Television as an Instrument of Terror by George Sternlieb

Author:George Sternlieb [Sternlieb, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781351486668
Google: qKw0DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-08T03:28:09+00:00

Collective Daydreams

Television programs have been characterized by some students of media as "collective daydreams"—projections of the desires, fantasies, hopes, and dreams of the American public, filtrates of the consciousness of writers and producers. The television industry argues that it is only giving people what they want—and what the American television public seems to want, more and more, are violence and other potentially destructive kinds of programming. But it's only entertainment, we are told... so don't go around making a mountain out of a murder, or three.

The television industry can show you stacks of statistics which show that people are satisfied with what they are getting, and a look at the listing of most popular programs of any week is enough to scare anyone with aspirations toward "uplifting" the taste levels of the masses. Or with faith in the ability of the general public to select so-called "good" programs. (We can always ask ourselves, "Good for what?")

The reason daydreams, even commercially created ones, are important is that they give us insights into what people are really concerned with, and how they see themselves—which often cannot be found out by opinion polls and that sort of thing.

In the introduction to a fascinating book, Psychoanalysis and Social Research, psychiatrist Herbert Hendin and his colleagues point out that individuals are "not consciously aware of most of the significant attitudes and dynamic patterns shaping their thinking and behavior." Hendin suggests that the psychiatric interview, based on free associations, dreams, fantasies, etc., is more useful than traditional techniques because it circumvents the defenses which people (often unconsciously) construct. The person being interviewed, we are told, "often reveals his inner feelings unawares."

Hendin then discusses some research he conducted in Norway and compares his findings with those of a sociologist who "accepted at face value statements by Norwegian women that in their country the woman plays a completely submissive role in marriage." What Hendin discovered, when he got Norwegian women to talk freely, discuss their dreams, etc., was that they saw themselves as stronger than their husbands, that their mothers had dominated their fathers, and that the women were the more effective figures in most of their friends' marriages. These Norwegian women dreamed of their husbands as children and babies. When pressed to explain the discrepancy between their statements and their dreams, the women admitted that "women are stronger than men, but a man must be allowed to think he is stronger."

What all this means is that we have to be careful about accepting people's answers to questionnaires or the typical question-and-answer interview. People have a tendency to give the answers they think they are expected to, or to give answers they themselves want to believe. People often don't reveal their true feelings.

Given this problem, is it not sensible to avoid those "rehearsed responses" and instead examine people's fantasies—or, in the case of television, the fantasies they find interesting and compelling? If a program is popular, it must, in some way, take care of viewers' needs and give them rewards and gratifications of one sort or another.

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