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| Sunday, 31 July 2005 |
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Features |  |
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Children and mind-bending Solemn Thoughts by Wendell Solomons "Our enquiries reveal that there is no Censor Board for TV, unlike for films, although there are serious shortcomings in the area of films" (National Consumer Watch report published by the 'Sunday Observer', July 10, 2005) The city of Colombo was galvanised by the slaying of a 19-year old. In an apartment block with a security service, the girl had scrambled down the stairway from the 24th floor of her home in pursuit of someone, or pursued by someone. At daybreak it was discovered on the 19th floor that her head had been bashed against the wall so hard that she could offer no resistance. Next, someone slipped off her jeans so as to knot them around her neck and strangle her. Does such criminal deftness await your child? There's a writing on the wall. Big-match, sports encounters among schools in the city became free-for-alls. Injured have to be taken to hospital for bruises and broken bones. Isn't the social distribution clear? If you contrast rural school kids of the same age, the youth in the capital are more heavily exposed to Western TV and video. Western entertainment producers are keen to treat audiences to every conceivable trick or ruse and therefore city teenagers who soak in TV after school closes at 2 p.m. may be manipulating their parents who arrive tired after a full day's work. Your survey may reveal that kids often rule the roost at home though their elders may be needed by the country economy as key managers. Let's travel now to a venue more saturated than Sri Lanka by TV - the US. The US leads the world for schoolroom violence. Recently, the head of the National Rifle Association suggested that teachers carry firearms with them to school for their personal protection. Across the border in Canada, lives a schoolmate of mine. When I asked how that country differs from the USA, he said that starting with childhood the US population is exposed to a larger array of TV channels than in Canada. He said that he discovered that Americans are far less informed of the real world than Canadians are. Why paradox? More TV - less information? Beethoven once wrote that music is the highest form of art because it provides the performer and the listener with the most direct access to beauty. Theodor Adorno, also German-born, said that the lever that inspires could be pushed downwards. Music could be devised to deprive? life. In his book 'Philosophy of Modern Music', Adorno advocated the use of "radical" music to induce schizophrenia: "What radical music perceives is the untransfigured suffering of man... the music imprints itself an attitude similar to that of the mentally ill. The individual brings about his own disintegration." In 1937 Theodor Adorno, travelled out to become the head of the New York-based 'Radio Research Project,' funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The purpose of the project was to test the hypothesis that the radio could be used to manipulate the thinking of the US population. Adorno had observed that people "listen automatically and disassociate what they hear... They are not childlike... but they are childish; their primitivism is not that of the undeveloped, but that of the forcibly retarded." Among the findings of the Radio Research Project were - (i) People tend to become addicted to radio serials [now used for TV] based on the "What happens next?" format; (ii) Listeners react to form, not content, as in the famous Orson Welles, 'War of the Worlds' broadcast which audiences believed was describing an actual invasion (in spite of repeated clear warnings that the show was fictional,) and, (iii) Repetition is the key to popularity. That is, if you play it enough, people will believe it. A lie can become popular opinion if it is repeated enough in media ('media as a weapon of mass deception.') In 1941, Adorno moved to Hollywood to continue his work in what he called the "culture industry." He immediately began a book-length sociological study entitled 'The Dialectics of Enlightenment,' in which he identified Hollywood as the place to carry out a bizarre revolution. Earlier in 1915, Harvard social-engineer Hugo Munsterberg, published a book entitled The 'Photoplay: A Psychological Study,' in which he wrote "The spellbound audience in a picture house is certainly in a state of heightened suggestibility and is ready to receive suggestions... [You] cannot overlook the fact that the masses of today prefer to be taught by pictures rather than words. The fact that millions are daily under the spell of the performances on the screen is established. The high degree of suggestibility during those hours in the dark house must be taken for granted... The photoplay must have an incomparable power for the remoulding and upbuilding of the national soul." In Sri Lanka, you discover that a foreign agency has invested large money in roadside signs that beam the slogan "Stop Child Abuse" at you. Very compelling, but what is the reality? The children of the country's economic managers are now more exposed than others through the constant barrage of TV. The message they are getting removes restraint so carefully built up in their rural counterparts through guidance and respect for elders. If the above benefactors of the country's children baulk at adding a
warning panel below, then the country could add a sign nearby - 'protect
children from tv crime and violence." |
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