Television and Culture

El artículo en español puede leerse aquí.

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Television is, simultaneously, an instrument of culture and a source of cultural impoverishment. The first point requires no demonstration; it is self-evident, as television, being a medium that reaches everywhere, can carry a cultural content that benefits many. Yet television is also a constant agent of cultural impoverishment, diverting people away from one of the main paths that lead to culture: dialogue.

Dialogue, alongside reading, is the most effective exercise to develop our capacity for reasoning. Through dialogue, wit is sharpened. Generally, those who engage in dialogue find themselves in one of two scenarios: either striving to surpass their conversation partner – thereby accelerating their mental processes – or seeking to learn by listening attentively and asking questions to clarify matters. This constitutes the fruitful dialogue between disciple and master and is also the best method to satisfy intellectual curiosity. Neither of these two scenarios can occur with television, where one is only left to submit, listening without the possibility of responding, asking, or clarifying. Television is, per se, an inescapable monologue.

Before television, people engaged extensively in dialogue. The constant flow of dialectics continually sparked new ideas. Television killed or greatly reduced the tertulias. Tertulias were once numerous – held in royal palaces and village kitchens; in the café gatherings of the middle class and in popular taverns; in backrooms, under colonnades, and in open fields; in pharmacies; in tobacconists’ shops; in barbershops; in pedantic ateneos and ecclesiastical sacristies; in political circles; in bourgeois casinos and workers’ centers. People engaged extensively in dialogue. The constant flow of dialectics continually sparked new ideas. Wit, as I reiterate, was honed, grew, and often found its way into the pages of newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and books, where it remained preserved forever.

From pre-Roman times, where the name tertulia originated, until the mid-20th century, it was one of the most perfect and prolific mechanisms for creating culture. After all, culture is the cultivation of mind and spirit, as our distinguished Luis Vives defined it, being perhaps the first to use the term intellectual culture in its dual etymology of cultivation (colo, colere) – to till or work – and of veneration (cultus) – to revere or worship.

The tertulia, with its dialogues, was a formidable cultural agent – an agent that diminished as it declined, and there is no doubt that television was the main culprit for this extinction or reduction of the tertulias. Today, people engage in much less dialogue than they did before television, and therefore intellectual exercise is greatly diminished. This is the major negative impact of television on culture, which, in my view, outweighs the positives it may offer as a vehicle for cultural dissemination.

This vehicle is fundamentally audiovisual, a monologue. It informs, narrates, and makes things visible, but does not explain its explanations. And explaining what is explained, along with teaching how to learn, is the foundation of good pedagogy and, above all, of higher didactics. In my view (and this is how I applied it in my university lectures), these principles are fundamental to the university. One goes there primarily to learn and practice research methods and methodological practices.

It may be argued that the self-taught need none of this. That is not true. The so-called self-taught individual is constantly asking questions and inquiring – consulting various books in a comparative and deductive reading process, seeking clarification from people, persisting in their readings and inquiries. None of this is possible for the television viewer, who is condemned to perpetually watch, listen, and remain silent, like the pesky parrot in the Portuguese tale: Vosa Excelença ira aonde o leven.

One must also consider that television cannot always be «good». Most of its sessions inevitably have to be «bad». There is no human possibility of filling so many daily hours with «good» content. Any collection of «goodness» eventually runs dry. The «good» that human ingenuity has produced is very limited. Those who create television programs are inevitably compelled to settle for the mediocre, the banal, if not the outright «bad» and even harmful. A station with two channels broadcasts more than twelve hours daily, amounting to over 4,380 hours a year – far too many to fill with top-quality productions or exemplary didactic content.

Moreover, due to their prohibitively expensive technical and economic complexity, television networks can never be in the hands of the common people. They are either in the hands of the State, which is bad, or in the hands of financial oligarchies or political sects, which is even worse. In these final years of the century, people flock to television like flies to honey or children to candy, eagerly consuming whatever wholesome or poisoned delicacies are served up on the «small screen». As a result, vast crowds ingest their daily dose of images and words, often laden with a propagandistic agenda that is rarely clean or generous.

Today, studies in what might be called psychological penetration are well advanced. Techniques to infiltrate the average person’s mind and shape their thoughts and actions are well understood. Commercial advertising, particularly in the United States, has achieved considerable success in this regard. And this is undeniably an insidious method that threatens the listener’s freedom, privacy, and dignity. Unaware of the manipulation, they allow themselves to be influenced, like the drinker or the lover of sweets who consumes the drug hidden in their beverage or candy.

If you put television at the service of any cause – good or bad, political or commercial – that cause will succeed in penetrating and controlling millions of minds. Only individuals with strong, well-organized intellects can remain immune to this mass drug, but they are an insignificant minority and, in turn, exert little influence on the masses. For instance, serious and scientific publications with solid and sound morals have readers in the hundreds, while «celebrity» magazines, pornographic or sports magazines, have readers in the thousands. The proliferation of such trash or banalities in print serves as a clear indicator of the cultural values of our time.

Archimedes is reputed to have once declared: «Give me a lever and I will move the world». I dare say: «Put television in intelligent hands, and they will drag or hold the majority of a nation in whatever position they desire». Fortunately, those in control of television, especially in Spain, are far from being intelligent.

Television entertains and distracts without demanding any mental effort in return. Previously, reading required the use of imagination. Over a century ago, when in a rural kitchen under the dim light of a lamp, a reader read aloud the weekly installment of Pérez Escrich or Fernández y González, «the Viscount dismounted from his chestnut steed and, after passing the reins to his footman, stepped into the park where the fair-haired marquise awaited him, her arms tenderly entwining around his neck». the rustic listeners, captivated by the melodramatic narration, had to engage in a process, a mental effort of imagination to visualize the Viscount (whom they likely pictured as dashing), the horse (with a chestnut coat and graceful build), the footman (in an impeccable livery, tall boots, and a servile demeanor), the park (a romantic garden with trees, flowers, and sandy paths), and finally, the marquise (beautiful, slender, enamored, swaying in her silk crinoline, encircling the gentleman’s neck with her lovely arms). All these mental operations had to be carried out swiftly by those simple listeners of Don Enrique P. Escrich or Don Manuel Fernández y González. Today, television spares viewers this intellectual effort, presenting the Viscount, horse, footman, garden, and marquise just as the television adapter arranged them, without requiring the slightest imaginative exertion. It is undoubtedly an advantage to know these characters de visu, but a drawback for training the intellect. Thus, the modern television viewer finds themselves on a lower intellectual plane than the bygone listener (who was more than just a passive hearer) of serialized melodramatic novels. Similarly, theater – being predominantly voice, gesture, and expression – conveys less to the masses than cinema, which combines voice, gesture, expression, imagery, and varied movements.

Alongside the undeniable cultural benefits that television can provide, there are two great evils: first, in the hands of the State and oligarchies, it becomes a formidable instrument of tyranny; and second, with its direct ability to present visually, it prevents the mental exercise or discipline that forms the basis and foundation for cultivating the intellect and spirit – that is, for culture. And let us set aside (which is in itself no small matter) the harm directly caused by «bad» programming.

It is very likely that, in a few years, all of this will be painfully evident.

Only God knows.

Jesús Evaristo Casariego

Translated by the Gremio San Jerónimo