Koganti |1 Roy Koganti Instructor Kurt Sampsel English 76-101: Interpretation and Argument 17th March 2012 AS Rough

Draft When your parents tell you to stop watching television and go do your homework, they arent just worried about you not finishing your homework; they are just as worried, if not more, about the TV shows you are watching. The modern debate about whether TV is good or bad for you is not simply about the television. It is representative of a larger issue, of all types of media from magazines to the internet. The fact there is so much controversy over media simply goes to highlight the fact that media of all forms does disseminate information to viewers. It is simply a matter of dispute as to the nature and effect of that information. Whether true or false, such information tends to play a role in peoples beliefs and values. It is also important to be cognizant of the fact that this effect, whether good or bad, is more pronounced on children. The main reason behind this is a lack of life experience. Older people have seen more of the world and all its conflicting nature. They have more information through which to shape their values and are less likely to be influenced by a single magazine article or a TV show. The reason behind this has to do largely with the content of the media, but its not a simple problem of there being too much explicit content, like Gore and Mckeever argue. The problem with the content goes much deeper than that; from the stereotypical portrayals that Pozner, Klosterman, Pratkanis and Aronson discuss to the misrepresented information that Brodie, Williams, Burns, Woloshin and Schwartz say that media depicts, media content has many ways to mislead us.

Koganti |2 The most direct and base problem, the first one that dissenters of the internet and television always bring up, is the proliferation of too much explicit content in media. This has always been a central concern throughout the ages for a very good reason its effect on children. Explicit content has a less prominent effect on most adults who already have a central set of values and decades of life experience behind them, but children are yet to shape their beliefs; the latters ideals are crafted by what they see and hear and most of what the y see and hear is from the media. Mckeevers article addresses the effects of such explicit content on the young, his main point being that watching a crime or amoral acts in 3D, even if it is fake, convinces a child much more than a book, that that is the way the world really works that such stuff is normal and they should act the same way. Gore shares the same basic sentiment as Mckeever. He believes that the media does not censor what they show. It portrays too much explicit content as something completely normal. This causes more children to emulate them, and parents should have the right to restrain such emulation by preventing their children from watching such shows in the first place. Too many shows on TV did not label their content as sexual or violent in any way so parents were not able to efficiently censor what their children watched. Gore wants the media groups to differentiate between what is normal and what isnt take away the label of normal from explicit images. This allows parents more power in choosing what their children see. This is where Gore differes from McKeever; the latter seeks to slowly weed out all the undesirable aspects in the content and have them completely expunged while Gore knows this is a tall order and essentially strives to limit access to such sensitive material with the help of parents. In short, Gore believes that such explicit content is not overtly explicit enough so people are unable to regulate who watches it while Mckeever argues that explicit content is so explicit that rather than being regulated, it

Koganti |3 should be slowly cleaned out. Perhaps the difference in opinion comes from the different time eras these two authors lived in. Dissidents in the past tried harder to wipe out explicit content but in time, they realized the futility of their efforts and started on the long road of censorship and regulations instead. Till now, we have regarded explicit content to be a dangerous factor in the media due to its inherent ability to ingrain a certain mentality into its viewers an immoral and risky kind of mentality. However, we should not make the mistake of thus labeling normal content as safe. Its not normal content; it simply isnt explicit content. Even such content has the very real menace of communicating false information and values to not only our children, but to any adult out there as well. Normal content can very easily misrepresent information to us, giving us a wrong view of many important issues in the world. Previous authors have in essence tried to argue that explicit content have very little credibility and verity in them; this makes people try to pass it of as somewhat normal, but how credible is even normal content really? In Woloshins and Schwartzs article, they target the credibility of the ever-important the medical community. Is a diagnosis accurate, do the drugs have any harmful side-effects, is treatment actually necessary and so on. The answers to many of these questions are not being doubted by an increasing amount of patients. They simply take those answers at face value. Also, for those who do decide to conduct research on their own, many go through the popular media channels, and usually gain information that is exaggerated, misrepresented, one-sided or just plain wrong; its simply part of the whole disease mongering scheme. The media usually tries to play up disease stories due to their dramatic impact on viewers, which increases ratings, ends up causing public scares and puts the wrong information out there. The media should approach medical news with a greater degree of skepticism.

Koganti |4 Brodies article about how entertainment television can be used to spread health-care information also picks up on the same point as the previous article fictitious information or overly dramatic information could lead to viewers having erroneous perceptions about health issues. Brodie uses E.R. as his main example and how E.R. is a form of dramatic medical drama. Many of the illnesses are serious and sometimes misrepresented. There is so much drama that rather than making people cautious and helping them to know what to do, it makes them too cautious. Essentially, both authors are saying that media spreads misleading information. However, while Brodie gets to this conclusion by questioning the power of the television in being informative, Woloshin and Schwartz get there by looking at the corporate and monetary reasons why the media would mislead us. One important note here is that even parents can get misinformed, so the danger to children could even be greater than in the case of explicit content; we can see the danger to our children in a gun, but not in a quarter which they can choke on. When looking at how facts are misrepresented in the media, we realize that in many cases, truths are turned into white lies. Now lets look at the other case, when such lies are turned into truths; this is how it is when it comes to stereotypes in the media. People in the media always try to argue how the media simply reflects the images in society but after the media reflects such values, those values always become more widespread among the population. The media takes a rare trend or issue, and passes it off as normal because its more exciting than what is the norm; it attracts more viewers and increases ratings. Klostermans essay addresses a key point of stereotypes in the media archetypical portray of characters in TV shows. In many TV shows nowadays, the type of character is more important than who the character is. An AfricanAmerican, a jock, a geek, the Goth and so on. TV shows have in fact perpetuated many of these personas from something that probably wasnt mainstream into the normal way for people to act.

Koganti |5 Shows like The Breakfast Club and St Elmos Fire clearly perpetuated this trend. This type of archetypical portrayal has now spread through shows. In horror and slasher films, theres a satirical saying now the black man always dies first. Pratkanis and Aronson also attack this issue by contending how propaganda ingrains certain stereotypical thinking in our minds that guide our thoughts and actions. I feel that they have a good point here; much of what we see on TV nowadays is overly exaggerated and set in specific settings and characters in order to obtain maximum viewership. Much of what we see on television does not reflect the actual statistics from real life. For example, they mention in the essay, violence in the US is steadily declining over the past decade but violence in TV shows is increasing. This leads up to another related point on how such fictional violence affects peoples perceptions in real life. It changes how they feel about the issues raised in TV, and that change directly relates to the way they think and act in real life. Pozner discusses this point in regards to the medias portrayal of women today, especially in how the media depicts certain ways in which the average girl is meant to behave. It affects their perception of themselves; they look all the opinions in ads, magazines and films and automatically think to themselves, this is the way it is. It makes women strive to be thin, to be untrusting of their relationship partners and have certain expectations regarding themselves and others. Its similar to Klostermans ideas about stereotypical characters. The media has generated a specific portrayal of the female gender that people have accepted to be the norm. In sum, Klosterman, Pozner, Pratkanis and Aronson are all saying that the various stereotypes borne in the media are perceived as normal in society and this changes our attitude and guides our speech and actions. I believe that this danger arising from the media is directed more at young people than anyone else. Most children are too young to see the complexities of such stereotypes and they are fickle. Stereotypes dont stick as strongly to them.

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One interesting point I have picked up on is that no one is truly safe from being misled by the media. Adults worry all the time about how children are going to be negatively influenced but they do not realize they are in danger as well. The various problems in the media all have the greatest impact on differing age-groups and kinds of people. In the end though, its up to the parents to minimize this impact on their children, so they have to ensure that they remain perceptive and cautious of what they see in the media. They have to find out all the information before they impart their own knowledge to their children. As Alexander Pope said, A little learning is a dangerous thing; incomplete knowledge is what the media serves us.

Koganti |7 Works Cited Brodie, Mollyann. Communicating Health Information Through The Entertainment Media Health Affairs Volume 20:192-199.

Gore, Tipper. Curbing The Sexploitation Industry The New York Times 14 Mar 1988

Woloshin, Steven & Schwartz, Lisa.M. Giving Legs to Restless Legs: A Case Study of How the Media Helps Make People Sick PLoS Medicine Apr 2006 Volume 3 Issue 4:52-55

Klosterman. What Happens When People Stop Being Polite Sex, Drugs, And Cocca Puffs Chapter 3: 26-40

McKeever, William A. The Moving PictureGood Housekeeping Magazine. Aug 1910:184-186

Pozner, Jennifer L. Youre Soaking in It Salon.com, 30 Jan 2001

Pratkanis & Aronson. Pictures In Our Heads Age Of Propaganda, Chapter 7: 79-87