Television

Television causes harm to the human psyche in insidious ways. Much of its harmful effects are in the form of subliminal messages. These subliminal messages are not just in advertisements, but also in movies and sitcoms. They do not just convince us to buy products that we would otherwise not buy. They also condition us into believing that certain evil behaviors are okay and even amusing.

We are more likely to disagree with a controversial message when it is delivered in an explicit manner. The explicit message presents itself at face value, and we can easily see it for what it is. Subliminal messages, on the other hand, get into our subconscious and, therefore, they easily escape our scrutiny. That is why we are much more likely to agree with a subliminal message than we are to agree with an explicit message.

What if a person on the television screen were to tell you that a certain behavior, which you knew was wrong, was actually okay? You would likely disagree. What if, however, you were to see a character exhibit this very same behavior on the television screen while the other characters barely batted an eye? Such a scene would deliver the same message, but in a subtle manner. It would be more likely to escape your notice, yet the memory of the lack of reaction from the other characters could linger in your mind, and perhaps make you believe that maybe this behavior is not that bad.

One may argue that television is meant to just be entertainment, not a moral compass. However, television does still act as a moral compass. Every time a character on television exhibits evil behaviors while the other characters do not bat an eyelash, television is sending the message that this behavior is okay and meant to be tolerated. These messages may not be the intended affect, but they are an affect.

Adults are affected by what they see on television, not just five-year-olds. People idolize the characters they see on television, and sometimes even live through them. People want to look like them and sometimes even BE them. Studies have shown an increase in disordered eating behaviors among women in Fiji and in East Africa shortly after they were exposed to Western television in the 1990s. The young women reported feeling admiration for the characters they saw on television, and wanting to look like them, including being thin like they were. While Fijian culture traditionally favored robust appetites and plumper body types, after the introduction of television, young women reported even being pressured by their families to lose weight by exercising and dieting.

We can see that television is not just entertainment. Viewers perceive television as a representation of how they should be, though they may not want to admit it. This article discusses the harmful kinds of subliminal messages on television. If you deny that it has an affect on you, then your denial only increases the affect.

Scenes on television that we should find to be disturbing

There are scenes throughout television featuring events that should have provoked outrage among the characters, but do not. Such scenes send across messages that what happens in these events is okay when it is not. One example is an event from the TV series The Office, the popular reality TV show within a show. In one episode, Pam, the receptionist, is having a dispute with one of the other employees. In one scene, he is briskly walking towards Pam in an aggressive manner with the likely intention of physically attacking Pam. He is about to attack Pam when suddenly one of the cameramen, who secretly has a crush on Pam, stops him. Because the cameraman was not allowed to appear on the screen, he loses his job. A later scene shows the man sitting in his apartment bummed out that he lost his job.

We, as the audience, are supposed to think it romantic that this nice man who secretly has a crush on Pam has lost his job while trying to protect her. What we do not notice is that there should have been outrage among the other characters that this man literally lost his job because he stopped another man from physically attacking a woman. For him to keep his job, he would have had to let the other man attack Pam while they filmed it. Perhaps the man would have gotten into legal trouble for attacking Pam eventually, but the attack still would have been allowed to happen, and Pam could have gotten badly hurt. None of the characters, not even Pam’s husband Jim, questioned the validity of the reasons for this man losing his job. None of the characters expressed outrage at this injustice.

In another scene of The Office, Pam is about to go on a date. Stanley, one of Pam’s coworkers, says that if Pam orders the most expensive thing on the menu, then she will “have to put out.” This statement made by Stanley also should have provoked a negative reaction among the other characters, but instead the other characters do not bat an eyelash. The idea of a woman owing sexual intercourse to a man she is on a date with simply because she ordered an expensive food item is akin to prostitution. Furthermore, Stanley has a teenage daughter! One would think Stanley would not give this kind of advice to his teenage daughter, but Stanley has no problem with giving this kind of advice to someone else’s daughter.

Some TV sitcoms feature the buffoon husband married to a smart attractive wife. An example is the TV series Everybody Loves Raymond where Raymond is portrayed as your average every day man. The buffoon husband and the smart attractive wife, as a theme, are viewed as comical, but when we look closely enough, we may notice that the buffoon husband is often a rotten person. Raymond may act like a buffoon a lot of the time, but when presented with the opportunity to take advantage of a situation for his own personal gain and at the expense of his loved ones, he suddenly becomes cunning and crafty. In one such episode, there was a dispute between Raymond’s wife Deborah and Raymond’s mother Marie. The dispute was causing Deborah and Marie to compete for Raymond’s affection and do all of these nice things for Raymond.

What did Raymond do? Raymond intentionally pulled off a scheme with the effect of prolonging the dispute so that he could continue to reap the benefits. In the end, Raymond was scolded by his brother for “taking advantage of the situation”, but did Raymond actually feel any remorse? Not necessarily. Sometimes evil disguises itself as idiocy where the wrongdoer plays dumb a lot of the time, and where the wrongdoer’s true intelligence only manifests when the wrongdoer has the opportunity to pull off a wicked scheme for his/her own personal gain.

It is okay to break into someone’s home, as long as you know the person personally

In the land of television, it is okay to break into someone’s home, as long as you know the person personally. An example is in the first episode of the Bones TV series in which Dr. Brennan’s X-boyfriend sneaks into her house. Dr. Brennan senses that there is an intruder, and graps a baseball bat. When she sees him, her reaction is nothing more than “oh, it is my X, he wants to talk to me.” In real life there would have been reason to arrest him, but in the land of TV, it is okay for him to break into her house because he just wanted to talk to her.

Various other scenes in movies and sitcoms show characters barging into the home of another character uninvited. Another example is in the 1990s movie Dennis the Menace. Six-year-old Dennis walks right through the unlocked door of Mr. Wilson’s house, up the stairs, into Mr. Wilson’s bedroom and shoots an aspirin down Mr. Wilson’s throat. Mr. Wilson was outraged, but he seemed to complain more about the aspirin being shot down his throat than he did about Dennis breaking into his house and into his bedroom.

Mr. Wilson rightfully asserted to Dennis’s father that he is the victim, but we as the audience are not expected to take Mr. Wilson’s complaints seriously, because he is portrayed in the movie as an old grump who complains about everything anyway. We are expected to find his complaints to be comical, but in my opinion, some of his complaints are legitimate and should have been taken seriously. After Dennis’s criminal act of breaking into someone’s house, nobody explains to the little boy that it is wrong to break into somebody’s house. They only explain to him that it is wrong to shoot an aspirin down someone’s throat.

Stigmatization of celibacy

Another toxic message from television is a strong stigmatization of celibacy. Strong messages throughout television tell us that something is wrong with us unless we are having sexual relations all the time with multiple partners. If you go so much as six months without having intercourse, something is wrong with your life. If you do not lose your virginity by a certain young age, you have done something wrong. In the movie Mean Girls 2, Johanna gets laughed at for being a virgin, and she is only 16 years old!

I can only imagine how toxic these messages must be to teenage audiences, many of whom are prone to insecurities. In reality, sexual promiscuity is self destructive and destructive towards others. It spreads diseases, including the AIDS virus. It results in unwanted pregnancies, leading to the killing of unborn babies by the millions. It leads to emotional harm as people engage in a high level of intimacy that is only meant for very intimate long-term relationships. In the land of television, having sexual intercourse with a person one only met that very evening is the norm.

An extreme example of the normalization of sexual promiscuity and the stigmatization of celibacy is the TV series Sex and the City featuring four women living in New York City and going on dates. According to one episode of this TV series, if you go three months without having sexual intercourse, you may as well be revirginized. Even dating someone for two weeks without having intercourse is considered weird. All four female characters have sexual relations with a different man every other episode. Holding off sex until marriage is unthinkable.

Virginity and celibacy are private decisions that are to be made by individuals. Asking people about their sex lives has no place in civilized conversation. One would not just walk up to a married couple and casually ask them how many times per week they have sexual intercourse. That would be a highly personal and inappropriate question. Those who choose celibacy are not to be judged by any means, but when celibate individuals watch TV, their lifestyle is judged.

Adults need the assistance of children when making adult decisions

Television shows numerous movies and sitcoms where children are smarter than their own parents. An example is the feel-good movie It Takes Two starring Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson. Alyssa’s father, Roger, is about to marry the wrong woman. Alyssa and her twin sister Amanda know that this is the wrong woman, but Roger does not. So the bulk of the movie shows Alyssa and Amanda trying to get Roger to marry Diane, the right woman.

Once again, something is wrong with this picture. The children know who their parent is supposed to marry, but the parent does not! This is abnormal. Adults are not supposed to require the assistance of children when making adult decisions. In this scenario, because of Roger’s incompetency in discerning a good person from a bad person, Roger is not only unable to protect his own daughters from bad adults, he is forcibly exposing them to the bad adult by marrying her and making her into her step mother. Alyssa and Amanda are left with the burden of having to convince their father that this woman is bad.

The 1990s movie Problem Child 2 is yet another example of a movie where the father is about to marry the wrong woman and only his son and his new friend know she is a bad person. The son and his new friend are burdened with having to prevent the wedding from taking place. Eventually the father realizes this woman is indeed a bad person while he is literally standing on the wedding aisle. He decides to marry the good woman that the children knew was the right person all along, and so they live “happily ever after.”

Another movie Mary Poppins Returns features yet another father who is more easily outsmarted than his own children. His children eventually figure out the scheme of the men at the bank who are trying to take their home when it does not belong to them, but the father remains ignorant, and he does not listen to the warnings from his children. Once again the parent is outwitted and the children are not. The children figure out the scheme of the bad guys while the parent remains ignorant, and the children are left with the unfair burden of having to take matters into their own hands, this time with the help of Mary Poppins.

We are encouraged to laugh at people getting hurt and hurting each other

Jerry Springer had received some criticism for allowing guests to have violent fights on his show while the audience was entertained. However, Jerry Springer is not to be singled out. His show is the rule on television, not the exception. Television is ridden with displays of fighting and drama for the purpose of making the audience laugh.

Seemingly innocuous childrens cartoons teach children to laugh at others getting hurt. Many of us recall the anvil falling on the cartoon character’s head and watching the cartoon character see birds or stars after getting into a violent accident. Of course cartoon characters do not get hurt the way that real people get hurt, but laughing at cartoon characters getting hurt is a stepping stone to eventually laughing at live action characters getting hurt, and then maybe even real people. I can testify that cartoons caused me to laugh at live action characters getting hurt, and on a few occasions even real people. I eventually unlearned this habit, fortunately.

Many things on television that are made out to be funny are no longer funny once we start to feel empathy for the characters. Television often shows a character intentionally inflicting harm or humiliation on another character while we as the audience are expected to laugh. An example is a scene from the movie Monster-in-Law starring Jennifer Lopez, featuring a rivalry between soon-to-be mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. In one scene, the older woman intentionally slips something into the younger woman’s food that she knows the younger woman is allergic to. The younger woman eats the food and has an allergic reaction. As she looks at her badly swollen face in the mirror, I had this vibe that I was somehow expected to laugh, but this was crossing the line. I had just watched a human being intentionally inflict harm on another human being, and the scene was made out to be comical. Meanwhile, did the older woman know what kind of allergic reaction the younger woman was prone to? Did she know whether it would be anaphylactic shock including airway obstruction?

A romantic comedy Say It Isn’t So features two young people who fall happily in love, but soon after find out that they are actually brother and sister. As a result, the man is known for years thereafter as the “sister fucker” and he takes on a menial job. This is a comedy, keep in mind, so it is all made out to be funny; but in actuality it is a sad story. I even cried some of the time when I was watching it.

In numerous other movies and sitcoms, we see a character saying something mean to another character that denigrates or humiliates him/her in front of others while we, as the audience, are enticed to laugh. The Office TV series has numerous scenes such as this. Over time I realized that if someone who is supposed to be my friend or coworker were to say something to deliberately humiliate me in front of a group, I would not want some audience being enticed to laugh. Who would? Once we start to feel empathy for the characters, many things on television that would be funny are not anymore.

The media’s love of scandals

The media’s love of scandals is understandable. The media needs to make money, and in order to survive, the media is going to throw out there anything that would get the audience excited. Scandals are a low-hanging fruit from the tree. The problem is that scandals involve someone doing something wrong and/or someone getting hurt. Such things should never give us joy, but there is an ugly side of human nature that likes scandals. We like it when someone else does wrong or is screwed up because it makes us feel less bad about ourselves and about our own lives. A part of us may like hearing that that seemingly perfect couple down the street is getting a divorce. A part of us may like hearing that the person who seems to have it all just got fired from his/her job or did something embarrassing.

Scandals in the media are not hard to find. Just glance at the magazine rack in the checkout line at the grocery store. The scandals are primarily among celebrities: rivalries, painful relationship breakups, custody battles, etc. I wonder what it may feel like to be a celebrity and to have your pain be broadcast in the media for all to see.

Even if a part of you likes scandals, it does not mean you are a bad person. In a way, we are born to like scandals. It is what we do with that bad side of ourselves that matters. Do we let this bad side of ourselves cause us to wish ill on others? Or do we try to overcome this bad side of ourselves and teach ourselves over time to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep? We decide.