THE AGE OF TELEVISION AND THE MISREPRESENTATION OF REALITY

Marshall McLuhan once observed that television is teaching all the time. Mother Angelica, nature programmes, performances by famous artists exemplify excellent programmes which achieve the classical goal of art, which is to teach and to delight. Unfortunately, not all television programmes achieve that goal entirely.

Teaching effects change for better or worse. That our society has changed since the advent of television in the 1950s is an observed fact.

In the 1950s, most people recognized the claims of objective reality as a beneficial guide to reasonable human conduct. They knew truth to be an essential fact of objective reality, discoverable by right reason. The authority of God and of just human laws was generally respected and obeyed; a person usually acknowledged his guilt, privately or publicly, if he offended these norms. A decent respect for the person and possessions of others prevailed, and people recognized that their actions had consequences for which they were responsible.

On the eve of the millennium, the claims of subjective self-centred myth flourish, and they have replaced reasonable human conduct with intellectual and moral anarchy. Truth has been replaced as the greatest good by whatever whim or desire attracts the individual at the moment.

This myth is the oldest chimera. Its central belief is that we can make our own reality, that we can decide for ourselves what is good and what is evil with no reference to God or right reason. It still lures the vicious, the gullible, the unsteady, and, most dangerously, the young. As always, their selfish turning in on themselves darkens the intellect and weakens the will. And so, they live in a fantasy of their own creation that is given a quasi-substantial existence and justification by that amazing universe next door to reality, television.

Marshall McLuhan noted that television exists to sell things. These “things” are not commercial products merely, although advertising does command much time during programmes. The invitation to viewers, however, is that they buy the ideas, attitudes and ideologies of a fantasy world which has no relation to objective reality.

An examination of these ideas, attitudes, and ideologies shows them to be those of the secular humanists and the feminists. The standard features of many programmes – the weak, dominated male of many sitcoms, the vicious male criminal of dramas, the promotion of fornication, adultery, sodomy and other homosexual perversions, the sexual fixation of soap operas and talk shows – demonstrate the ideas presented to the audience of all ages, particularly the young, whose taste and moral sensitivity are coarsened.

An ideology may be defined as the misrepresentation of reality to further an agenda and to retain power. The feminist ideology posits women have certified victim status. They have been constantly oppressed by men. This ideology unites with that of the secular humanists, for both secular humanists and feminists insist that all individuals have the right to decide their own choices in life with no reference to any outside authority, either God’s law or man’s reasonable laws.

However, while all individuals may have the right to decide their own choices in life, feminists contradict themselves by claiming that all things must bend to the feminist will. Only then can the “empowered” woman know that a just balance has been established. This contradiction does not bother feminists.

Television dramas present one of the most explicit examples of this misrepresentation of reality. They show calamity as the norm of daily human existence and its concomitant suffering as meaningless. The spiritual life of man is dismissed as something inconsequential, and in any event, totally private to the individual. Man’s solipsistic existence forces him to struggle alone to avoid the greatest human tragedy, failure to survive. In the self-centred universe depicted in these dramas and movies, the dismissal of another human being’s legitimate claims is necessary. This dismissal predicates contraception and abortion, not as choices, but as prerequisites to survival. The elderly and the sick who ask to be killed express the triumph of the human will.

Since television is a fantasy world that masquerades as the real world, its products (programmes) have to be packaged carefully to appeal to the consumer audience, and one of its most skillfully packaged products is the news. To seduce the viewer into buying the news, its packaging must cloud the viewer’s judgment by the abuse of the language.

Let’s look at some examples of this abuse. Abortion becomes “reproductive choice,” and, therefore, acceptable. The preborn human being is reduced to subhuman status by the word “fetus,” a legitimate medical term, but with its own meaning in the news anchor’s Newspeak. The anchor correctly speaks of child abuse and the murder of children, but this same news anchor scrupulously and hypocritically avoids any indication of the evil of abortion. By design, this abuse of language hides the real news story.

A staple of the news is the presentation of violence – natural, accidental, or deliberate. When people witness actual violence, they react with fear, horror, confusion, and stupefaction. However, a surfeit of violent images, carefully selected by the producer of the news, along with images of other news items shown in quick succession, allows the viewer no time to formulate an impression of his own. This procedure tends to anaesthetize the viewer seated comfortably in his living room.

To prevent boredom overcoming the viewer, the news reduces itself to a soap opera in which everything exists now. No historical perspective or future implication allows thought. The hero of this soap opera is the news anchor. His authority is unquestioned, and the setting of the drama reinforces his authority. A large desk is his, television monitors often glow behind him, sometimes minions scurry in the background. Supporting actors, reporters on the scene, give verisimilitude and advance the plot, Some anchors have a telephone on the desk.

Television stations like to insist their news broadcast is the authoritative voice of what is happening in the world, guaranteed by their own say-so. Think of Walter Cronkite’s arrogant sign-off, that “that’s the way it is tonight.”

And yet the most gullible continue to tune in. Perhaps the reason for this is found in the grossest superstition, “I saw it with my own eyes.” What the viewer sees is the result of the very clever arrangement of images selected by the anchor and one or two others. Images and script sometimes have no correlation, but they are very carefully fashioned to advance the station’s editorial policy or its political affiliation. The specious authenticity of the news is furthered by the omitting of certain items – if it wasn’t on the news, it is unimportant or it never happened. The deliberate ignoring or the misrepresentation of pro-life activities shows this perfectly.

Television will continue to turn the world upside down as long as the present ideology of its panjandrums has its day. By refusing to accept the ideology of television’s demi-moguls, men and women show that right reason can prevail, and that television in the future can present the truth and reality of God’s creation.