Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

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If you need further proof of this, there is always advertising.

A recent study showed that a greater percentage of voters based their decisions concerning candidates and ballot propositions on information received from advertising than on information received in any other way. This may be partially due to the fact that, except for big electoral races which are widely reported in all news media, we are likely to receive a greater quantity of data from advertising than from news. This is certainly true of most congressional races, and is even more true of local assembly races and ballot issues.

Yet we all know that advertising cannot be considered truthful. In fact, it is by nature one-sided. Advertising always reflects only the facts and opinions of the people who pay for it. Why else would they pay for it? And yet, knowing that, people use advertising information as though it can be relied upon.

The situation is clearer still when it comes to product advertising. When you are watching an advertisement, you know for sure that the advertiser is trying to get you to do something: buy the product. You also know that the people in the ad are not "real," that is, they are actors who are speaking lines, in situations that do not represent their actual lives. Everyone knows this. We all know that the motive of the sponsors and the actors and the writers of the ads is that they are all trying to implant a feeling in us that will eventually get us to buy something.

We know they are doing this but we very often act on the ad. Advertisers don't care at all if you know the advertising is fictional. They make very little effort to fool you about that, because whether or not you know it is fictional, the image of the product goes into your head. From then on, you've got the image and there's no letting it go.

If you then walk through a supermarket and spot the toothpaste that you've been carrying as an image, a little click goes off in your head. Familiarity. It doesn't mean you'll buy the toothpaste, but the click goes off anyway. They implanted the image, and you then carry it around inside you like some kind of neuronal billboard. There's nothing you can do about it if you're going to keep watching television at all. Your knowledge of real and not-real is useless. All images are real.

In a sense, the advertising images are more real than other television images because you get to see the image "live" right in your supermarket. First you ingest the image of the toothpaste from television and file it. Then you see it in the store and you recognize it. (Have you heard your child say, "Hey, I saw that on television"? There's a real excitement being expressed.) If you buy the toothpaste, it's then right there in your bathroom, so the image from the screen materializes in your home. Advertisers are the alchemists of our day.

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