TV's Weakening of Coping Mechanisms

Maybe I shouldn't put this out there since it's an incomplete theory, and I don't know if it's even testable, but... there does seem to be a loss of resilience in society right?

You know mass shootings, depending on the definition being on the rise, as memorable as they are it feels that way. An NCAA basketball coach mentioning how his players are more sensitive now, not like the old days when he played and he has to do like a 5:1 ratio of positive comments to negative ones because of that. And I don't want to criticize soldiers one bit because they're braver than I am, but I think back to a picture I saw of a civil war battle, where the families were watching the battle from like bleachers or something. I think they coped with death better back then too (Although this is probably due to the fact that the average life expectancy was <40 and with high infant mortality that would desensitize as well.)

So the theory part, TV's effect, especially during youth. What if there's a natural linearity to life, and then a self confidence that develops by forming your own opinions based on a more natural context (spatial, time, actors you're familiar with and responses by those actors you can reasonably predict at certain stages).

With TV you have a lot of imposition of will. Mainly due to only being able to focus on like 1 thing at a time. So combine this with the layers of meaning present in film at all levels and you have ideologies imposed on the viewer for one thing. Also the unnatural fragmentation in tv - in a 30s commercial you might have 15-20 jump cuts with an avg of 2 seconds per clip. A lot will get by an adult, let alone a kid or teen. At an avg of 3hrs viewing per day or whatever it is now, it is pure innundation of information, fragmentary and non-sequential. 8 year olds watching the same programs as their 30yr old folks and presented in an unnatural way in time and space and internalized unnaturally. Life milestones, responses to bullying, expansion from 1st person perspective to second and third, group think and roles in groups - all ideas imposed on youth thousands of times often with pieces missing in the jump cut, the clear path from point A to point B. Also imitation of tv and film actors ways of communicating. Like the final word being so important when really a lot of people are (or should be), learning all the time. There is just a massive cumulative amount of exposure to tv for our limited attention brains. And the effect? I think the effect of this is a big component of the loss of resilience.

Short version: TV imposition of will by selective attention, layers of meaning and pure volume of information. Theory: Self-confidence and with it resilience form better by forming one's own opinions in life in a more linear natural development over time, especially the pre-tv era.

 

Well, this is certainly a interesting theory. Could you expand a bit on your fourth paragraph? It's a bit meandering and I'm not sure of your contention regarding "imposition of will".

 

Sounds plausible enough, although I'd wager that there's a confounding variable in the outsourcing of child-rearing to sources outside the immediate family circle and a progressively increasing reliance on using the TV, computers, tablets and interactive media as means of "buying time" for the parent. I see that shit on a regular basis, it's awful - parents are voluntarily relinquishing control of what enters their child's mind.

 

Lol, this was the first battle of the civil war and some southern people thought it was going to be all polite killing. I think most of them got shot.

But bet that most of the civil war did not have like a tennis crowd watching.

 

When you consider the ignorance, and banality of most families, the last thing a child needs is to spend their entire day only interacting with their family. If anything, children need to be out in the world more, not less. They need greater exposure to other people's ideas.

The average human family is the problem. Many parents don't effectively prepare their children for a social world.

Considering the level of prejudice and violence that has been encouraged throughout history, long before TV came along, I consider neurotic empathy to be a vast improvement.

Also, the comment about Civil War families watching from the bleachers only proves that point. Life used to be a lot less valuable than it is today. Children used to be a lot less valuable than they are today. So, yes, people were more stoic about dealing with death, but only because they had less control over it.

Ignorance is bliss. If human beings can't cope with increasing levels of information, and exposure to life's realities then we might as well abandon this experiment altogether. It's not worth it.

 

Sure, I guess part of what got me thinking about the topic was yet another mass shooting incident, but now I'm thinking that has more to do with evil, especially in the case of random shootings.

But yeah, resilience you hear about increased use of SSRI's, depression, PTSD (understand why, but the increase may need explaining). I'm trying to draw a link with tv/film because of how much time is spent in front of the screen and how impressionable young minds are. Highly, a lot of times you just have to be an authority figure to have an impact, like most people on tv.

For imposition of will was talking about ideas that could get by the viewer. Could be stuff as simple as peer pressure, group pressure, popular kid imitation. Like Cider House Rules where they slip in the pro abortion stance. Personally, I'm not all that political, but I caught the respected sage Michael Caine, popular/hot girl Charlize Theron way of getting that idea to the audience. Charlize Theron could influence a lot of opinions for a lot of causes.

But then also extended to the power of cinematography to bias:
Ways of making characters and their ideas seem more important - length of screen time, who gets the last word, location in background/mid ground/foreground or close-up, camera angle.
Painting a character - high light=friendly, low light=serious or shady.
Classical conditioning - disorienting scenes in Requiem For a Dream producing nausea, seeing a drug after watching that film and feeling nauseous.
And on and on, the craft has some serious levels to pack meaning into.

Beyond that, I'm kind of stuck at I think exposure to this can have some real negative effects during the developmental years. Nature and millions of years of evolution were for a linear life. There's a lot more context that helps the brain to make sense of the information and I think a self-confidence that develops from that. Jump cuts and rapid close ups are very unnatural. It could be information overload. You have 15 cuts in a 30 second commercial with the average clip being 2 seconds, combined with our limited capacity for attention and a lot of the tricks of bias get past us and sometimes even a lot of weightier ideas.

900hrs per year at school and 1200hrs per year watching tv.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/television-watching-statistics/

 

Absolutely, very multivariable problem and with parents, they come home worn out from 60hrs at the factory or wherever and just want to get dinner and unwind. Hard to teach kids with 2 free hours a day.

 

Yeah the amount of propaganda and manipulation techniques packed into television is enough not to watch it.

It targets the subconscious, especially 'entertainment' shows when the critical mind shuts off and it allows it all to slip right in. It is used to shape peoples values, implant ideas, and ultimately modify their behavior. Done very scientifically.

 

The dual edge of science and technology. I have no solution, just seeking a clearer understanding of tv's effects at this point. Also not too sure that non-film majors appreciate just how powerful the programming can be.

I would agree that an increased value on human life is greater than resilience in coping with death for sure. And greater exposure to ideas if unable in person.

 

Greater exposure to ideas.. But you have to wonder who's ideas they are and why are they being beamed into your living room.

 

Yeah I'm pretty sure the moguls have it down pat by now after like 80 years or so. Also the artists, man there are some good films out there, they make it hard to shut out lol.

It was a little scary to see the other thread on the Viacom consolidation, that list of subsidiaries was huuuge.

 

If you're going to involve analyses of SSRI's (which I think is a big hoax based on spurious variables for the most part), I might examine the supposed "clay softening" effect of such medications in regard to therapeutic intervention. They have been long-regarded as being conducive to therapy, especially CBT, in that they allow brain functionality to be more feasibly altered. Theoretically, if you combine such enabling drugs with the influence of unhealthy stimuli, you could argue that the combination could be very negative.

But that's just off the top of my head.

 

I looked into Vogue magazine a while back and it's owned by parent companies controlled by another Billionaire Oligarch family that owns a TON of other companies.

That model of consolidated ownership is the way things are, to the point where a small group of people really do have an extraordinary amount of control over the goings on in the world. They form the Oligarchy.