Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

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It works the same way, albeit more subtly, with the behavioral content of advertising and programs. 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 it flashes past nonetheless. 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.

The Irresistibility of Images

Western society, biased toward the objective mental mode of experience, tends to be blind not only to the power of images but also to the fact that we are nearly defenseless against their effect. Since we are educated and thoughtful, as we

"Western society tends to be blind to the power of images [and] to the fact that we are nearly defenseless against their effect"

like to think, we believe we can choose among the things that will influence us. We accept fact, we reject lies. We go to movies, we watch television, we see photographs, and as the images pour into us, we believe we can choose among those we wish to absorb and those we don't. We assume that our rational processes protect us from implantation, or brainwashing. What we fail to realize is the difference between fact and image. Our objective processes can help us resist only one kind of implantation. There is no rejection of images.

Raise your eyes from the page for a moment. Look about your room. Can you reject what you are seeing?

In Nicholas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, the main character is a visitor from another planet who arrives on Earth and is slowly transformed by what he sees. He becomes transfixed by television. At one point, in a fit of madness, he screams at the TV screen: "Stop it, get out of my mind, go back where you came from." But the images don't go back. They remain. He goes crazy.

You are watching Walter Cronkite. He is reporting the news. He apparently tells facts. It is impossible for you to judge the truth of most of what he tells you. He reports events from a thousand miles away. You take his information on faith, or you decide that he is wrong. Then he says the bank you work in was robbed today. "Not true," you shout, "wrong bank." You have rejected the news. You could reject it because it came as a fact that you could check. You could halt its entry into you.

Meanwhile, however, you have ingested Cronkite. His smile, his hand movements, his tone of voice, the way he holds his head. The image enters your cells. Style is also content.

If you are watching the Bionic Man, or the President explaining a policy, or the Fonz talking to his girl, or Dr. Marcus Welby, or the spokesman for Bank of America, you are receiving several levels of information at the same time.

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