Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Citation: Mander, Jerry. The Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. New York : Morrow, 1978. Print.

Summary:

Four Arguments…is an book written by Jerry Mander, someone who worked in advertising and was able to see the powers of television first hand as well as from a different standpoint: that of the contributor  rather than just the spectator. He first realized his skepticism of television after talking to a friend, Howard Glossage, who argued that advertising was “an invasion of the mind…a power relationship…a deep, profound and disturbing act by the few against the many for a trivial purpose” (17). He continues to prophesize a handful of other frightening potentials of the powers of television. He speaks of it’s ability (which it had already done at the time) to alter our understanding of experience, and how people were becoming less and less capable of distinguishing direct, first-hand experience from secondary, altered and filtered experience seen through a machine. He argues that although the television is able to transmit a plethora of information and images, something seen as an opportunistic characteristic to Marshall McLuhan, this amount of information merely results in passivity due to an overload of information, not activism and involvement like McLuhan believes. And finally, he argues that TV, nor any technology for that matter, can remain neutral, when those with money are the ones who control what is transmitted through a television, when so many people own a television and are passive to its subtle, yet undeniable, ability to invade our minds and alter our perceptions of reality and experience.

Response:

Although we only read the first part of this book, I was pretty moved by what Mander had to say, however unnerved, paranoid, and skeptical it left me feeling. I agree more with the skepticism and pessimism presented by Mander than the optimistic and opportunistic views of McLuhan, although I found both of their arguments pertinent to our current situation. Having just disconnected my cable, I agreed with a lot of what Mander had to say, especially his arguments of the present information overload…that although the amount of information we are exposed to could potentially result in involvement and awareness (for McLuhan, a characteristic that has the potential to be positive), in reality it only results in passivity and detachment. This is something I have experienced firsthand with my own mother, a TV junkie of sorts. She is so complacent to just sit in front of the TV every night, allowing flashing images to just be thrown at her, making no effort of her own…which of course was something I would do as well when I had cable TV,  and which was one of the reasons I chose to unsubscribe from my cable plan. However, now that I don’t have cable, there are times that all I want to do sit in front of the TV and be complacent, to make no effort and have my experiences predetermined for me. I also agreed with Mander’s argument that everything we are shown on TV, everything we read on the internet, even everything that is presented to us as news, is filtered by someone and something. Nothing is truly objective anymore; it can’t be when it goes through this filtration process. It’s not represented, it’s re-presented according to the agenda of someone or some institution, it’s all an edited fragment of reality presented as truth…being skeptical is the least we can do at this point.

Rob brought up an interesting point in class, having to do with our body positions when we interact with different forms of technology that I had never thought of before. He said that when we “interact” with television, we lean back in passivity, the television is acting upon us, information is spewing over us; as opposed to when we “interact” with the internet, we lean forward in an active pose…we are more in charge at this point, searching and re-searching for more information. Having never before thought of this, I much prefer the active pose.