Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Mander Jerry

Author:Mander, Jerry [Mander, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

For the entire four hours or more per day that the average person is watching television, the repetitive process of constructing images out of dots, following scans, and vibrating with the beats of the set and the exigencies of electronic rhythm goes on. It was this repetitive, nonstop requirement to reconstruct images that are consciously usable that caused McLuhan to call television “participatory,” another unfortunate choice of words. It suggests exactly the opposite of what is going on.

I wish he had said “overpowering.” The word “participatory” has been passed around at thousands of cocktail parties, misleading people to assume that if only they could have managed to get through McLuhan’s books, they’d have discovered that their innate feeling (anecdotal evidence) that the experience is passive and that it “deadens my mind” was somehow wrong. In fact, watching television is participatory only in the way the assembly line or a hypnotist’s blinking flashlight is. Eventually, the conscious mind gives up noting the process and merges with the experience. The body vibrates with the beat and the mind gives itself over, opening up to whatever imagery is offered.

Hypnosis

As the largest category of terms that people use to describe their television viewing relates to its hypnotic effect, I asked three prominent psychologists, famous partly for their work with hypnotism, if they could define the TV experience as hypnotic and, if so, what that meant.

I described to each the concrete details of what goes on between viewer and television set: dark room, eyes still, body quiet, looking at light that is flickering in various ways, sound contained to narrow ranges and so on.

Dr. Freda Morris said, “It sounds like you’re giving a course outline in hypnotic trance induction.”

Morris, who is a former professor of medical psychology at UCLA and author of several books on hypnosis, told me that inducing trances was really very easy. The main method is to keep the subject “quiet, still, cut down all diversions and outside focuses,” she said, and then to “create a new focus, keep their attention and at a certain point get them to follow your mind.

“There are a great variety of trance states. However, common to all is that the subject becomes inattentive to the environment, and yet very focused on a particular thing, like a bird watching a snake.”

“So you mean,” I said, “that the goal of the hypnotist is to create a totally clear channel, unencumbered by anything from the outside world, so that the patient can be sort of unified with the hypnotist?”

She agreed with this way of putting it, adding that hypnotism has power implications which she loathes. As a result she uses her first session with patients to teach them how to self-hypnotize, reducing her power over them. “I don’t use tricky signals to set them off anymore, or get them to look into my eyes. That encourages their giving power to me; however, I’m sorry to say that most doctors don’t encourage self-hypnosis. I guess they want the power.”

Dr. Ernest

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