Humanist and environmental activist Jerry Mander is nearing 80-years-old, but you wouldn’t know it to hear him. In recent years he has spoken on the dangerous, unsustainable and “obsolete” system of global capitalism, but his earliest and probably most influential public work is his manifesto warning about the many dangers of television.
Here in his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, the author uses his experience in media to explain the broad effects that television has had on our society. There are not actually four arguments; rather, there are hundreds of small arguments fitting around four broad categories.
Unfortunately, as he is quick to point out, these ideas are not quickly or easily explained. Many ideas are admittedly based on anecdotal evidence, complicated by a lack of scientific study at the time of its publication, but Mander’s observations are apparent to any TV watcher. For the purpose of this review, we’ll analyze just a few of the ideas he presents.
Unifying All Experience
A 1960s advertising guru who could have easily come straight out of AMC’s Mad Men, Mander understands the concept of selling useless trinkets we neither want nor need. Television is of course a big advertiser’s most useful tool. In the words of Mander, the television “implants” images in your mind in a way that can never be completely exercised. Consider for example what pops into your head when you are walking along a street and see a Jos. A. Bank retail location. Does the advertisement reappear in your mind? Can you hear the announcer’s excited voice in your head?
Television’s dangers are not limited to advertising however. Television is what Mander calls a “unity device,” an instrument that has unified people’s experiences all over the country into a single form. Where as before there was diversity, now almost everyone watches television, more than 4 hours a day on average, or what works out to two months of nonstop television watching every single year, or 13 years of an average life. We think we are all doing different things, having different experiences, whether we are watching sports, the news, reality shows, the latest crime drama or situational comedy.
Televisions, like God, are omnipresent. More than 99 percent of Americans have a television set in their homes. It seems that most waiting rooms now have televisions. Trendy upscale coffee shops or doughnut stores have them. Even prisons keep inmates pacified with the boob tube.
As we watch, we think we are having a different experience than our neighbors, but in reality, we are all sitting quietly in a room, watching a glowing screen. We’re not having different experiences at all. This can have broad, unpredictable effects on a society.
For example, Mander notes that people who watch television have strikingly similar views on a variety of topics, many of which are wrong.
“Heavy viewers of television were more likely to overestimate the percentage of the world population that lives in America; they seriously overestimated the percentage of the population who have professional jobs; and they drastically overestimated the amount of violence. In all cases, the overestimate matched a distortion that exist in television programming. The more television people watched, the more their view of the world matched television reality.
Knowledge that television programs were fictional [police dramas for example] does not prevent one from “believing” them anyway, or at least gaining important impressions which lead to beliefs.
You see Archie Bunker or the Waltons solve a family problem. You find yourself in a family situation which is not dissimilar. The image flashes past. You may reject it, but… if that’s the only imagined instance you have available to call upon for such a situation, you are somewhat more likely to be influenced by it. You don’t interrupt your behavior to say, “Wait a minute; I’ve got to keep straight my bank of television imagery from my bank of real-world imagery.” The mind doesn’t work that way… All images are real.”
Complex Ideas are Lost
Most people when asked will suggest that television is a neutral technology, that the quality of programming is the issue, not the television itself. But, Mander notes, that TV can only communicate what is direct and visual. It cannot communicate complex ideas, even with lengthy programs dedicated to educating an audience.
For example, showing a person crying communicates a lot about that person’s mental state, but communicating depression or melancholy takes more time and probably dialogue. Showing lust is easy on television, but showing brotherly love or compassion is far harder and less exciting. When programs try to show the loss of native lands or the destruction of the environment, it is easier to show pictures of forest being cut down than to explain why those places had value in the first place.
My aunt was in a motor accident many years ago. Her hands shake as a result. Everyone can understand this and it can be communicated on television very easily. However, trying to show her sadness or her loneliness would take far more effort. As Mander puts it, “It wouldn’t make ‘good TV.'”
It’s why television programs trend toward showing violence, anger, lust, death and other physical actions. Even when presented negatively within the context of the program, alternatives cannot be described. As a result it becomes harder for people to grasp these more complex emotional states when they are not watching television. The alternative traditions of patience, sustainability, and nature are at a natural disadvantage. People ultimately end up caring less about the world that treasures these values.
Many of us know that one friend or family member who watches too much television, over-dramatizes events and has difficulty communicating. Is it possible this is effecting us all in ways we can not detect? After all, almost no one alive today can remember a time without television. How would we know if our culture had undergone a massive change in tone?
“The medium is the message,” Mander writes echoing philosopher Marshall McLuhan, meaning that television’s dangers cannot be avoided by watching “good shows.” The risks are implicit in the technology itself and that it has the potential for serious harm and limited good.
Television as Sensory Deprivation
All types of control involve very similar methods. First you disrupt the target’s natural awareness and sense of events, then you implant a new reality you want them to absorb.
Take advertising for example. First you disrupt the target by getting their attention, then you implant the new ideas. In advertising slang this is shortened with the acronym AIDS or AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Sale/Action). First, your perception of reality is disrupted. You might hear a radio ad that begins with a siren or a scream. Then interest is built by providing you with a story, say a car crash. Desire is created by proposing a product or service, say roadside assistance or auto repair. Finally, the ad commands you to make a purchase.
Hypnotism works similarly. First, the subject’s normal way of perceiving the world is disrupted. He or she is “induced by a fixed and abstracted attention of the mental and visual eye, on one object, not of an exciting nature.” (source) This can be followed by suggestion.
Cults also operate in a similar manner, forcing victims to separate themselves from their existing reality (family, friends, work life, etc) and commit to the new reality created by the cult leadership.
There is another method of control commonly called “brain-washing.” When done correctly, the mind is completely shattered. New ideas can be implanted with a minimum of effort. When conducting a brain washing, the subject is put into a state of “sensory deprivation.” This means that the subject is separated from as much sensory data as possible. The subject will be blindfolded, placed in a room with a constant temperature, and his arms and legs constrained. Ideally, his toes and fingers will also be separated by cotton or otherwise immobilized. An apparatus will be placed in the mouth to limit tongue motion. Finally, the subject may be suspended in room temperature water to limit the feeling of gravity. In this state, the subject has no senses at all. All experience that remains is the experience of the mind.
While you might think this would make the mind stronger, the opposite is true. Quickly, the mind’s defenses break down. The subject “goes crazy.” At this point, all stimulus the subject does receive takes on extra weight. The messages are extremely powerful.
Is television a similar experience to sensory deprivation? Mander suggests there are some similarities. Watching television or films requires the subject sit in a quiet room with little else going on. The lights are often dimmed. The subject is made as comfortable as possible, usually on a soft chair or sofa. The messages on TV may not be as total or domineering as that of a government reeducation program, but could they still control our desires? Our sense of perception?
“Because the rest of your capacities have been subdued and the rest of the world dimmed, these images are likely to have an extraordinary degree of influence. Am I saying this is brainwashing or hypnosis or mind-zapping or something like it? Well, there is no question that someone is speaking into your mind and wants you to do something. First, keep watching. Second, carry the images around in your head. Third, buy something. Fourth, tune in tomorrow.”
Our Distance from Nature
Mander’s book isn’t the ultimate tome of anti-television literature. That book doesn’t exist yet, but it’s a great start and in that context, a classic piece of literature. As a humanist, Mander’s belief in the inner-person, what it truly means to be alive, is inspiring. Further, he addresses something I’ve long wondered about. Our distance from nature.
“It was obvious to me from my own work that something was wrong with what people were understanding and what they weren’t. A new muddiness of mind was developing. People’s patterns of discernment, discrimination and understanding were taking a dive. They didn’t seem able to make distinctions between information which was pre-processed and then filtered through a machine and that which came to them whole, by actual experience.”
Mander writes that while our conscious minds may know the difference between television imagery and the real thing, something subconsious does not. This inability to separate the real from the image had deadened something inside of us. Here he describes his visit to the Dalmatia straits:
“I could ‘see’ the spectacular views. I knew they were spectacular. But the experience stopped at my eyes. I couldn’t let it inside me. I felt nothing. Something had gone wrong with me. I remembered childhood moments when the mere sight of the sky or grass or trees would send waves of physical pleasure through me. Yet now on this deck, I felt dead. I had the impulse to repeat a phrase that was popular among friends of mine, ‘Nature is boring.’ What was terrifying even then was that I knew the problem was me, not nature. It wasn’t that nature was boring. It was that nature had become irrelevant to me.”
Conclusion
Mander discusses dozens, perhaps hundreds of other smaller arguments. From the obvious point that almost all television programming is controlled by a small handful of corporations, to the more theoretical discussion of brain waves and neuroscience. By the time you come away from Mander’s masterpiece, you will feel more strongly than ever that the reality we know is merely a manufactured lie. In short, this book is highly recommended.
For the record, here are the four arguments or general categories Mander divides his arguments into.
1. Television promotes autocratic control.
2. It is inevitable that the present powers-that-be (or controllers) use and expand using television so that no other controllers are permitted.
3. Television affects individual human bodies and minds in a manner which fit the purposes of the people who control the medium.
4. Television has no democratic potential. Even when the content is of the highest quality and its message noteworthy, it is shallow.
