Geraldo Made Me Watch TV And Listen To Mercyful Fate: Part 2

Part: II

TV

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”
~ Yoda

There’s a common misconception about the Devil living in the center of the Earth. This is far from the truth because the truth is closer to us than we think.

Warning: This Might Sting a Little

He lives in the center of our living rooms, inside our TV sets. Television is clearly evil in the sense that, as an abstraction, it preys on our emotions and deprives us of judgment and critical thought. It has become so ubiquitous and transparent that we no longer notice it as a spectacle or neat appliance, but rather as an invisible part of us that plays into all aspects of our lives. We become what we see, without knowing it. It’s a modern marvel built by Satanic geniuses.

But?

• “But TV is a valid and useful news outlet.”

The News
Okay, I’ll admit that I can see the usefulness of a communication tool in times of severe weather – I do live in tornado alley. But it’s extremely half-assed because with the internet, one can get that information faster and from the same source (National Weather Service) that the talking heads get it from and without the mock dramatizations. Local and national news programs have always been a funny enigma to me. In the span of half an hour to an hour, we receive an extremely truncated version of news worthy material. Serious expressions from well dressed and good looking hosts give way to light hearted banter as we watch the reading of a story from a teleprompter to a segueway into the next segment. In my view these people are not journalists but instead actors or performers whose main job is to look good and act as professional and inoffensive as possible. Seriously; why would anyone watch this diluted crap when a good ole’ fashioned newspaper or an online news site is within reach? Both of these formats are far more efficient in that it takes less time to absorb more information, and unlike broadcast news, one has a choice on what news to read. My only guess about this topic is laziness. Instead of reading the news in an engaging fashion, TV watchers are simply and generally told the news in a passive state – it’s easier.

• “But TV is a form of entertainment.”

Sporting Events
Hey, I like football as much as anyone, but when I sit on my ass and watch a 3 hour NFL game that has an average of 10 minutes of actual play time, I can’t help but think that I’ve been ‘sold on the cheap.’ The other 2 hours and 50 minutes were spent watching players mill around and line up, coaches mouthing plays and getting pissed, injuries, half-time shows, replays in slo-mo, listening to useless commentary, and of course the commercials; which tend to be of the manly variety – beer, trucks, Viagra, etc. The infamous Joe Six-Pack plays into the hands of advertisers as his belly grows and his bank account gets punished.

What!?

TV Stoners & Teleholics
Television is psychologically addictive. Like other addicts ranging from the closet variety to the full blown “I need a fix!” type; TV watchers will never admit to watching too much television. According to a 2008 study by Nielsen Media Research, the average American household watches an average of 8 hours and 18 minutes per day, while the average daily TV time for an individual is 4 hours and 45 minutes. And everyone’s familiar with that glazed over stare that accompanies the couch potato; directly attributed to rapid editing, visual and auditory effects, and of course the emotional pull, whether it be suspense, comedy, action, sorrow, or joy. Television is a visual medium specifically designed by and for visual creatures. Is it any wonder that the communication of messages through the tube to the watcher closely resembles the way humans learn? We’ve become so accustomed to its existence that we unknowingly depend on it. And that’s the point. To create isolated voyeuristic creatures that openly receive information laced with neat rewards that ultimately damage them, but fulfill another. It’s a legitimate business strategy that has worked for all human history; TV is just the newest incarnation.

The Commercials
The genius of TV and its parent, the advertising industry, is the clandestine creation of needs. The physical TV is the delivery truck, and the medium is the shipment of goods right to our eyes and ears. There’s a catchphrase called, Content & Fill that’s used in the advertising industry to describe the ratio of Content; being the commercials, to the Fill; being the vehicle or show to deliver the message. I’m gonna hand it over to my good buddy Noam Chomsky for this one. In this answer to an interviewer’s question he clarifies and takes the point farther:

The content is the advertising. The fill is the car chase or the sex scene or something, that's supposed to keep you going between ads. If you look at a television program; the creativity and the imagination and the expenses and so on are for the ads; the car chase you can pull off the shelf. And in fact this has led to a serious deterioration of the political system… (and now a necessary digression-ed.) Take a look at the last campaign (presidential ’04). The campaigns are run by the same people who sell toothpaste, exactly the same PR agencies. And when they sell a candidate they do it the exact same way they sell a lifestyle drug. You don't put up information about the candidate, what you do is create delusional images that delude and deceive. The population knows it. A very small number of the population, about 10% of the voters, literally, knew the stands of the candidates on the issues. And it's not because they are stupid or uninterested. It's just like you don't know the characteristics of toothpaste.

Chomsky kinda goes off on a political tangent here, but what he’s alluding to is that, the medium of television has the ability to be anti-democratic and controlling.
==>One way is through the ownership of broadcasting companies that consist of large conglomerates with multiple business interests. To function efficiently as companies, they would not communicate media or news that conflicts with their business interests, thus presenting a biased view. However, it’s important that they present their view as fair, balanced, and complete to the public in order to engage the maximum amount of viewers.
==>The second way is that through the distractive nature of TV; audiences are made to be fearfully apathetic. It has been said that a population is easier to control if they are distracted from things that matter. If people are obsessed with consumerism and superficialities, they will be less likely to care about important issues. If people are afraid and uneasy, their anxiety can be used to sell anything from bug spray and fuel injection cleaner, to guns and war. The bottom line here is to keep people from thinking by dumbing them down and distracting them.

Brave New World & 1984
Aldous Huxley published Brave New World in 1932; and we have been feeling the aftershock ever since. Not because of the book, but because of its story and irony becoming truer everyday. It's about a country that's very happy and somewhat utopian. The government of the fictional country achieved this by drugging the populace into passivity with commodities and drugs that everyone wants and needs. Sounds scary and familiar to me. 1984 was published in 1949 by George Orwell. This book paints a similar portrait, but instead of mindless passivity, the population of Orwell's country are controlled strictly and brutally via an invisible totalitarian dictator and regime. Both books use the sci-fi platform to tell about humanity's path. 1984 is reminscent of the U.S.S.R. and Brave New World is reminscent of families watching 8 hours plus of TV per day...

Where’s The Funny Part?

Have you ever encountered:

• Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
• Seasonal Affect Disorder (SAD)
• Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD)

I’m guessing a few have heard of these disorders. But not from their doctors. That’s because they were made up by advertising agencies – and one comedian.

This is manipulation in its finest sense, and the key is our participation. If we didn’t buy the products featured on TV, the television medium would not exist. Geraldo had a hit with his Satanism special and subsequent re-runs because there was a demand for it. His staff and ABC knew this; that’s the reason they produced it. Fear is the fuel that makes the machine go and the public’s best interest is not to be informed and educated in a critical way, but to be manipulated through entertainment into mindsets of paranoia and anxiety that produce diluted thinking and soft conclusions.

• I remember my giddy pleasure when the Kibbles ‘n Bits commercial came on. “ I want my Kibbles ‘n Bits ‘n Bits ‘n Bits…” It’s almost like proto hip-hop!
• My mother always got a little teary-eyed at the end of the American Express commercials. Shit, I just found one on youtube with Jerry Seinfeld as a fish out of water in Britain promoting the card that had me smirking.
• And the ‘Bud Light; Real Men of Genius’ series. Funny, funny stuff!
• Who can forget the crying Indian commercials from the 1970s as part of the, ‘Keep America Beautiful’ campaign.

The point being, is that this stuff is powerful and works marvelously. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with laughing and crying. But when our emotions are hijacked for the purposes of marketing a product to us, it just feels sinister even though we’re all laughing.

And Then What?

The Off Button
Saturation, submersion; the idea is not to notice it. But when the TV is figured out and turned off… well, it’s like we’re being turned on! It’s like a cold beer on a Friday afternoon; it’s like taking ski boots off; it’s like an amazing bowel movement; it’s like an orgasm; it’s like listening to your first Mercyful Fate album!

to be continued...

Sources:
Chomsky, Noam. Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements Of Propaganda. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1991
Gitlin, Todd. Media Unlimited. New York: Henry Holt & Company LLC., 2002.
Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1977
McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium Is The Massage. New York: Random House, 1967
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves To Death. New York: Penguin Books, 1985
Schor, Juliet. Born To Buy. New York: Scribner, 2004
Wallace, David Foster. “E Unibus Pluram: Television And U.S. Fiction.” The Review of Contemporary Fiction. (1993)

NoOne’s Listening. 7 Dec. 2005 Chomsky.Info. http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20051207.htm
Americans Can’t Get Enough Of Their Screen Time. 21 Sep. 2006 Nielsen Media Research. http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.55dc65b4a7d5adff3f65936147a062a0/?vgnextoid=e6db9c9ba2ecd110VgnVCM100000ac0a260aRCRD