Why is television so addicting to the point that people are willing to sacrifice 8 hours of their free time? That’s 33% of a day, and if you get about 8 hours of sleep, you only have 8 hours for other things like family, social time, work, school, etc. Rodman suggests the theory that people use TV as a distraction from an unhappy life. TV becomes a means of self-medication. It has numbing qualities that allows the viewer to get lost in another world and leave their own reality behind.
I have another theory about television addiction. We live in an incredibly voyeuristic culture. We love watching people’s lives and knowing every detail concerning what they do. What they eat, who they date, their sex lives, their jobs, their social habits. As a culture we are fascinated with this. Just look in tabloid magazines and you’ll see pictures of the latest celebrity grocery shopping or taking out the trash: “See! They’re just like us!” And it’s not just celebrities’ lives we’re fascinated with. There’s a huge number of reality shows on TV including The Real World, The Bachelor, Laguna Beach, Flavor of Love, Survivor, and The Girls Next Door. These shows play on our culture of voyeurs (were we already voyeurs or did TV create a culture of voyeurs?). Let’s take The Real World as an example. It’s a show of supposedly “real” people going about their everyday lives. In actuality, it’s a completely sensationalized version of “real life.” Constant parties, beautiful people, glamorous lofts, buzzing cities, exotic vacation. Whose life is really like that? We watch because it’s a sensationalized version of reality, much more interesting and dramatic than our everyday lives.
This TV addiction based on voyeurism has some major effects on our society. It ties in directly with cultivation-theory which states that the world perception of heavy TV viewers will be greatly distorted. I think watching sensationalized reality will only make self-medicating with TV a greater problem. Addicts will compare their “average” lives to the “average” lives on TV bringing on further unhappiness and addiction. Another effect? Only one in four Americans read a book last year. Besides just voyeurs, we’re quickly becoming aliterates too.
From US Weekly website. Titled: "They Pack Their Own Trunk!" Uma Thurman, packs her own trunk. See other funny ways they are "Just Like Us": http://www.usmagazine.com/just_like_us_08_01_07?slideshow_id=247&o=0
Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County??
Flava-Flav and his ladies. Mind-numbing fun.
4 comments:
This has always been a really interesting topic to me. Why do people sit and watch TV so much. I'll call myself an addict to TV. I tend to agree with Rodman in that TV is nothing more than a distraction. When I watch TV, I don't really care what's on, and I usually just leave it on Sportscenter or CNN to create background noise. I don't think people become as absorbed by TV and pop culture as the market research says.
TV seems to kill thought more than promote it, and because of that, the "idiot box" doesn't consume a persons thoughts, but suppresses them.
But one could argue that leaving your TV on as "background" noise, as you say, could just as easily be indirectly influencing your life with out you noticing it. The advertisers and even the stations are all controlling what content, brands, lifestyles are shown and whether you're someone who buys into those ideals or not... you're STILL hanging out with that TV on and whether you want to or not you're gonna see things as you glance at the screen.
Whether you (the non TV addict) like it or not... you still get some kind of influence and maybe even a small kind of dependency.
I liked your insight on the fact that American culture has become voyeuristic through television. Fifteen years ago the only reality shows on TV were things like Real World and Road Rules. Now the entire VHI lineup in reality shows, or clip shows that feature reality shows. MTV is right there with them, with very few shows that aren’t “Reality” based. I feel as a whole the country is becoming more voyeuristic due to these types of shows and it’s probably not healthy. People think that these shows are how reality is for other people, and when their lives aren’t like that its depressing.
I agree with you that people are just interesting in other people's lives. This is like the theory that never change around the world. The TV shows these days are just being so different that they were as usual. It became more entertaining and gossipy. That's because people "us" want to observe other people like celebbrities' lives because they just seems so different from us. Especially teenagers, they dream about lives of celebrities all the time, having alot of money, driving a luxurious car, and shopping all the time. TV is playing with a strategic media to the audience to make them want to watch the NEWS that they want to watch. It makes TV so important these days that people addict to it.
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