Television and Consumerism

Paper Summary:

The paper argues that television has changed a great deal from its original intention of providing information and entertainment to people far and wide. The paper discusses how today it has become a powerful propaganda medium wielded by rich and powerful corporations that try to promote the consumerism necessary to support themselves. The paper looks at how television is capable of shaping our culture and our identities and succeeding in turning society into obedient consumers. The paper concludes that our culture has become increasingly secular with a new religion of consumerism.

From the Paper:

"On a technical level, television is the "electrical transmission and reception of transient visual images" (Smith 13). It has been referred to as the first invention created by a committee (Smith 13), in that it was developed by "the effort of hundreds of individuals widely separated in time and space, all prompted by the urge to produce a system of 'seeing over the horizon'" (Smith 13). Smith argues that people have always wanted to communicate beyond the horizon, and that television seemed at first to enable this dream to come true. Smith also argues that television's original inventors saw television as a way to communicate beyond the horizon, to inform, and to entertain."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Achbar, Mark and Peter Wintonick. (Directors). Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. Video. 1992.
• Boddy, William. "The Beginnings of American Television." Television: An International History. Ed. Anthony R. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 1-9.
• Foley, Malcolm, Matt Frew and David McGillivray. "Rough Comfort: Consuming Adventure on the 'Edge'". Whose Journeys? The Outdoors and Adventure as Social and Cultural Phenomena: Critical explorations of relations between individuals, "others" and the environment. IOL, (2003): 261-272.
• Friends Television Series. http://www.friends-tv.org
• Himmelstein, Hal. Television Myth and the American Mind. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1994.

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