The rise of television has had a heavy impact on cultures worldwide with a common message – the American Dream is desirable and every one of us is entitled to it. Fortunately, but perhaps not quickly enough, many of us are waking up to realize that the dream is a nightmare. Here’s how it all began …
After the 1930s Great Depression and World War II, the United States devised a plan to boost the crippled economy. In 1946, government and industry began making identical pronouncements to redevelop American life for consumption of commodities at a level never before contemplated. A new vision was born that equated the good life with consumer goods, the new American Dream.
Two important steps were crucial to successful realization of this vision. First, to secure an abundant supply of raw materials to convert into commodities. Industry made huge investments in foreign countries, and government gave enormous aid programs to “underdeveloped” countries with valuable resources. Communism was the fear factor used to cover up this intervention and assert the patriotic virtues of foreign investment.
With raw materials secured, the second step was to create consumers of these commodities. Needs had to be established where there were no needs before. Advertising was the answer to convincing people that life with lots of stuff was desirable and patriotic, and television was the perfect sales tool to deliver the message right into people’s homes and heads. Television, which had been lying around in mothballs since the 1920s, was dusted off with the help of hundreds of millions of dollars invested by big advertisers. The success of the TV-Advertising duo resulted in the greatest economic growth rate in the history of America between 1946 and 1970.
The problem with the coveted American Dream is that it is not sustainable. For every person in the world to reach present US levels of consumption we need four more planet Earths, a problem no amount of space travel will solve. Considering who controls mass media, a re-evaluation of consumptive western culture is not likely to be inspired through television channels. Before it all crashes, the top dogs are cashing in whatever they can, while they can. Bush said it, “The have’s and the have mores.”
In the past twenty years, the triumph of American-style capitalism has seen media acquisitions and company mergers turn mega-corporations into unimaginable giants with more money and power than most nations. Only one hundred consumer corporations pay for ninety percent of television advertising. Some examples of the largest media organizations sharing common memberships, not only in each other’s boardrooms but in the boardrooms of the corporations that sponsor them, are:
NBC = GE: Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola, Dell, GM, Home Depot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola, Procter & Gamble.
ABC = Disney: Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Clorox, Estee Lauder, FedEx, Gillette, Halliburton, Kmart, McKesson, Staples, Yahoo.
CBS = Viacom: American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle, Lafarge North America.
CNN = AOL-Time Warner: Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton.
Corporations offer free TV’s and satellite dishes to rural populations to capture more markets for junk food, materialism, and appearance obsession. Drugs, cars, looks, values – the real drug pushers are the pharmaceutical companies sending ceaseless advertising into family living rooms. The result of this visual blitzkrieg of corporate propaganda is an indoctrinated and subservient mass audience, united in unscrupulous consumer ideology, boxed into a physical and mental environment conducive to autocratic control and political oppression. Freedom of choice is restricted to pervasive brand names, and self-worth is measured by buying power. We are what we wear, or drive, rather than the junk food we eat, or the values we keep.
Some people believe television is not reformable, that the problems are inherent in the medium itself and that to speak of television as being subject to change is as absurd as speaking of gun-reform. Yet it is still the most powerful and persuasive form of mass-communication on earth.
Imagine being able to reach millions of viewers simultaneously and continuously with incentives to confront our destructive habits; particularly the core problem, our blunt refusal to rethink human population growth. Imagine reaching these people with the solution to environmental degradation, oppression, conflict, terrorism, famine, poverty, fear, depression, over-population, extinction … The solution being Sustainability, how to live more with less. Propaganda ends where dialogue begins – what we have always needed, and will always need is debate. We need alternative, independent voice to question authority, expose problems, offer solutions, connect us, inspire and foster change, and create a vision for the future. This can be done in entertaining, inspirational and empowering ways, but free speech is only theory when censored, so the battle begins with a fight for equal access to the airwaves.
Freedom of thought, freedom of opinion, freedom of expression – these are basic, legal rights protected globally in Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. The reclamation of the Human Right to Communicate via the world's most powerful communication medium is called Media Carta, a movement spearheaded by Adbusters. It begins with a First Amendment lawsuit in Canada for the right to buy a piece of airtime! For more than a decade, Adbusters has been trying to buy airtime for its social marketing TV spots, called uncommercials. In the United States they have been shut out by CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and MTV; as well as by major networks in Canada, the UK, Australia, France, South Africa, Japan and Germany.
Battles are raging against corporatized communications, consumers are beginning to realize the political power they wield as a collective buying force, and independent community-based alternatives are already underway. Small-scale grassroots pickets will turn into large-scale economic boycotts. Victory will tip the balance of power from corporations to people, from consumption to sustainability, from money to ideas, from quantity to quality.
The most effective way of participating in the media revolution is to reject the corporate message and buy less stuff.
Copyright © V. Schulz 2005 - All Rights Reserved
LINKS:
Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television, by Jerry Mander
Adbusters <http://Adbusters.org>
Media Carta campaign <http://MediaCarta.org>
The Corporation <http://www.TheCorporation.com>
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