"I do not expect the media to recognise its duty to humanity, but lets contextualise the psychological studies which take a simple and incoorect assumption of direct influence. The only reasonable conclusion from such studies is to sanitise the media (exercise the violence from the programs). Now this will have an effect on the media, it will make it in its present context even more barren and trivial and re-enforce its negative development cutting off what little potential it has for giving human social expression a meaningful avenue."
Thanks taking the time to write... a great post. I would not support the censorship of violence; but I would be interested to know whether anyone on this list would feel that a ban on commercials would be an attack on freedom of speech?
I sometimes try to explain to Americans that one of my biggest traumas was being nine years old, watching a movie on TV for the first time in the U.S. and having a commercial interrupt it. I was confused and then aghast. "Is it over" I asked. "No, no, it's just a commercial." The main message of that commercial for me being: we don't care who you are, we don't care what you're doing, we don't care how you feel, we are going to interrupt because we can. Fuck you. But it's really hard to express the horror of that experience, because that experience is just life; it's just reality here.
The only thing that was ever useful to me about commercials is that they made me understand the spectacle of the seven deadlies. All you out there who read any medieval stuff or even Marlowe's Faustus. Everything is going great for our hero, when they bring on the march of the seven deadly sins: lust, wrath, gluttony, sloth, etc. and the hero falls apart...sells his soul...whatever. I could never get that, why/how could someone come undone by watching this gross stuff parade across the stage. Then one day I was watching a commercial, when it suddenly hit me: this was it: gluttony, sloth, avarice, envy, lust...that's what commercials are selling and that's what they use to sell...AND IT WORKS!!!
I mean, to talk about violence without talking about the violence of advertising is silly. But hey, have they ever done a study on the effect of commercials on the human psyche? And, if they find out it's not to good, what then?
There's just one good thing to remember about this mess: if it were really true that we are inherently and inescapably greedy, lustful, angry, lazy....why do they need to reinforce it every ten minutes? Why?
Joanna