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Liked It1 of 1 members found this review helpful “Good, searching, if rather feverish and indignant indictment of TV watching. Talks about intellectual impoverishment as well as the possibly deleterious physical effects of TV.” see full review » see other reviews » |
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1 of 1 members found this review helpful
“Good, searching, if rather feverish and indignant indictment of TV watching. Talks about intellectual impoverishment as well as the possibly deleterious physical effects of TV.”
Eileen M wrote this review Thursday, August 6 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
1 of 1 members found this review helpful“Jerry Mander (interesting name) is correct. This, book written in the 1970s, forcasted the right wing take-over television. Mander states that televisin can not be a left-wing medium only a right-wing one. Now that the PR firm of Fox 'News" has dominated political dialogue it is easy to see.”
Yogarific wrote this review Saturday, August 16 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
1 of 1 members found this review helpful“Great book, very thought-provoking. The use of television is worth investigating.”
Judy A wrote this review Saturday, February 9 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
1 of 1 members found this review helpful“I liked this book so much that it made me wonder why it hadn't been adapted for TV.
footnotefetish wrote this review Thursday, November 29 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Okay, enough of my bad jokes. I read this book a long time ago, but I can still remember a lot of things in it. I guess that's the mark of a good book: It sticks in your memory.”
1 of 1 members found this review helpful“A must read. Also "Amusing our selves to death" by Neil Postman attacks the same issues from a different but even more relevant and important angle.”
Usman Ahmed wrote this review Monday, October 8 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“review By J. Michael
umm hussain wrote this review Thursday, October 4 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
"This book is a revolutionary manifesto, a call to arms against the modern-day Moloch, that pernicious idol television. Read it at your own peril- if you're content facing life in a somnambulistic stupor, this book is a bucket of cold water in the face. TV=living death.
Mander makes it clear that he's not calling for people to reduce their TV watching or for the networks to "reform" themselves by adding more "educational" programming. The technology itself is irredeemable and must be eliminated. Nothing less it at stake, he asserts, than human autonomy and the democratic system. The book is full of seemingly overblown statements like that, but Mander's arguments, coupled with a lifetime of personal observation of television's effects, lend credence to even the most ostensibly hyperbolized polemics.
Employing both logical argument and frequent reference to scientific studies, Mander lays out his case for the condemnation of TV. He points out how sitting in a darkened room staring at an object is the ultimate in sensory deprivation, a state which makes the mind malleable and suggestible, and in which the subconscious will accord extraordinary authority and importance to the loudest and most forceful voice ("Buy Now!" "Tune in tomorrow!"), which is the very definition of hypnosis. TV is hypnotizing us. It separates us from humanity's natural means of understanding the world- direct experience. It is a pale and pathetic substitute for life itself. Our real-life knowledge of the world is being replaced by the knowledge and values that advertising executives want us to have- namely, brand identification and consumerism. The couch potato justifies his addiction by saying that TV-watching enables him to empty his mind and not think after a long hard day's work. Indeed, his mind is being emptied, but it is also being re-filled with images and desires of someone else's choosing. It is designed to plant ideas into the subconsciousness, so that people buy things they don't need and never knew they wanted, in order to perpetuate a never-ending cycle of consumerism. TV is an instrument designed to dominate other people's minds, a dangerous enough tool in the hands of advertising executives, but when used by authoritarian-minded political manipulators-which it is- it is a deadly weapon. In short, TV has created a nation of barely sentient, obedient zombies- the perfect market for the advertising industry and the perfect citizenry for the political class.
Ok, the book has faults, which some reviewers noted, more or less fairly- to be sure, some parts of the book are somewhat dated. The milieu in which it was written was the 1970s. References to the ERA, Vietnam, and anti-nuke rallies will jolt the modern reader. Also, Mander wrote in the era before cable TV, so obviously the book doesn't deal with the additional dynamic that creates. And surely there have been additional studies and books in the subsequent years that would be of value to the subject. Additionally, though Mander is correct that the human brain was created (or evolved, if you prefer) to function in a natural environment by gaining knowledge through hands-on experience, and the implications of that are certainly worth thinking about, his "noble savage" encomium may go too far; unless we're willing to go back to a pre-literate society in which we'd live in caves, we're going to have to deal with some level of artificiality and mediation of experience (e.g. books). And yes, the 4 Arguments aren't exactly organized as coherently as expected and would probably better be termed "1500 Arguments". Nevertheless, these are relatively minor objections- this is a brilliant book that will, above all, make_you_think_.
Unfortunately, the book is only likely to be read by those who have already thrown off the shackles of the toxic hypno-box, or who are close to doing so. In any case, it's an important manifesto whose message must be promulgated by one enlightened individual to another until the day when television's poisonous influence is finally eradicated from the world. "”
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