Programmable

As consumers of television, we are all influenced daily by the things we consume via our televisions. Fully aware of this process, many groups have arisen, over the years, to chastize "Hollywood" for the lack of options. While it was much easier to focus on and try to influence the television industry, when there were only 3 major networks, those days are long gone. Today, when I choose between Direct TV, AT&T U-verse, Cox cable, and more; I am essentially choosing a different order of the same 200 to 400 television channels. My options now are more numerous than ever.

 With so many options, televison has become more fragmented than ever. Viewers today find that the same television that once brought us together , via a handful of shows running at any given time, still brings us together. These days Americans are living in each others stereotypes, from The Basketball Wives to Jersey Shore. It all makes me long for the good ole days, when as a child, I could discuss my favorite shows with classmates and friends. Shows like Bonanza, Little House on The Prairie, and Gunsmoke, bring back great memories. For family shows, I can recall: Leave It to Beaver, The Brady Bunch, My Three Sons, and I Dream of Jeanie. When I think of excitement, I remember shows like: The Dukes of Hazzard, Starsky & Hutch, Hawaii Five-0, and Cojac. Finally, when it came to comedy, there were shows like: Sanford & Son, All in The Family, Good TImes,  The Jeffersons, Happy Days (and spinsoffs Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy). This group is a fair representation of my childhood in television.


  I loved all of these shows. For me, it was not until college (in courses like sociology and psychology), that it ever dawned on me that the television shows I had spent too much time watching, as a child, had an impact not only on my world view, but my self image. I could not have cared less. Less, that is, until I had children. Then, all of a sudden, it hit me. More goes into the confidence, character, integrity, and the morals of a child than their parents, alone, can control.  

  Just like withholding love, affection, and positive reinforcement from a child has a negative impact. Children, even the smallest of children, can be negatively impacted by the information they consume via their television. As that television consumption has steadily grown, so has the impact on the minds of the consumers. All of us!

 While we, as a society, know more now than we have ever known about brain function, we tend to focus our research more on how it impacts former football players than average Americans. However, denying or not understanding the fact that we are all "programmed" by the things we hear and see each day, does not change that fact. Said another way,  how we visualize ourselves and others in this world is not something we create from "whole cloth". It is impacted daily by the outside information we consume. Everything from a school teacher's smile to start the morning or the lack thereof, to casual eye contact from a neighbor or coach, helps define how each of us finds our place mentally and socially. We all see and process that information, whether we acknowlege it or not.

 Today, with one thousand times more options on the big and small screen, entertainment has become one of the clearest reflections of where we are, as Americans. There are some ideas so objectionable and outside our shared norm, that they are difficult to accept, even as we live them, like what in means to have a "Brown" President. The fact that our entertainment and our reality,  often share the same space in our minds is not always a good thing, but it begins in our earliest thoughts.

 The long-term results of our experiment in entertainment are hard to deny: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/19/doll.study.reactions/index.html and in a separate study http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7213714&page=1. 

  The bottom line is that we are all "programmable" and the battle over school curriculum or textbooks might be missing the point. Is it possible that by the time our children reach school, their perceptions will already be fully formed? After all, our children get more everyday on the television, which impacts how they see themselves and the world, than all the other messages they recieve each week combined. Parents, school, and church cannot keep pace with the thousands of images shown on television.  As parents have been forced to work more, the schools have been asked to cover more problems with less resources, and the churches have simply fallen in line with one, or the other, prominent political positions. I wonder if the story is the same in the "blue" states?

 The result is all of us, as American entertainment consumers, have gotten better at looking right past each other, to identify with the stereo-type we have ingrained in our hearts and minds. We continue to miss the opportunity to show the next generation the good in all God's creatures. Not just the sharks and pit bulls and pit vipers, but human beings of other ethnic backgrounds, religions, and cultures. One side of our paradigm is content to stand as "pro gun" and "tough on crime", and the other side is so busy getting the "Hollywood" money that both refuse to insist on more positive messaging. And we all suffer the consequences!