c. 1998 Religion News Service
(Tom Ehrich is the author of”On a Journey”(Journey Publishing Co.), a book series of daily meditations. If you have feedback on this column or want to suggest a question for a future column, e-mail Ehrich at journey(AT)interpath.com.)
UNDATED _ What does it mean when passive entertainment rules the cultural landscape?
TV networks agree to pay $2.3 billion a year to broadcast professional football games at a time when communities are pulling food stamps, ignoring potholes and cutting school budgets. NBC agrees to pay $13 million per episode for the hit show”ER”while real emergency rooms force the real wounded to wait longer for attention.
Computer makers work feverishly to develop faster chips and larger monitors, whose main beneficiaries are graphics-intensive games. Microsoft’s battles with the government over an Internet browser aren’t about productivity or improved communications; they’re about entertainment on the Web.
Day-care centers and elementary schools lull children into non-disruptive moods by showing videos during”learning”time. College students set up their dorm rooms as entertainment centers. And in many homes, the”family room”is actually four chairs facing a TV screen, while”family vacations”focus on passive-entertainment destinations like Disney World and Six Flags theme parks.
Some of an entertainment culture’s consequences are well known, if little heeded. Our children tend to be overweight, visually over-stimulated, and academically under-stimulated. Inner-city kids looking to escape poverty turn to basketball, not algebra, and then learn too little to get decent jobs.
Computers proliferate in American homes and classrooms, but their primary use is entertainment. Hence the current shortage of computer programmers, an occupation that requires concentration and imagination, not skill at wielding a”joy stick.” We know that television and movies convey too much violence, too much sex and too little guidance on how to actually live life. TV news has turned human suffering and politics into theater.
Two other impacts of the entertainment culture are less often discussed: guilt and fear.
Parents feel guilty about the place of television in their children’s lives. Men and boys feel guilty about the time they spend surfing the Net searching for pornography. Sometimes guilt can lead to remorse and repentance. But guilt derived from entertainment usually leads to withdrawal. We are ashamed, so we hide. We know more about Brad Pitt’s romances than we do about our neighbors and we accept the illusion that reading celebrity-obsessed”People”magazine is the same as knowing people.
We then find the world confusing and, therefore, frightening. But I don’t think TV violence itself makes us afraid. We know that our next airplane ride won’t lead to a mid-air hijacking and shootout at 30,000 feet. It’s our withdrawal that leaves us fearful.
I think we find people confusing. Real human motivations aren’t learned by watching handsome doctors turn tragedy into triumph. Real people get angry while driving, worry about hair loss and unpaid bills, yearn for friends, and hope the car lasts another year. Real people are fascinating, complex creatures. But when we don’t know each other, we imagine the worst.
I think we find the cycles of life frightening because we know so little about them. The normal ebb and flow of a marriage, for example, is such a mystery that we find the ebb at times terrifying. When one watches an artificial life, rather than struggling through a real one, certainties like aging, illness and death take on monstrous proportions.
Then, even God becomes frightening. Rather than wrestle with God, as Jacob did, and lament one’s frailty before God, as David did, we make God a matter of brand loyalty and become consumers of religious entertainment, insisting on being pleased.
It’s too simple to say that televisions have”off”buttons. Seeking the easy way out has been our downfall ever since Adam said,”Sure, why not?”and the Israelites fashioned a golden calf during Moses’ absence.
MJP END EHRICH
