Television And The Crisis in the Humanities

Abstract

It is indeed a problem, perhaps even a crisis, that many Americans are igrorant of Tempest, the Civil War, the location of the Persian Gulf, the Constitution, or the chief justice of the Supreme Court. However, if conservative humanists continue to ostracize, scorn, and ignore both media studies and the media themselves, the result will not be a return to the good old days when people read Homer and listened to Bach, but an even darker veil of ignorance, fostered for economic and political purposes by the very media that some humanists do not wish to understand. The rhetoric of conservatives has about it the ring of both Chicken Little &nd of Nero fiddling. They emphasize cultural literacy while overlooking actual literacy. The problem of student illiteracy is a chronic problem with a lung history, rather than a crisis. But the conservatives ignore real problems that have better claim to the word crisis than do such conservative worries as political correctness, radical professors, and the inability of students to quote Shakespeare. Conservative critics are also concerned with free speech issues, yet would deny academic freedom to scholars who disagree with them. They ridicule humanistic inquiry into music video, television, popular music, and film, condemning media studies and the academic freedom required to conduct such studies. Conservative critics' mistaken understanding of television and its history underscores the need for more, not less, media study. If the humanities have no use for the media, the globally monopolized media are certainly not going to have any use for the humanities. (Thirty-eight notes are inrauded.) (RS) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************