The Dumbing Down Of Society

[Hugo]

Well, the question is is it a real or precieved want?

The question that raises is, what's the difference between the two?

Certianly viewers are to blame for bad choices, but someone else foists these choices upon them.

This cannot be true. No amount of advertising could have stopped electric light from replacing candlelight, cars replacing horses, electric ovens and microwaves from replacing open hearths. In this way, the free market or any part thereof cannot tell viewers what they want or influence their decisions save by the act of informing them which choices they have. Advertising is simply a branch of applied psychology. It is coarse because the public is coarse, and loud, brash, and sexual for the same reason. It offends people of sensibility for the same reason that the general public has always offended people of sensibility.

But I think TV is giving us a historically unprecedented amount of crap, with a broader reach than ever before. Not everyone went to the cockfighst 100 years ago, but just about everyone has a TV.

This also ties into Maplesyrup's point:

I agree there has always been trash around but the amount of time that people spend watching TV has:

1 - skyrocketed

2 - substantially reduced our being involved with creative activities.

although Maplesyrup is incorrect on point 2. People have far more leisure time than ever before, since the expansion of wealth due to capitalism creates pressure on employers to be better competitors in the labour market, by offering more money, shorter hours and more days off. Whereas two hundred years ago, people might have spent 60-80 hours a week working, now most people only spend 40. Obviously they'll find something to fill this gap. It isn't that TV has encroached upon creative activities, rather that TV has expanded to fill a gap created by increased leisure time.

[Black Dog]

The question that raises is, what's the difference between the two?

This cannot be true. No amount of advertising could have stopped electric light from replacing candlelight, cars replacing horses, electric ovens and microwaves from replacing open hearths. In this way, the free market or any part thereof cannot tell viewers what they want or influence their decisions save by the act of informing them which choices they have.

Advertisers seldom sell products. If the sole purpose of advertising is to inform people of their choices, then we wouldn't be seeing billion-dollar glitzy ad campaigns.

Advertisers sell lifestyles, power, status, presitige and other intangeibles. Ads are designed to play on these desires, the implication being that purchase of the product is the gateway to status etc. Simply put, while purchases made are indeed the product of free choice, the role of advertising is to influence those choices and crate markets for products based on their ability to deliver satisfaction beyond simple material benefits.

[Slavik44]

I know when I was a kid my parents didn't give me free run of watching the T.v and I was encouraged to read, it took me along time to learn to read, however in the last foundation skills assement test I was in the top 10% of the province for reading comprehension.

I don't really mean to be insulting, but this would be a little more reassuring if your post was not absolutely filled with spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors.

I am not here to be fancy, I look at studies, articles, and expirences and i write what i see. I sometimes try to go back and edit through the post but sometimes I am in a hurry, everyone has their faults on this site, no one is perfect. I simply just tend to hit keys out of order on a keyboard, but I have never talked about the brave Canadian soldiers invasion of norway. That doesn't and shouldn't discredit everything Paul Martin says.

[Argus]

It is hard to believe that those people who ranted against television in the seventies were complaining about television at its zenith. How low it has since sunk! Television is no longer interested in educating, no longer interested in art, or in making statements about society.

Television was at its zenith during the 1970s? I doubt it. I seriously doubt it.

I was not alive during the 1970s. However, I have seen reruns, and I've talked to people. And I've had the same conversation with people who believe that the movies or the music of their time was the "zenith" of the art. It wasn't. The bulk of what you watched on TV in the 1970s was crap. People have very subjective memories. They tend to remember "Mary Tyler Moore" and "Archie Bunker" and forget about "Love Boat", "Starsky and Hutch", "Alice", "CHIPS", "The Dukes of Hazard", and dozens more that were so wretched they haven't even surfaced as reruns.

Of course there was a lot of crap on. There's always a lot of crap on, but there was also a lot of great TV. People of your age might not even realize it but Mary Tyler Moore was not only extraordinarily well-written, but it was ground-breaking. The idea of a young, single woman making it on her own without a man to help her was quite novel. Shows like All in the Family, Maude and The Jeffersons broke all kinds of taboos, and brought controversial subject matter right up to people's faces, and let them laugh at it. MASH was a comedy, but had drama, another novel idea. Good Time was the first show set in a slum, a black slum. I may be wrong, but I think it was the first black show at all. The point I'm making is that Television was trying in the 70s. It was breaking ground, taking risks, trying to be outstanding entertainment. Sure, a lot of it was crap, but the crap to quality ratio was far, far lower than it is today. And the crap from the seventies was far, far superior to any reality TV show.

What do we have on TV now that qualifies as intelligent and thoughtful? There's damned little that even tries to be original on TV now, just tired retreads of tired retreads. What little class exists is mainly long-time holdovers from the 90s on its final legs. The trend is downwards - deeper into the sewer.

[Argus]

In MS's opening post he wrote of the dumbing down because of the difficulty of the Language. He did not agree with the assertion but I think it should be explored.

Societies for the reform of the English language point tot he 17% rate of functional illiteracy in English speaking countries: a rate that apparently does not exist in other language, advanced socieities. The claim is that the spelling in English does make it too difficult to read and write for many.

Nope. I don't buy it. I blame the quality of education, not the difficulty of English. English is actually a reasonably easy language to learn compared to some, like French or Spanish. And you know, every now and then some newspaper publishes an exam 8th graders were expected to pass back in 1900 or so and you can see just how much more stringent the requirements were back then. Those people who graduated high school back then were extremely literate, unlike so many who graduate today, and had a decent grasp of history, geography, math and science to boot.

[kimmy]

Of course there was a lot of crap on. There's always a lot of crap on, but there was also a lot of great TV. People of your age might not even realize it but Mary Tyler Moore was not only extraordinarily well-written, but it was ground-breaking. The idea of a young, single woman making it on her own without a man to help her was quite novel. Shows like All in the Family, Maude and The Jeffersons broke all kinds of taboos, and brought controversial subject matter right up to people's faces, and let them laugh at it. MASH was a comedy, but had drama, another novel idea. Good Time was the first show set in a slum, a black slum. I may be wrong, but I think it was the first black show at all. The point I'm making is that Television was trying in the 70s. It was breaking ground, taking risks, trying to be outstanding entertainment. Sure, a lot of it was crap, but the crap to quality ratio was far, far lower than it is today. And the crap from the seventies was far, far superior to any reality TV show.

A couple of things jump out at me from your post. First off, all the shows you mentioned are half-hour sit-coms, aren't they? Are there any one-hour dramas from that era that you'd point to as exceptional? I don't know of any, myself. The only examples of drama from that era I've seen ranged from so-so to flat out bad. I can admit to finding "The Rockford Files" mildly entertaining, more due to James Garner's charm ( ) than any particular brilliance of the program. Aside from that, I don't know of a single hour-long drama that would stand up today.

As well, you point out that Mary Tyler Moore and All In The Family and other shows broke social taboos and put controversial issues on TV. Which is great, and I understand that television might be different today if shows hadn't broken barriers earlier on. I'd just offer that pushing the envelope isn't in itself a mark of quality. "Murphy Brown" strove to be controversial, but it was still a pretty crappy program. "Will & Grace" is groundbreaking by putting raving homosexuals as the stars of a TV show... but I just don't find it entertaining. "Friends" was groundbreaking by basing an entire show around the mentally handicapped, but I'd rather jab my eyes out than watch it.

What do we have on TV now that qualifies as intelligent and thoughtful? There's damned little that even tries to be original on TV now, just tired retreads of tired retreads. What little class exists is mainly long-time holdovers from the 90s on its final legs. The trend is downwards - deeper into the sewer.

I couldn't agree less.

I think "Scrubs" is a terrific program. I don't normally watch any sitcoms, because it's an inherently crappy format, but Scrubs is as good a half-hour comedy as I've ever seen. The only other half-hour comedy I watch is "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart", which is outstanding. The people at "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" and "The Royal Canadian Air Farce" should watch an episode of the Daily Show; they'd either learn something, or commit mass suicide as they realize how weak their own shows are compared to the Daily Show.

And for dramas, I don't think TV has ever had as many quality dramas to choose from as there are right now. Without A Trace, CSI, Law and Order (and its spinoffs), Joan of Arcadia, and "24" are some shows that I think would stand up well against any drama from any era gone by. Last season's (tragically cancelled) Boomtown and Wonderfalls were simply brilliant television (and apparently too intelligent for the average viewer to follow.) And that's not even mentioning shows like The Sopranos or Six Feet Under, which I've seen a couple of times and thought were very good, but haven't seen often enough that I'm prepared to speak for them personally.

On artistic merit, I just can't imagine an objective observer picking any show from the '70s over any of the shows I've mentioned. The zenith of television? This is it, right now. Well, maybe last season, when Boomtown was still on the air. And yet, people look past the quality shows that are on right now, and focus instead on the plague of reality shows.

(And, for what it's worth, I'd pick The Amazing Race over The Gong Show or The Newlywed Game or The Dating Game, any day of the week. )

-kimmy

[August1991]

What a bizarre thread, and what a bizarre group of opinions.

I am not here to be fancy, I look at studies, articles, and expirences and i write what i see.

Point well taken, Slavik44. But in a world where people must rely on symbols, you would be well advised to advertise the wisdom of your posts by using correct spelling. [spelling or not, I like your posts.]

Television was at its zenith during the 1970s? I doubt it. I seriously doubt it.

I agree with Kimmy. In addition, there was no choice then. In English, CTV and CBC. Near the US, there was ABC, CBS, NBC. The odd independent.

French TV is basically a stream of softcore porn and Italian TV is all sports and game shows.

European TV really, really sucks. Italian TV is unbelieveably stupid. "Game" shows! In addition, private stations are forced to schedule and announce advertising in advance!

There is something called Euronews and Deutsche Welle. You gotta see it to believe it. Microsoft's in-house newsletter is more informative and exciting.

I like the British attitude to newspapers: serious papers for news and then the others for fun, like pop music.

Societies for the reform of the English language point tot he 17% rate of functional illiteracy in English speaking countries: a rate that apparently does not exist in other language, advanced socieities.

Eureka, please provide references for such claims. I think that we have never been so literate. People are also very media -savvy, for something important to them. They clue in fast when they are being conned.

But the speed comes at the price of depth, context and information. In the race to get it out first, such matters fall by the way side. To me, the saddest thing about the rise of TV news is that newspapers, instead of playing to the strengths of the written word, which allows more thought and analysis, are instead turning into print versions of TV

Black Dog, people turn to the TV for news that is irrelevant to them. At most, it means they can avoid derision. "What's the other guy's name? Korry something?"

People turn to careful research for things that matter. Talk to the most politically ill-informed person who has a child just diagnosed with cancer.

You certainly can never go broke by pandering to th elowest common demoinator, which is what advertisers (the people who really drive television content) do.

Commercial television is designed entirely around advertising. The programming is filler around the ads. All commercial television is informercials. It is designed to capture your interest and keep you.

Nothing is funnier than watching American TV shows outside of North America. Without the ads, the pace of the script is all wrong.

No amount of advertising could have stopped electric light from replacing candlelight, cars replacing horses, electric ovens and microwaves from replacing open hearths.

Wonderful quote, Hugo. Dead on.

Advertising is simply a branch of applied psychology. It is coarse because the public is coarse, and loud, brash, and sexual for the same reason.

Really dumb, Hugo.

It offends people of sensibility for the same reason that the general public has always offended people of sensibility.

Now you are wrong and offensive.

If the sole purpose of advertising is to inform people of their choices, then we wouldn't be seeing billion-dollar glitzy ad campaigns.

The sole purpose of advertising is not to inform, at least in the way Hugo suggested.

Advertising informs in the way good spelling does. Someone who spells well is probably someone educated. And someone educated is probably someone who knows what they are talking about. Maybe. Which brings me back to Slavik44.

----

You don't like TV? Don't watch it.

You don't want to live in a society where other people watch TV? Join the human race. Take people as they are. IAC, other people do much goofier things than watch TV.

[Hugo]

Really dumb, Hugo.

You know what I consider "really dumb"? A three-word, ad hominem response.

Allow me to illuminate my point a little better. The intelligentsia, or "people of sensibility" as I alluded to them above, have always considered the tastes of the masses (forgive my classist language for the moment) as vulgar. In ancient Rome, men of letters lamented the commercialisation of their religious festivals, for instance, in much the same way as Maplesyrup is complaining about the commercialisation of his television programmes two thousand years later. We're all here now despite these Roman sell-outs, and of all the problems humanity has faced in the two millenia since I don't think any can be attributed to excessive commercialisation.

Most posters here are of above-average intelligence and inclined to intellectual pursuits, e.g. debating politics. Nobody so far in this thread has said anything good about mass-market TV or advertising. The best that has been said is that it should be left alone. Nobody said, "Hey, Jerry Springer is actually high-quality TV" or "I consider scantily clad girls wiggling around in a razor commercial to be quite avant-garde."

TV advertising is essentially the same Jerry-Springer-esque medium. It has to appeal to the masses, because TV advertising is a bad way to reach a niche market. Specialist magazines, for instance, are much more efficient. Therefore, a successful TV advert must communicate in terms that the average viewer most identifies with. Like Jerry Springer, it must be virtually devoid of factual content, appeal to emotion alone, and be carefully crafted to generate a predetermined response.

A TV advert that is simply a dry statement of benefits of the product will never sell anything. Imagery sells. SUV adverts don't usually talk about powerplant torque or cargo space, and when they do, it's merely a voiceover for the imagery: rugged, handsome men and women white-water rafting, climbing mountains, mountain biking and so forth. If you shut your eyes and listen to an advert voice-over it's amazingly banal. The current Acura RSX Type-S commercial is just a video of cars and a techno soundtrack. No facts at all, but pure emotive imagery.

What's wrong with this? Nothing. Advertising is like the trashy romance novel, but like the novel, nobody's forcing you to read it, or watch it. If the novel is too trashy, nobody will read it. If the advert is too far-fetched or stretches the truth too much, the product won't sell.

The sole purpose of advertising is not to inform, at least in the way Hugo suggested.

The sole purpose of advertising is to inform in much the same way as Michael Moore wants to inform. They'll use the facts - or something vaguely resembling them - but they definitely want the audience to have a particular reaction.

But advertising, like Moore, is a feedback loop too. An advert cannot push people very far beyond what they already want or feel, or it won't be successful. Moore, too, was successful not because he opened minds, but because he appealed to the preconceptions of his audience. I think most people who went to see his movies already agreed with their conclusions, or at the very least their premises.

Blackdog, I'm sorry I didn't reply to your post specifically but I think you'll find what I said relevant to it.

[August1991]

Your spelling seems to be impeccable, Hugo. Why?

[Cartman]

What is striking to me is how "cheap" the programs have become. Reality shows are popular largely because they are relatively cheap and easy to produce. And I do not accept that this is necessarily what people really want. People are not making entirely free choices in what they view because they are offered a limited menu in the first place (despite the number of channels on the air).

Just because people watch something does not necessarily mean that is what they enjoy. If that were the case, then we would be led to the conclusion that people love commercials when most consider them a nuisance.

There might have been a lot of mindless stuff on in the 70's, but I do not think there was the cheap, sick and repulsive crap on now (i.e. Springer, Fear Factor, the Bach., COPS etc). What's next, beheadings and public executions?

[Guest eureka]

The only reference I can give, August, is that I heard it on a CBC Radio show not ling ago, I think it was the "Current."

A Canadian was one of the interviewees and there was an Englishman. There are, apparently, substantial socieities in both countries. The British, I think, is about one hundred years old. Phonetic spelling seems to be their chief wish.

Both were credible. The Englishmenr was a professor at some university.

The part about the complexity of the language producing superior literature is mostly my own theorising. For instance, in poetry, rhyming is very difficult in English: in French as well as many other languages, it is relatively easy due to standard case endings,

Nearly twent years ago when I worked in downtown Toronto, I used sometimes to have linch at a place (snadwiches) that showed film of the 100 greatest commercials. They were mostly entertaining, informative and factual.

TV can be that way. It is vulgarity, though, that appeals to the masses The question is why should it not. Is that the level of human intelligence and talent and sensibilities on average.

Is society really dumbing down on the entertainment level or is entertainment finding its level?

The debates could go much deeper and cover, say, attention spans in modern society and the causes of the decline there. Is it education and information overload that is responsible for the inability of moderns to recall, remember, or to participate in anything of length .

The Ancients would recite and listen to epics when there was no written language or when most people were not educated to read. The "Vulgar" attended, and from all accounts, enjoyed and understood Shakespeare. It is not so today.

Are we using the wrong bench marks and comparisons?

[Hugo]

Your spelling seems to be impeccable, Hugo. Why?

Private schooling.

[August1991]

Private schooling.

My query didn't concern where you learned your spelling. I was interested in knowing what motivated you to ensure good spelling.

[Hugo]

I was interested in knowing what motivated you to ensure good spelling.

Arrogance and a smug sense of self-satisfaction.