By changing frames at hyper-speed and using all the techno-gimmicks modern technology makes available to them, techno-shysters will seize the viewer’s mind, bounce it around, distort it, erase it, restore it, insult it, flatter it, tease it, and anesthetize it. They will dice-it-and-slice-it by means of multiple frames within the frame … None of it is there by chance. All of it is meticulously planned and engineered by people who hate you if you have a functioning mind.
ALAN writes:
Decades have gone by since I stopped “watching television”. To be sure, I had my share of favorite programs in the years 1954-’65, before I reached an age of intellectual-philosophical awareness. But in the late 1960s I began to notice changes in and about television that did not impress me favorably. From then onward, I spent very little time “watching television”. I thought most of it was appalling — then and now. All the shows that were all the rage meant nothing to me. I got the impression that there was an inverse correlation between the moral-philosophical content of TV programming and advancements in TV technology. The more sophisticated the latter became, the more degenerate the former became.
Until recently and by intent, I had not seen or listened to any TV commercial in more than twenty years. I am old enough to remember TV commercials from the 1950s-’60s that are now called “classic”; advertisements for shampoo, cereal, soup, cake mix, cigarettes, Anacin, Geritol, Speedy Alka-Seltzer, Rice-a-Roni, Mr. Clean, Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix, the Gillette Bluebird, and the Doublemint Twins.
Upon seeing what TV commercials are like today, my only reaction was unqualified revulsion. How, I thought to myself, could any grown-ups worthy of that name agree to sit through, watch, and listen to such adolescent-witted, razzle-dazzle hype?
I have long been a credits-reader. I like to read the credits listed after a movie or TV show. It was possible to do that with 1950s programs like “Perry Mason” and “Leave it to Beaver”, in which the closing credits were clearly readable and sensibly paced. Today it seems that credits are shown at hyper-fast pace, doubtless to move on as quickly as possible to the next razzle-dazzle spectacle, but perhaps also because many TV viewers cannot read well, if at all.
Another development in television that did not impress me was its bag of technical tricks, in which a scene is made to appear or disappear in a white flash, altered repeatedly, and presented in hyper-fast-cut edits within the span of a few minutes. All pretentious nonsense, I thought.
Compared with such high-tech hype, TV advertisements in the 1950s were models of restraint, form, and mannerliness. For an example, see the advertisements for Kodak film and cameras in 1950s episodes of “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” TV show.
In his 1851 essay “On Noise”, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote about the power of thought and concentration being reduced or shattered by random interruptions of noise. He could not have imagined either (a) the degree to which modern technology would make it possible to shatter thought and concentration not only by means of random, arbitrary noise, but also by means of unpredictable, formless, rapidly-changing visual scenes, or (b) the extent to which modern people would not object to such distractions but would welcome and pay for them.
A century after Schopenhauer, philosopher Richard Weaver wrote:
There is in the nature of great organs of publicity…something which causes them to cater increasingly to the sensate. The trend can be pointed out in a number of ways: first headlines become larger, then the language employed becomes jauntier and less responsible, next pictures begin to take the place of language, and finally substance itself is changed to appeal to appetites for the lurid, the prurient, and the sadistic. Thus the history of journalism has been a rather steady progress toward sensationalism…. (Visions of Order, 1964, p. 53)
He was writing about newspaper and magazine journalism in years before Americans would begin to place TV sets in their living rooms. But his words apply today with even greater force to everything shown on TV: Programs, “news”, and advertising. I can remember such things as they were in the 1950s. How they have changed from what they were then to what they are today is a perfect illustration of the trend he identified: There has been an exponential increase in the use of screaming and shouting, profanity, herky-jerky movements of the camera, optical tricks, and destruction and anarchy for the sake of sensation. In other words: A relentless assault upon traditional standards of good manners, self-restraint in speech and conduct, and decency in public discourse.
“Watching TV” requires perceptual awareness but not conceptual thought. That is why dogs can watch TV without learning anything. Is the same true for children before they have mastered conceptual thought? Not precisely, because TV teaches children things they are not aware they are learning — indeed, things their parents are not aware they are learning.
To read a book or a newspaper is to be in charge of one’s mind. It is to do something. It requires conceptual thought. To watch a TV show or advertisement is to surrender one’s mind. It is to be done to. It precludes most conceptual thought.
Richard Weaver understood this when he wrote that “one of the great conspiracies against philosophy and civilization, a conspiracy immensely aided by technology, is just this substitution of sensation for reflection….” (Ideas Have Consequences, 1948, pp. 27-28) By “sensation”, he meant hype, spectacle, and razzle-dazzle–television’s greatest achievements. By “reflection”, he meant conceptual thought, concentration, and memory–television’s prime targets for annihilation.
Nearly three hundred years ago, Lord Chesterfield wrote in a letter to his son: “….the steady and undissipated attention to one object is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind …”
A population of weak and frivolous minds….. Does that remind you of any population nearby?
Hurry, bustle, and agitation are exactly what we see in TV advertisements. What can be said about a population who welcome such qualities into their homes every day or agree to endure them and on multiple TV channels around the clock?
The purpose of “television news”, reporter Robert MacNeil wrote, “is to keep everything brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation through variety, novelty, action, and movement. You are required…to pay attention to no concept, no character, and no problem for more than a few seconds….” (Quoted by Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death, Viking, 1985, p. 105 )
In other words, “TV news” provides ever-changing sensation and discourages concentration. That is also a perfect description of modern TV advertising, whose purpose is to destroy restraint, form, mannerliness, and any other qualities that might encourage thought or civility. And that is why screens and sound are now everywhere: To prevent even a moment of quiet or respite in which you might be able to think or concentrate.
“Mind” means attention. It is, not by chance, the first casualty of TV advertising.By changing frames at hyper-speed and using all the techno-gimmicks modern technology makes available to them, techno-shysters will seize the viewer’s mind, bounce it around, distort it, erase it, restore it, insult it, flatter it, tease it, and anesthetize it. They will dice-it-and-slice-it by means of multiple frames within the frame, a variation on what is called “multi-tasking”, another modernist hoax and fraud. None of it is there by chance. All of it is meticulously planned and engineered by people who hate you if you have a functioning mind. But that is not the worst of it. The worst is that most TV viewers will lap it up and ask for more. Against good form, restraint, mannerliness, and proper speech, they will choose cutting-edge cool every time.
What does it mean to find oneself in a nation of such people? What do constantly changing visual scenes and technical tricks do to the potential for conceptual thought? What do American parents do to their children by permitting or encouraging entire generations to sit mesmerized before TV screens throughout their infancy and absorb such random, mindless, rapidly-changing distractions and technical tricks? Is any generation of children inoculated in those things even capable of learning conceptual thought?
Or is it an unstated intention of the entertainment industry to discourage that potential in children or prevent it outright? Is it their intention (along with that of government-run schools) to cripple children’s minds while claiming to educate and entertain them? Do the schooling racket and the entertainment racket work as a “partnership” in pursuit of that goal?
To learn conceptual thought and make sense of the world around them, children must have quiet, opportunities to concentrate, and grown-ups who are patient. Hurry, bustle, and agitation are exactly what children do not need but what modern parents sanction by planting their babies and children in front of TV screens and smartphones. Thus exposing them to thousands of colorful pictures will work to their advantage and help to make them “the best educated and most well-informed” people in history, parents and teachers are routinely advised to believe in what I suggest is one of the biggest of the Big Lies that dominate modern life.
Why is it that so many in the first generations to grow up on a steady diet of TV entertainment are now notoriously semi-literate, irresponsible, unable to concentrate, and seldom able to speak or write sensibly?
What changes are wrought upon the infant brain and the child brain by a never-ending stream of constantly-changing pictures on TV screens? How do those changes alter the potential for learning conceptual thought? Why is there so little discussion of these questions in the public forum, with rare exceptions like Marie Winn, Jerry Mander, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Neil Postman, and Dr. Bruce Charlton?
I sat with my grandmother in the 1950s as we watched some of those classic TV advertisements on our black-and-white television. She would be appalled by today’s TV advertisements — possibly by what they try to sell, but certainly by how they are framed and presented.
Grown-ups in the 1950s would have said that advertisements filled with such hyper-agitation are an insult to one’s mind and sense of life. And they would be right. But most TV viewers today are not grown-up. They have no mind or sense of life to insult. They are perpetual adolescents in thrall to the great pagan god Techno-Hype.
— Comments —
Kathy G. writes:
I agree with everything posted here. I would add that I think the older generations would find it very strange how many advertisements are actually cartoons now, even cartoon animals, where before it was White men in lab coats or suits selling stuff in ads.
