"Americans Presume Television"

Anthony Meyer

As a society, Americans have presumed that the television is a piece of furniture. We believe that the home is not complete without it. We assume that the television is as necessary as a couch or a stove. In fact, look at the design off our living rooms. They share an essential floor plan, an acceptable American feng shui: a couch, a coffee table, and a television.

The centerpiece of my living room is a reasonably sized Sony, outdated by about 5 years. My couch could put an adrenaline junky into a coma. Its leather cushions put all others to shame. I float on top of them like a bather on a Bahaman beach. The act of watching television happens on this couch.

I watch television late at night. As all night owls eventually realize, nothing worthwhile is on late night television. The viewer, however, finds the act of turning off the television impossible. Somehow I repress all desire to press the power button on the remote even though there comes a point after watching x-many episodes of Blind Date and suffering through y-many Coke commercials when I ask myself, “Isn’t there more to life than this?”

Socrates would have agreed that a life spent in a television comatose is not a life worth living. I divide a television comatose into a dichotomy between commercialism and anti-intellectualism. Commercialism is rampant in the world of television. Literal commercials and product placement attempt to convince viewers to consume. More importantly, a whole culture of consumption forms. Anti-intellectualism describes how the programming on television contributes to the delinquency of American society. People read books before the television was invented.Therefore, how should I finally disconnect myself from my leather womb of a couch when its cushions entice my back to the world of television perpetually? The world of television is complex and ever-present, but it is not reality. I can sever my television umbilical cord if I do not buy into the dual systems of television and commercialism. Although the solution to this problem may be a simple gesture, standing up from the couch and turning the television off, the philosophical implications of the gesture are much more complex.

My beliefs as to why television has such odious properties boarders on a conspiracy theory. I argue that the structure of television (referring to the programming on television) is such that people are brainwashed into believing that the world of television (consumerism and anti-intellectualism) constitutes the norm. There is a life outside of MTV; however, the advertisers who sponsor MTV’s programming would not profit if the masses realized this. In a more general statement, television has a hypnotic quality to it, which causes people to prefer the sleep-like existence on a couch over the real, visceral existence of life without television.

With those generalizations in mind, I believe I can infer that television is a vehicle of poverty (or at least that television perpetuates like poverty). Poor people have a tendency to search for escapes to poverty, television being one of those escapes, instead of attempting to resolve their unfortunate plight. Likewise, those well off look for escapes to their existences. With such a metaphor, why would anyone watch the tube?