That Screen on the Side of the Box

Can the screen really affect your character—and can it really affect your hope of everlasting life?

Someone once said that the real test comes to us not when we have too little, but when we have too much. What we do with the "extra" shows our real character. When it comes to time, however, the "extra" forms as well as tests our character, as we shall see.

At last count most Americans have 5.5 hours of free time a day. (Surprise!) So, what are we doing with ours? Studies show that a lot of us are spending our extra time sitting in front of that screen on the side of the box. Varying with age and gender, the average time spent watching is around four hours a day, and in the typical home the set is on over seven hours each day.1

Of course, people don't just watch the screen. They do a lot of other things at the same time, much to the annoyance of advertisers. For the advertisers, the screen exists in order to sell us their whatevers. They try to keep the programs interesting enough to keep us tuned, yet not so interesting that the story overshadows the real point of it all: the commercials. Most of us have developed the knack of screening out things we consider nonessential, like commercials. Advertisers know this, which is the reason commercials are never shown just once.

While industry representatives pooh-pooh the idea that anything they show has any kind of impact on anybody ("it's only a story"), advertisers keep right on plowing big money into buying time, knowing that people like you and me are going to be influenced by what we see. To paraphrase Paul's words, "By beholding we become changed" (2 Cor 3:18): "By beholding we spend". (How do you like being valued only as a money-spending consumer?) All the money spent for commercials reveals the lie in the disclaimers of influence.2

Several years ago ABC published A Research Perspective on Television and Violence, which represented the industry stand on the issue. Dr. Eli A. Rubinstein of the University of North Carolina has noted that this study did not refute the major findings and conclusion of the study of the National Institute of Mental Health, and that it sounded "remarkably like that of the tobacco industry in its position on the scientific evidence about smoking and health".3

Violence

Frank Mankiewicz and Joel Swerdlow observe that when Newton Minnow (who was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at the time) quipped that television was a "vast wasteland," he should have said it was a "combat zone".4 Literally thousands of studies have been done on this issue, with one conclusion: violence begets violence.5

One 22-year longitudinal study found that there is "a clear and significant relationship between exposure to TV violence at age 8 and the seriousness of criminal acts performed... at age 30".6 Heavy viewers of violence perceive the world as being more violent than it really is and tend to be pessimistic, suspicious, alienated and apprehensive.7 Viewers are taught that violence is the preferred response; consequently they think and behave aggressively. As Ben T. Logan puts it, "We have in us urges to be violent that feed on screen violence. We carry around inside us attitudes that can make us willing participants in the sexism, racism, and other stereotyping found on the screen".8

Theologians and preachers call this sin.

Imitation

"Monkey see, monkey do." Imitated acts of violence include suicide and all sorts of mayhem. One celebrated illustration of this is that of Niemi v. National Broadcasting Co. (1978) in which the (simulated) rape in the movie Born Innocent was reenacted against an 11-year old girl on a California beach several days later. The youthful attackers admitted that they got the idea from the film.9

Adults are no different from adolescents in this regard. At the very time Doomsday Flight (in which an air carrier receives a bomb threat) was being broadcast, one U.S. carrier received an identical threat. Within 24 hours four more such calls were received. The Federal Aviation Agency publicly blamed the network and film for endangering the public. Author Rod Serling stated, "Yes, I wrote the story, but to my undying regret".10 We can't force people to turn off Magnum P.I. and Co., but former Surgeon General Everett C. Koop once asked: "The real issue is this: Why on earth does anybody watch that stuff?"11

Desensitizing

It is not only commercials that television teaches us to screen out. A couple sits watching a tender scene in a movie, which brings tears to the woman's eyes. Their conversation goes something like this: "What are you crying for? It's just a movie!" "I know, but I can't help it." "Women!" "Well, next time I'm not going to cry".

This is called desensitization. It is the process by which our personal feelings are extinguished, and it progresses as we watch. Dr. Thomas Radecki, video watchdog of the National Coalition on Television Violence, states, "I think we have become desensitized to violence".12

Does anyone care any more when watching a fellow human hurting or being hurt? "Tens of thousands of hours viewing spectacles of death, with breaks for Lite beer commercials, does not heighten feelings of compassion".13 Research demonstrates that the viewing of violence does extinguish normal human emotions. We are reminded of 2 Timothy 3:3 KJV, which lists among the last-day vices, "without natural affection".

Sex

Television has also come in for heavy criticism in its portrayal of sex. While most people object to nudity and explicit sexual behavior on the screen (MTV shows these things at a rate twice that of conventional programming), Jerry Mander raises a deeper issue: "Television's focus on the relationships between people may be far more important and have far more impact on the sexual scripts of children and adults than the portrayal of any particular nude scene or sexual act".14

The screen is an important agent in the socialization of people, the process by which members of our species become human. F. Earle Barcus writes, "Television programs for children have male and female characters available as role models, and it has been documented by a number of researchers that these characters teach children the appropriateness of sex-role behaviors through the use of modeling".15 Teenage girls used to be reserved in their conduct toward boys; now they're very forward, hanging onto them and touching them freely. Young people, especially those with no significant relationship with adults, do learn how to act and relate from the screen.16

Susan Franzblau observes that sex is most often found on sitcoms rather than serious programs. She writes, "On TV it tends to be all right to laugh about sex, but not all right to take it seriously as a natural part of a loving relationship. It is all right to show, quite explicitly, a woman being raped but it is not all right to show a positive, loving sexual act. Is that what we want television to teach us and our children about sex and sexuality?"18

The screen is a slick marketing device that delivers audiences via entertainment to advertisers. The result is that certain people make a lot of money. People like to be entertained; they like action. And so most programming is entertaining action which is not intended to replicate reality. Unfortunately, those who watch the screen end up believing reality is what they see.

Shaping Reality

Neil Postman, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at New York University, put it this way: "There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre.... How television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails".19

Jesus wants to give us more, not less (John 10:10b). You may have never thought of it in this way, but His "more" includes the values, or qualities of living, that make His life(style) so worth living. What happens to these values on the screen?

Self. On television, the individual is supreme. But such old fashioned selfishness is a counterfeit for Jesus' thinking, which upholds the supreme worth of the individual. Jesus would have died for a single individual! Yet despite the selfishness, there seems to be a lack of self-worth in people today. Many teenagers and other individuals look down on themselves.20

Work. According to one Seventh-day Adventist author, when a worker doesn't put his heart into his job, "he neither preserves self-respect nor wins the respect of others".21 Work is a key to self-respect, which surely is a part of "the good life," and who doesn't want to live "the good life?" To buy into prime time's idea of the good life means thinking, "I want to live without working hard," and a lot of people look at life just this way. Is it any wonder that there is a paucity of self-respect these days? But is the screen really worth losing one's self-respect over?

Materialism. When The Godfather was filmed, not just any place on Lake Tahoe would do. It had to be filmed in the poshest place on the lake—Henry Kaiser's estate. "Read my lips: I have more than you do. Check that BMW out". However, money, according to some very wise counsel, is a good thing and is to be used in doing good for others.22

Power. And, of course, the Number One American Value is POWER! Who doesn't want to "get to the top"; who wants his team to lose? What a contrast with Him who lost everything (Phil 2:3-8, 2 Cor 5:21) in order to give everything to us! Unfortunately, research shows no difference in viewer values between Christians and non-Christians.23

Future. In the presentation mentioned earlier, Scott Card asserted that the storyteller of fiction is the one who gives a community identity and shapes the future of that community by the stories told, especially the stories everyone loves.24 Such stories function as a sort of community epic, and, along with local rituals, help establish the community. According to Card, the storyteller of fiction has the power of revising your idea of community as well as either changing or creating your values; that is, if he can get you to love his story enough.25 Toward the end of the presentation he said:

There's a ring of truth in this. America's character has been changing. The fiction storyteller has been that screen on the side of the box. Who would have thought innocuous things such as M*A*S*H would do that to us? What will all those mutated turtles do?

Character

Has the church's character been changing too? Men's "characters are composed of that which the mind eats and drinks".26 We must "avoid reading, seeing, or hearing that which will suggest impure thoughts or evils... [for this] will awaken evils within, and the soul will wander in darkness".27 A lot of church families are very tuned to the media. If you are among them, what do you think has been happening to your character?

A well-known Seventh-day Adventist counselor put it this way: "There is no influence in our land more powerful to poison the imagination, to destroy religious impressions, and to blunt the relish for the tranquil pleasures and sober realities of life than theatrical amusements".28

"Our amusement and entertainment should meet the highest standards of Christian taste and beauty". So reads part of Fundamental Belief No. 21.29 Going back to 2 Corinthians 3:18, what we behold changes us. If we behold His glory we will be changed into a likeness of that glory. But if we behold something else—

Ask yourself just what kind of character you want to have, and then choose accordingly. Simple? Simple.