because he was aggressive. Obama simply underperformed.
In the allotted time slot, even the most gifted speaker could not thoroughly explain his plan for economic recovery. The content was just not made for the medium.
Neil Postman argues in his book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” that television undermines rational inquiry because it requires “complete passivity” from its viewers. He argues that intellectual arguments can only be thoroughly made through the written word. By forcing the most important discussions to fit the limitations of our televisions we rob the discussions of their true power. Similarly, we force ourselves to become passive onlookers instead of active participants.
Each day, our country becomes more like Aldous Huxley's dystopia in “Brave New World.” A country where mindless entertainment is used to control the masses, to encourage consumption and apathy and to convince the citizenry that success is defined by economic growth as opposed to intellectual development.
We have become a nation whose voter turnout is greater for American Idol than for the presidential election.
Reach the columnist @Cmjacks7@asu.edu or follow her at @JacksonCrista
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