Brains Don't Wash: Television and the Myth of a Media Hierarchy

As stated in the introduction to this blog, the seeds of this first post come from the Facebook status of my good friend Whitney Oliver. Her status, in short, simply stated that she just 'wasn't feeling' the show 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,' though in her mind she had given it a good chance. Following were a myriad of responses, two of which stood out to me: one person described the show as appealing to a 'different side' of humanity, the characters being 'all id,' the point being to depict and satirize, through hyperbole, the underbelly of apathy; another person decided not to engage in the discussion, but rather simply to say, 'Television poisons your mind and brainwashes you.' Upon further discussion, the second commenter expressed the fear that the 'sociopathy' described by the first amounted to a dangerous 'television trope,' responsible for negatively influencing the personalities of viewers.

While of course, this is a limited perspective, from one individual, I feel it is safe to say that there are many who share this person's opinion, and that this opinion has been largely embedded into our culture, even as television has risen to prominence and secured itself as a medium of mass appeal. Television is frequently lambasted for 'brainwashing' the masses, 'poisoning' the intellect, and encouraging counter-productive or otherwise dangerous behavior of a wide range—sociopathy, of course, being included. Typically, this designation operates by means of comparison—television is pitted in an inevitably losing battle against more 'worthy' and 'important' media. What results is something of a 'media hierarchy,' in which the capabilities and functions of specific artistic media are split into ranked categories.

Though there is, of course, no universal media hierarchy, it is relatively safe to assume some overall trends which emerge from this cultural hegemony: literature seems to be at the top of the tier, as does film, despite years of suspicion amongst various intelligentsia in a manner similar to television. The visual arts and theater are also frequently placed here, though also seem, to a certain extent, to embody 'niche' worlds which both challenge and reaffirm their superior statuses. 'Erudite' musics (such as European classical and jazz) are also placed here, whereas 'contemporary' or 'popular' music forms are seen as fulfilling more 'personal' needs (after all, who doesn't love [these kinds of] music?), and as such are placed into a restrictive yet exalted category of distinction.

Similarly dismissed forms such as comics and video games occupy the dangerous and frivolous lower sphere along with television, though these two forms, in particular, seem to a large extent capable of transcending their 'unimportant' designation either due to their occupation of culturally driven 'niche' worlds in a similar fashion as the visual arts and theater, or to their association with upper-tier media. For example, the popular term 'graphic novel' (often applied after-the-fact to collected editions of serialized work) creates a space for comics dealing with predetermined 'literary' content to be considered not solely as comics, but also as 'literature' (the exploitation of this term by major publishers allows works with content formerly dismissed as frivolous, like superhero comics, to exist in this space as well). Video games are commonly associated with cinema, which is apparent in the cultural fixation with in-game cutscenes. To further complicate matters, separate hierarchies exist in association with these media, as part of distinct, overlapping cultures concerning 'gaming' and 'comics' which largely operate independent of the broader, more traditional cultural designations of the media. In short, comics and video games have formed self-sustained subcultures (complete with their own unique sets of evaluative criteria) which protect them, to a certain degree, from their external denigration.

Television, on the other hand, is not protected in this way. While, of course, a thriving communications department is part of any healthy university, and the existence of television seems pretty secure at the moment, the cultural attitude towards the medium is at best complacent and only incidentally appreciative; at worst, it is hostile and combative, as the statement spurring this discussion (and the fact that most who will read this, I am confident, have heard it several times in altered forms) indicates. From this, a few questions arise:

most immediately, why is this such? And, more directly in relation to the statement in question, why does it matter? Why go to such lengths to establish this in first place, let alone to defend the cultural placement of a media which is secure in its existence, anyway? Establishing definitive, absolute answers to these questions would surely prove very difficult, if even possible. As such, it seems more suited to the task at hand to revert back to the statement in question and attempt to answer these questions indirectly and incidentally.

What most immediately comes to my mind (and to be sure, what formed the approach I took when responding) when I hear, "Television poisons your mind and brainwashes you," is the redundant and simplistic nature of the statement. Most notably, 'brainwash' is a diluted term which has been overused to the point that its actual meaning is somewhat suspect. In various contexts (and often in one individual context) it could refer to either a type of negatively connoted 'hypnosis' or to the psychological theory of 'social conditioning.' These two meanings are related, but by no means synonymous; furthermore, they do not seem at all to be adequately described by the term. The former meaning implies a sophisticated and subtle form of hostile coercion containing tones that 'brainwash' just doesn't capture, the latter's definition holds the devotions of entire university departments. In order to even respond to such a statement, it must first be elaborated on so that its meaning can be more finitely established. In this context, after just such elaboration, it was identified as 'social conditioning,' or 'social engineering' as worded by its author, who argued that negative television tropes such as the 'sociopathy' mentioned might be responsible for crafting the personalities of viewers in ways which they are both unaware of and complacent with.

This is getting to the heart of the issue, and is specific enough to work with. Social conditioning has long been demonstrated as existent in human interaction, and though to what extent it factors in to human behavior is perpetually a point of contention, that television exists as an agent of social conditioning in our society in at least some form is virtually undeniable. Furthermore, I would even agree that television has negative influences on society. Where I deviate from this claim is in the totality and uniformity it is typically accompanied with—like all other media, I believe that television as a whole has neither a uniformly or inherently positive or negative influence. In fact, television is not unified in any manner of speaking at all, save that it contains moving images and sound (even this does not always hold true).

Up until this point I have described television as a 'medium,' ignoring the fact that the term 'medium' is an immensely nebulous and complicated term. In some contexts it refers to a means of distribution, in others it refers to what might better be described as a 'form' or 'genre' (although these terms, of course, come with their own limitations and complications). As such, it is important at this point to clarify that, unlike the other media I have placed on the 'Media Hierarchy,' television is in fact not a unified artistic medium, despite that it is often discussed as if it were (thus why I chose to place it in comparison to other artistic media). It is only a 'medium,' then, in the sense that it is a 'means of distribution,' which in fact contains a virtually infinite number of forms which are not unified in any contextually relevant manner. To complicate matters, the form of television is not even unified as a means of distribution, as many people watch 'television' shows these days on a variety of devices (computers, phones, MP3 players, etc.) which are not television sets. As such, to say that television 'socially engineers' a person in a negative fashion is to attach a sense of uniformity to the medium that simply isn't there. One could argue that television is still all negative, even if it is negative in several different ways, but such an argument would only hold up as part of an extremely pessimistic world view, and would be hypocritical unless extended to every medium. Television programs include everything from shows like the one in question to news broadcasts, political debates, commercials, book readings, educational programming, public service announcements, and media typically not associated with television, such as televised films and even, solely, music. To suggest that all 'serialized-narrative-visual-live-action-comedy,' (terming the show in question a ‘sitcom,' even, is of questionable accuracy) is necessarily and uniformly of only negative influence is absurd enough when the facts are laid out—to suggest that all content distributed via television is, in all contexts, negatively influential has absolutely no basis worth giving attention to.

I do not mean to pretend as if television is uniformly positive by any means; nor do I mean to undermine the medium's specific limitations. Most notably, television is of a commercial nature which is both relatively distinctive and magnanimous. Though I do not believe that this affects content in a uniformly negative way, it undoubtedly has vast-reaching negative influences which lead to programming which is crafted, sometimes in virtually absolute ways, by commercial interest. But though the intensity of this type of commercialism is largely distinctive to television, it is by no means limited to the medium. Commercialism shapes the content of other media in a negative manner, and, likewise, television programming has long demonstrated the ability to transcend its commercial nature for the purpose of profundity.

In the realm of the 'sitcom,' for example, most people will yield to the fact that there are 'exceptions' to the rule, like ‘All in the Family,’ ‘Cheers,’ ‘Good Times,’ ‘Family Ties,’ and ‘Roseanne,’ which all grapple with serious themes and/or important social issues as well as being innovative in terms of writing and acting; what is less commonly recognized, however, is that the 'exceptive' status of these programs is questionable—for example, the theme of 'social injustice' is something of a trope in sitcoms, with even seemingly whimsical programs dealing with it at least at some point, such as 'Family Matters,' (as reflected in an episode where Laura faces racial discrimination) 'Full House' (an episode in which D. J. flirts with bulimia) and 'Boy Meets World' (an episode in which one of Eric's girlfriends, of Asian ethnicity, is attacked with a racial slur at the mall). I do not mean to suggest that themes such as this are always dealt with in sitcoms, nor that they are adequately dealt with when they are merely glanced over; but their existence as a traditional element of the sitcom is undeniable. What’s more, some argue that the trend of the occasional ‘serious’ episode in the sitcom has declined precisely because serious themes are tackled with unprecedented frequency. And sitcoms aside, programming with undeniably positive functions exist in television, such as presidential debates and emergency weather forecasts. Likewise, both works of a strong commercial nature exist in other media (such as genre fiction), and works that are undeniably of a negative influence (such as racist literature and artwork) readily exist and sometimes flourish in other media, saying nothing about the frequent sexist, racist, and otherwise offensive stereotypes which are perpetuated in virtually all media, all of the time.

The reality is that any criticism of television as a whole should only come with the full awareness that television is only a means of distribution, and thus is not uniformly and inevitably of any one particular orientation. As such, if people wish to criticize the trope of ‘likable sociopathy,’ they must first recognize that the trope exists in other areas of our culture, and then criticize this trope specifically, rather than assume it represents television as a whole. If one wishes to claim that television breeds inactivity and apathy, they must first recognize that many physically and politically active people watch television regularly with enthusiasm (and, of course, that both programming encouraging physical activity and political passion are routine in television).

When these and other basic facts are recognized, it becomes clear that 'media hierarchies' do not do justice to the complicated nature of all media—including television—and that they (erroneously) assume restrictive features in what actually display immense variety of form and content. Not only do they not achieve anything productive, but they are in fact self-defeating due to their illogical orientation. As such, while I would actively encourage that we criticize all media in involved and socially motivated ways, it is best to assume that brains don't 'wash' (nor are 'washed'), media don't 'poison,'—‘social conditioning’ is ‘social conditioning’ and neither 'brainwashing' nor 'poision'—and that reductive and redundant rhetoric does not achieve anything of importance to the study of media, nor to humanity as a whole.

Introduction, or, the History of Deez Mediaz, or, Why in the Hell Are You Reading this Fucking Thing in the First Place?

Pseudo-self-deprecating (actually immensely self-centered) title aside:

Long story short (believe me—this is the shortest you'll ever get it :P ), I have a tendency to, as my dude Joseph puts it, 'get worked up' on the Facebook statuses of others. A couple weeks ago, I did just such when he posted a concise statement saying that while he was not in 'celebration' of Osama bin Laden's death, he hoped that it would signify closure concerning a decade of excessive and aggressive U.S. military pursuits, to which, after some basic conversation, I responded by ranting verbosely about foreign policy. He responded by saying that, despite my long-winded response, we seem to pretty much agree on the important parts of the subject, and that perhaps my detailed writings on foreign policy would be better fitted into a blog, where more people would (perhaps >_<) pay attention to them.

In the couple weeks since then, I have engaged in three or so Facebook debates with various individuals—one of them being a lengthy (and heated) conversation with the author of this blog concerning the appropriate and rational way to deal with fundamentalist religion, due to a conversation in progress on my good friend Skye's status. The second was, similarly, on a post of Skye's and on the topic of the rhetoric of the 'New Atheism' movement, and was considerably more civil (and thus more productive and interesting). The current one is now in progress on my friend Whitney's status, about television, and is being abandoned so that it can instead be summarized and placed here as my 'inaugural' blog.

What brought me to concretize this decision was another conversation with Joseph (via Skype, as he is in Japan at the moment), wherein he teased me about the fact that I always 'get worked up' on Facebook. In defense of myself, I said, "Hey, man, it's an opportunity for intellectual discourse!" His response was, "If you're using the term 'intellectual discourse' on Facebook, you're trying too hard, man! You should get a blog!" My response to this was to create a status playfully mocking him: "Andy Jones is looking for opportunities for intellectual discourse. Any suggestions?" When my friend Dwight suggested that I look to blogs, I ceded victory to Joseph and decided to start one myself.

And that's pretty much that! Intellectual discourse ftw, man—it's what it is. I've limited the focus of this blog to 'media theory,' which I feel is a nebulous enough space for me to work within, and perhaps enough to create the illusion of unity amongst the mess of convoluted entries which will surely follow, starting with the (I hope at least somewhat convincing) debunking of the myth that television is a 'poison' which will inevitably 'brainwash you.'

Pieces.