Unit 7 TV and Its Influence
Section Two In-reading
READING ONE
When Television Ate My Best Friend
I was eight years old when I lost my best friend. My very first very best friend. Lucy hardly ever whined, even when we kids played cowboys and she had to be Dale Evans. Nor did she cry, even when we played dodge ball and some big kid threw the ball so hard you could read Spalding backward on her legs. Lucy was world class.
Much of our time together was spent in my backyard on the perfect swing t: high, wide, built solid, and grounded for life. But one June day long ago, something went wrong. I was swinging as high as I could, and still higher. The next time the swing started to come back down, I didn’t . I just kept going up. And up.
Then I began to fall.
―Know what? Know what?‖ Lucy was yelling at me.
No, I didn’t know what. All I knew was that my left arm hurt.
―Know what? For a minute there, you flew. You emed to catch the wind and … soar! Right up until you must have do ne something wrong, becau you fell.‖
Wearing a cast on my broken arm gave me time to work out the scientifics with Lucy. Our Theory was that if you swing just high enough and straight enough, and you jump out of the swing at just the right moment and in just the right position —you just might fly.
July was spent waiting for my arm to heal. We ran our hands across the wooden at, feeling for the odd splinter that could ruin your perfect takeoff. We pulled on the chains, testing for weak links.
Finally came the day in August when my cast was off, and Lucy and I were ready. Today we would fly.
Early that morning, we began taking turns — one pushing, one pumping. All day we pushed and pumped, higher and higher, ever so clo. It was almost dark wh en Lucy’s mother hollered for her to come home right this minute and e what her daddy had brought them.
This was strictly against the rules. Nobody had to go home in August until it was altogether dark. Bes
ides, Lucy’s daddy wasn’t a man to be struc k with irresistible impuls like stopping at the hor store and thinking, Golly, my little girl loves ponies! I better get her one!
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So we kept on swinging, and Lucy pretended not to hear her mother – until she dropped Lucee to Lucille Loui. Halfway through the fourth Lucille Loui, Lucy slowly raid her head as though straining to hear some woman calling from the next county.
―Were you calling me, Mother? Okay, okay, I’m coming. Yes, ma’am. Right now.‖
Lucy and I walked together to the end of my driveway. Once in her front yard, she slowed to something between a meander and a lollygag, choosing a path that took her straight through the sprinklers. Twice.
When at last Lucy sashayed to her front door, she turned back to me and, with a grin, gave me the thumbs-up sign ud by pilots everywhere. Awright. So we’d fly tomorrow instead. We’d waited all summer. We could wait one more day. On her way in the hou, she slammed the screen door.
BANG!
In my memory, I’ve listened to that screen door shut behind my best friend a thousand times. It was t
he last time I played with her.
I knocked on the door every day, but her mother always answered saying Lucy was busy and
couldn’t come out to play. I tried calling, but her mother always answered saying Luc y was busy and couldn’t come to the phone. Lucy was busy? Too busy to play? Too busy to fly? She had to be dead. Nothing el made n. What, short of death, could parate such best friends? We were going to fly. Her thumb had said so. I cried and cried.
I might never have known the truth of the matter, if some weeks later I hadn’t overheard my mother say to my father how maybe I would calm down about Lucy if we got a television too.
A what? What on earth was a television? The word was new to me, but I was clever enough to figure out that Lucy’s daddy had brought home a television that night. At last I knew what had happened to Lucy. The television ate her.
It must have been a terrible thing to e. Now my parents were thinking of getting one. I was scared. They didn’t understand what television could do.
―Television eats people,‖ I announced to my parents.
―Oh, Linda Jane,‖ they said, laughing. ―Television doesn’t eat people. You’ll love television just like Lucy. She’s inside her hou watching it right this minute.‖
Indeed, Lucy was totally bewitched by the flickering black and white shapes. Every afternoon following school, she’d sit in her living room and watch whatever there was to watch. Saturday mornings, she’d look at cartoons.我是一棵小小草
Autumn came. Around Thanksgiving, I played an ear of corn in the school pageant. Long division ruined most of December. After a while, I forgot about flying. But I did not forget about Lucy.
Christmas arrived, and Santa Claus brought us a television .―See?‖ my paren ts said. ―Television doesn’t eat people.‖ Maybe not. But television changes people. It changed my family forever.
We stopped eating dinner at the dining-room table after my mother found out about TV trays. Dinner was rved in time for one program and finished in time for another. During the meal we ud to talk to one another. Now television talked to us. If you absolutely had to say something you waited until the commercial, which is, I suspect, where I learned to speak in thirty-cond bursts.
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Before television, I would lie in bed at night, listening to my parents in their room saying things I coul
dn’t comprehend. Their voices alone rocked me to sleep. Now Daddy went to bed right after the weather, and Mama stayed up to e Jack Paar. I went to sleep listening to voices in my memory.
Daddy stopped buying Perry Mason books. Perry was on television now, and that was so much easier for him. But it had been Daddy and Perry who’d taught me how fine it can be to read something you like.
Mama and Daddy stopped going to movies. Most movies would one day show up on TV, he said.
After a while, Daddy and I didn’t play baball any more. We didn’t go to ball games either, but we watched more baball than ever. That’s how Daddy perfected The Art of Dozing to Bab all. He would sit in his big chair, turn on the game, and fall asleep within minutes. At least he appeared to be asleep. His eyes were shut, and he snored. But if you shook him, he’d open his eyes and tell you what the score was, who was up, and what the pitcher ought to throw next.
It emed everybody liked to watch television more than I did. I had no interest in sitting still when I could be climbing trees or riding a bike or practicing my takeoffs just in ca one day Lucy woke up and remembered we had a Theory. Maybe the TV hadn’t actually eaten her, but once her parents pointed her in the direction of that box, she never looked back.
Lucy had no other interests when she could go home and turn on ―My Friend Flicka.‖ Maybe it was becau that was as clo as she would get to having her own pony. Maybe if her parents had allowed her a real world to stretch out in, she wouldn’t have been satisfied with a nineteen-inch world.
All I know is I never had another first best friend. I never learned to fly ei ther. What’s more, I was right all along: television really does eat people .
READING TWO
How Parents Can Lesn the Effects of Television Violence
"Mommy, I'm bored.‖
"Don't bother me now, Junior; I have a headache. Why don't you go watch TV?"
Conversations like this often take place between parent and child becau no parent, no matter how conscientious, can spend every minute with his or her child. And let’s face it, television is a way to keep a bored child quiet and occupied. And yes, television can be a good form of entertainment and even a valuable teaming tool.投档比例
Almost everyone agrees that television can have a great influence on how children view the world and how they act within it. As a result, almost everyone agrees that it is important for parents to supervi what television their children watch. Usually, this means that parents are advid to restrict the amount of violence viewed.
Anne Somers, for example, cites the National Commission on the Caus and Prevention of Violence, which published a report, To Establish Justice, to Insure Domestic Tranquility, in 1969.
A portion of the report disclos that many of the experiments done with children show that aggressive behavior is learned by viewing violence on television. The report states that while television is a rious influence on our society’s level of violence, it is not necessarily the main cau. However, it goes on to say that the influence of television on children is stronger now, when the authority of the "traditional institution" of religion, education, and family is questionable. The concern expresd in the report is that since so much of television broadcasting express antisocial, aggressive behavior, and since television is such a strong influence on children, children will be learning to behave aggressively.
Certainly the literature expressing the dangers of television violence for children is abundant; one ca
n find it published in everything from TV Guide to the most scholarly journals. Yet does it all mean that parents must be sure their children never view violence on the small screen? 1 think not, for there is evidence that not all children who view televid violence become overly aggressive. The child's interpretation of what is viewed is a crucial factor in how he or she will behave afterward. Sociology professor Hope Lunin Klapper believes:
The child itlf plays an active role in the socialization process. The conquences of television for a child are thus in part a conquence of the child .... It is the child’s perception which defines The conquences of wo major steps: first, the child’s perception or translation of the content, and cond, his or her respon or lack of respon to that perception.
Thus, whether televid violence will adverly affect a child will depend on that child. The conclusion to be drawn from Klapper is that some children will not become violent just becau they have viewed violence on television. Klapper says that whether a child behaves aggressively will be, in part, a result of his or her perception of the viewed violence, and this says a lot about
what the parental role should be. Parents could counteract any negative effects that television violence could have on a child's behavior by taking advantage of the opportunity prented to teach t
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he child some of the values that they feel are important. As a child watches a violent program, the parents could explain that the behaviors displayed do not coincide with their values. In this way, a child could be taught that even though such behaviors exist, they are not desirable. After all, violence does exist in the world. If parents constantly shield their children from this fact, then the children will be unable to cope with this reality of life. On the other hand, exposure to violence, through television and parental explanation about what is viewed, can be a healthy education in the reality of violence and how to avoid it.
Professor Charles Atkin explains another reason children should not be completely restricted from viewing violence. He suggests that children will choo to watch television shows that correspond to their own tendencies toward aggression. Thus by obrving the types of programs their children prefer, parents can gain a better understanding of their personalities. A child who continually elects to watch violence may have aggressive tendencies. Parents need to know whether their children are too aggressive so they can intervene, and one way they can discover this is to obrve their children's viewing preferences. If the child is consistently choosing violent shows, the parents can, as Atkin explains, "effectively mediate their children's predispositions" and make their child understand that although violence does exist in reality, there are other aspects of life as well.
Thus, parents can help their children's personalities develop in a positive manner by obrving how they respond to television violence and by influencing accordingly how they interpret what they e. Parents can u televid violence to asss their children's tendency toward violence, and they can u it to voice their disapproval to show violence is wrong. Of cour, this means parents must watch violent shows with their children, even when they have a headache.
READING THREE
Why You Watch What You Watch When You Watch
It is about time that you all stop lying to each other and face up to your problems: you love television and you view too much.
I ud to be the guy in charge of the ratings at NBC, and my waking hours were filled with people either complaining about the inaccurate the ratings were or, without my asking them, volunteering that they never watch TV, becau the programs stink, particularly this ason.
Let’s look at the facts, becau only by examining the nature of the dia can we cure it, or at least make peace with it.
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The truth is that you buy extra ts, color ts, and even pay a monthly charge for cable television to view. Yet when you view an evening's worth of TV you are full of complaints about what you have viewed. But the next night yon’re right back there, hoping against hope for satisfying content, never really learning from experience, another night is shot. Instead of tuning the t off and doing something el, you persist in exercising the medium.
The fact is that you view TV regardless of its content. Becau of the nature of the limited spectrum(only a few channels in each city) and the economic need of the networks to attract an audience large enough to attain advertising dollars which will cover the cost of the production of the TV program, pay the station carrying the program, and also make a profit, you are viewing
program which by necessity must appeal to the rich and poor, smart and stupid, tall and short, wild and tame, together. Therefore, you are in the vast majority of cas viewing something that is not to your taste. From the time you bought a t to now, you have viewed thousands of programs which were not to your taste. The result is the hiding of, and lying about, all that viewing. Becau of the hiding and lying, you are guilty. The guilt is expresd in the feeling that ―I should have been reading instead of viewing.‖
It is of cour much more difficult to read than to view. Reading requires a process called decoding, which caus a slowdown in the information taken in by the ur. TV viewing is very simple to do—kids do it better than adults becau they are unencumbered by guilt—and the amount of information derived from an hour’s viewing is infinitely more than is derived from an hour’s reading.雁的成语
But print has been around for a long time and it has attracted people who have learned to express themlves in this medium , so the printed content, on the whole, is superior to the TV content . Still ,most of us prefer television. Despite the lack of quality content, the visual medium is so compelling that it attracts the vast majority of adults each day to a progression of shows that most of the people would ignore in printed form .
The process of viewing works like this:
A family has just finished dinner and one member says, ― Let’s e what’s on TV tonight.‖The t gets turned on or the TV Guide gets pulled out. If it’s TV Guide, then the list of programs(most of which are repeats) is so unappealing that each member of the family says to himlf that he remembers when TV Guide made an awful error in its program listings back in 1967 and maybe it has happened again.
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The t is turned on whether a good program is listed or not at that time. Chances are over 100 to 1 that there is nothing on that meets this or any family’s taste for that moment. But the medium meets their taste.
The view(s) then slowly turns the channel lector, grumbling at each image he es on the screen. Perhaps he’ll go around the dial two or three times before ttling on one channel who program is least objectionable.
― Well, let’s watch this, ‖ someone in the family says. ―There’s nothing better on.‖ So they watch. No one thinks of jogging a couple of laps around the block or getting out the old Parcheesi board. They watch whatever is least objectionable.
The programmers for the networks have argued that this is a ―most satisfying ‖ choice— not LOP(least objectionable program) . But if it were, then why would everybody be complaining and lying about TV viewing? I don’t deny that in some rare time periods, ―least objectionable‖is actually most satisfying, but the bulk of the time people are viewing they don’t particularly consider good, and that is why the medium is so powerful and rich.
READING FOUR
TV Addiction
The word ―addiction‖ is often ud looly and wryly in conversation. People will refer to themlves as ―mystery book addicts‖ or ―cookie addicts.‖ E.B. White writes of his annual surge of interest in gardening: ―We are hook ed and are making an attempt to kick the habit.‖ Yet nobody really believes that reading mysteries or ordering eds by catalogue is rious enough to be
