“I’m turning it off,” my mother would say as we were sitting down to dinner. She didn’t care that there were only 2 minutes left of Hey Arnold and it was a new episode—the TV was off before I could even make my case.
My views on television have changed rather sharply since my Nickelodeon days; in fact, now I hardly ever watch television, even online. Two summers ago, I was over at a friend’s house and she suggested we watch a few episodes of The O.C. Having never seen the show, I figured it’d be interesting to see what all the hype was about. A few minutes in, I was completely puzzled.
All I saw on the screen were some tanned SoCal babes gossiping about each other’s sex lives while driving expensive cars and hanging out at their parents’ pool houses—set to hyper-cheesy dramatic music. Pleasant to look at? Yes. In any way intellectually stimulating? Not at all.
The world I saw on screen was so far from any reality I knew, even controlling for the fact that I obviously didn’t grow up in southern California by the beach or have hottie girlfriends like Mischa Barton. What I gleaned from my short O.C. experience was that the brains behind the show—and most of modern television as we know it today—were money-making geniuses, creating a dream world that sucks people in and spits out huge advertising-generated revenues.
The best way for television networks to get the attention of a large number of people is to create something everyone can easily understand and relate to. Not surprisingly, sex seems to be the number one interest-generator for television. In a 2005 study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, sexual content was found to be present in 70 percent of the programs (including American Idol, The Simpsons, and CSI) that are most popular with the 12-to 17-year-old demographic. The numbers are likely higher in shows geared towards adults.
I’m not saying I don’t find sex interesting. It’s a topic on most people’s minds a lot of the time, and it makes sense that human activity on TV should at least touch on the topic. If I were a television producer, I’d also want the people involved in the sex to be physically attractive—good looking people having sex is definitely more enticing than average looking people getting it on. That’s where the problem comes in.
Not everyone is good-looking, and not everyone has sex all the time. In fact, I think most people would agree that the opposite is true. (harveymaria.com) The depiction of sex on television—occurring easily, constantly, randomly—creates false expectations for viewers, which are then subconsciously translated into their own nonfictional lives. Needless to say, these expectations are rarely met. A 2007 University of Michigan study found that increased television watching is “associated with lower levels of psychosocial functioning,” and increased emotional interaction is linked to increased social anxiety.
Producers also target people’s less carnal desires—material wealth. Shows such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Dirty Sexy Money don’t even try to hide what they’re promoting. The teenage cast of The O.C. lives in beachfront mansions and drives Range Rovers. The highly materialistic images propagated through television fuel America’s conspicuous consumption.
Unfortunately, there is no systemic solution for the hazards associated with television consumption. Some people may be able to watch TV and be completely aware that television is not reality—just the creation of an industry in which the ultimate motive is to get as many viewers as possible. I know I’m not immune to television’s spicy plots and sultry leading ladies, so I choose to tune out. I don’t need TV to tell me what I want or how I should act—for that I count on my own experiences, not manufactured images on a screen. Perhaps my mother was a bit harsh in her rule over the television, but at least she had the right idea. Like anything else, just because it’s there doesn’t mean it’s worth watching.
is this moron?