Children of the Screen

Imagine a fisherman’s trade. He storms out into the ocean, using potent bait to lure in the fish, and then sells said fish to a cannery or something along the same lines. The cannery pays for the fish and the process begins again. Now imagine today’s media process, most poignantly the evening news. Using the headlines as bait, news and media reels us in, and sells our viewing potential to advertisers, the metaphor’s cannery. I will first admit that this comparison is not of my own creating: my Comm. 101 teacher used this metaphor in class. But I thought it played well into a discussion on this piece, Children of the Screen. It begs us to ask the question, when we view media today, are we the consumer, or are we the product?

The title article makes many claims in a depressing, yet hauntingly truthful manner. Our society has lost much of its identity. And this is a world-wide problem. When a bustling street in Hong Kong is indistinguishable from one in New York because of the McDonalds on the corner and the fully entrenched advertising for Sprite, something has gone horribly awry. Norms can no longer be stratified without some sort of financial backing and the right lobbyists or sponsors. The terms by which we live our lives are no longer molded by our own hands.

This immersion into mass media and ever-changing values has taken a toll on nearly everyone. Young girls attempt to starve themselves to look like their favorite movie star or model, who has most likely been airbrushed to the point of being a surreal caricature of their former selves. Athletes take performance enhancing drugs just to compete and be the very best. But there is a problem with all this. None of it is real. We are living in a TV fantasy land where every crime is violent, but solved in the end. A place where people entertain themselves by having their testicles kicked by a horse, or where people compete in the most ridiculous challenges for their fifteen minutes of fame and a possible payday that will most likely be blown through before the show has even aired.

As one can see, I am fairly well in agreement with the author of Children of the Screen. But as a reader trying to be objective, I had to pay some thought to the upsides to such a society. It bothered me that said pros to the situation were ignored by the writer of the article. There are some positive aspects that exist, such as the fact that cellular phone service has helped to unite third world countries without a centralized landline. Or perhaps the fact that all kinds of charitable groups can come together online and share ideas to create support could be seen as advantageous. E-mail and texting makes communication simple and instantaneous; even television has some creative and educational programming. Of course, for every upside, there are problems, and drawbacks, but that is simply a fact of life.  

So which one are you? Are you the product, or the consumer?