I finally saw Bowling for Columbine (got the SpecialEdition DVD for my birthday). It was pretty good, as if the rest of the world hasn't said it enough. I found myself in the spotlight when he and the author of Culture of Fear were walking around in South Central Los Angeles and showing firsthand how our media inspired conceptions of the danger in that region are vastly overblown. Exposes my recent entry about ghetto tours as unenlightened bullshit (as if everything else I write isn't).
I'm aware of how the media, especially TV affects. Hell, everything we do, eat, think, breathe, see, ponder, oogle, touch, lick, smell, imagine, and covet affects us. The problem with media isn't that it affects us, its that it is a passive paternalist authority that we willingly cede command and control to. With most everything else, be it the people we associate with, the newspapers we read, or the internet sites we browse, we at least make choices about what kind of exposure we endure and thus have at least some contribution, if not control, over the kinds of stimuli that affect us.
But not with television media. We just lap it up, and its getting worse with the continued blurring of the lines between news and entertainment and reality. It's all becoming one big entertainment morass that, while entertaining, seductively shapes our perceptions of the world. The whole point Moore tried to make with Bowling for Columbine was that our television media instills irrational fear and paranoia in the citizens of the USA which leads us to do the most fucked up things, like kill over 11,000 of our friends, relatives, and neighbors with guns every year. Even as crime has gone down over the last decade and more, fear and insecurity have risen, even without 9/11.
Everyone needs to work together to combat this psychological reprogramming we suffer as a nation. It isn't much, but I try to do my part with this blog. But we need to engage each other on these issues too. Get your friends and family and co-workers to look at the news (instead of watching it for content, look at what it is doing) and try to point out the lines on the page, then get them to step outside.
We are failing as a species and as people. We have so much power and potential and we are doing nothing but racing to the bottom as fast as we can. The only options are to stand around and think about how bad it is and hope that someone else grabs the reins first or get out there and start tackling the problems with local engagement. We all know how community bonds have fractured and disintegrated; reestablish them!
And stop watching TV.
Posted by Nutrimentia at October 5, 2003 05:18 PM | TrackBack