TV as an indicator...

[Declan McCullagh]

I remember seeing the Nazi agitprop films during anthropology classes
in college. I'm not saying that modern TV is particularly splendid.
But at the producers are capitalists trying to maximize ratings (and
sex and insults may do that), not murderous government officials
trying to justify mass extinction.

-Declan


On Mon, Jul 09, 2001 at 09:20:32AM -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
> I turned on a television set last night, for the first time in many 
> months.  I was watching videotapes, but I caught fragments of shows 
> while tapes were rewinding, etc.
> 
> American TV has taken a definite turn for the vicious since I last 
> watched.  It's still pablum-and-opiates, but someone has spiked it.
> 
> We're seeing an increasing focus on elitism, "survival of the fittest", 
> etc -- shows that present the "elimination" of the weak as a virtue, 
> and where game-show hosts masquerading as intellectuals intentionally 
> humiliate contestants.  We are seing a separation of moral responsibility 
> from action and being conditioned to accept viciousness in authority 
> figures.  We are also being conditioned to accept the idea that some 
> form of pseudo-intellectual "correctness" excuses viciousness.
> 
> The tone is very similar to "entertainment" or "public education" 
> films that were produced by the propaganda arm of the german National 
> Socialist party in 1936-1938, which I remember from school but 
> which folk in Germany, or those who attend current-day American 
> schools, will not recognize due to censorship.  We forget history, 
> believing that this will prevent us from repeating it rather than 
> the other way round....
> 
> The progression was reasonably simple, as I recall. 
> 
> First, the people are conditioned to accept "harsh reality", survival 
>    of the fittest, etc. 
> Second, the people are conditioned to accept that, these things being 
>    inevitable, hurrying them along is a virtue. 
> Third, some class of people are identified as being "inferior" and 
>    pseudoscience upholding the claim is advanced.  
> 
> The shows I saw last night were deep into the second stage, and 
> universal public monitoring is now more pervasive here than it was 
> then and there, and our schools are raising a generation of people 
> who think monitoring and draconian weapons laws are normal, and 
> ideas not "politically correct" are being persecuted as vigorously
> here as they were in Nazi Germany. 
> 
> The parallels continue...  The "new media must be controlled" of 
> that era was radio and television -- now it's the internet.  Same 
> basic debates going on -- most of the same outcomes happening.
> 
> I am scared.
> 
> 
> 				Bear