Breeding the Fear Culture -- TV
Posted by unbrand on 27 October 2002 | 0 Comments
The fear culture is thriving on TV and has been for some time. Have you noticed how the “Movie of the Week” on the various networks is basically the same on all the channels? This is glorified victimization that has been finely honed and crafted for decades. Forget human struggle and the heroic will to overcome trauma. Forget the classic man vs. man or man vs. nature narrative archetypes. What we have is victimaztion as the focal point for two hours. Invariably, the heroine (90% of the time the victim is a woman) struggles for custody/survival at the hands of her lover/husband/”oppressive other.” Granted, struggle (or rather, conflict) is key in telling a story, especially on television. But when these shows plumb the depths of inhumanity, week after week, on every major network and some cable channels, it becomes important to take notice of what’s going on in the larger sense.
The idea is simple: Get the viewer in a “low” state, to where the viewer is so appalled and aghast at what is on the tube that the viewer is emotionally vulnerable. That’s the lead-in for the advertisers. When the viewer is in such a low state, he or she is more open to influence. The primary goal of advertising is to influence. A perfect fit.
The same concept of getting the viewer in a low state applies to other aspects of television as well. The nightly news is increasingly running stories of violence and murder, even though crime overall is down: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Apart from the further desensitization to violence this causes, it puts viewers in an emotionally vulnerable state so the advertisers can come in and insert their product-selling message deep into the psyche.
At the recent San Francisco protest march against war in Iraq, a network news photographer was overheard on his cell phone yelling at his boss to convince him to “Let me stay! I know there’s something big that’s going to happen here!” Nevermind that the march was very peaceful the entire day. This guy wanted his pictures of violence. He even went so far as to taunt some of the protestors in the hopes of getting them to have some kind of confrontation with the police.
For advertising reasons alone, the television media want to keep us fearful. But hey, we have enough other reasons to be afraid, right? Maybe those other reasons will keep enough of us away from the Movie of the Week. After all, why should we limit ourselves to this one form of fear when there are so many others readily available?