Beware! TV Kills

In Crack in the Box, Peter Hamill compares television and drug use. The correlation he describes is that television has likely been the cause of the countries rapid inclination in drug use. An increase use of television has created within us a need for more stimuli, acquired by means of less effort. To understand this more clearly, we must look closer at the similarities between drug use and television. So what are the similarities that Peter Hamill provides us between drug use and television?

Peter Hamill suggest a variety of similarities between the two, one of which is that television viewers are unable to experience life while watching television. An individual may watch a sitcom, action movie, or drama and experience a variety of emotions without actually living to experience them. A drug user will exhibit the same behavior by shooting up and feeling that high with no real life work to achieve it. Both promote laziness and provide both users the sense that no effort is needed to feel instant gratification.

Another similarity that Hamill suggest is that television is a consciousness-altering instrument, taking the user out of the “real world” and into a plethora of other realities. Users abuse television as an escape from the ills of society, from the pangs of their own trials, and to avoid facing those problems with conscious thought to solve them. Drug users also use their illegal substances as a form of escape from the “real world” because life is “too hard”. Television makes life appear simpler, a drama unfolding where particular problems are often solved within half an hour to an hour and result in a happy feeling. In the real world, problems do not always work themselves out like this, in fact it would be fair to say that in order for an issue to be worked out so quickly would take an immense amount of effort and energy emotionally.

We must understand that the most important effect of both addictions is the quick change in moods. Hamill explains that this change in moods is not earned, that a television user can simply hit a button and be instantly gratified and mood-altered almost as quickly as taking a pill. As I mentioned before there is no real effort to watching television, you simply turn it on and change the channel. You can lie comfortably in your recliner or sofa while consuming Laffy Taffy or Mike-n-Ike’s (my personal addictions). If I am feeling blue or sad, I effortlessly find a sitcom or comedy to make me laugh. And none of it requires any real imagination or thought process to acquire that laughter. Television even provides us auditory cues for when to express a given emotion, with background music or laugh tracks. Nothing is required of us, we merely sit and watch and allow ourselves to be spoon-fed emotions like an infant.

We must make an effort to put up safeguards to prevent this addiction to instant gratification of emotions. It is imperative to our mental health and stability. How do we go about putting up these firewalls of protection from television addiction? Hamill makes some suggestions on the best way to approach this. First we must take control of the television and its use by our children. Allowing them to watch television selectively and not just randomly based on what they want to feel. Finding quality programming that will allow them to walk away and think about what they have viewed. We must also limit the amount of time our children are in front of the television by encouraging them to go outside and play, to read a book, or some other constructive activity. These activities will exercise their ability to process their own emotions by some means of effort. Second, we must educate our youth in television as a subject, much like literature. This enforces that the drama unfolding on the screen is an art, an expression of creativity, and challenges them to consider ways of improving entertainment as an art.

After watching a movie with my own children, I always challenge them to consider how they felt about the technical merit of the film. How did they feel the actors portrayed their perspective characters? How did they feel the costume department did to convey a certain time period? How did the music move you in some way? What could have been better about the way musical score was used in certain scenes? Examining the hard work that the many people provide to entertain us allows us to correct in our eyes that movies and television are works of art, not reality.

And finally Hamill suggest that we need to live life, to read, to think. We should experience external stimuli which will enable us to process our own emotions by thoughtful consideration of the event or experience. This requires limiting our exposure to television and media, so that we may experience real life and allow real life to aid us in experiencing genuine emotions.

In conclusion, we must take this knowledge and find applicable measure for our lives. While it may be impractical to obliterate all forms of media for the specific use of increased stimuli, we must still control our urge to haphazardly utilize cheap methods of feeling emotions. Emotions are our humanity and to negotiate them unwisely would be our unending failure as a species. By controlling our ability to instantly gratify our emotions, we will become more equipped to deal with the issues and problems in our lives not simply to escape from them.

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This was a paper I had written from an article written by Peter Hamill "Crack in the Box". This article can be found at the following link.

http://www.petehamill.com/crackandbox.html