The Television Generation: Couch Potatoes or Informed Critics?

Abstract

When Hill Street Blues first aired on NBC January Raymond Williams (1980) has observed that the 15, 1981, I wasjust twelve years old and at first probhabit of receiving one-way, talking-head informaably thought of it asjust another television cop show. tion from television teaches viewers not to ask But sometime during my years as a high school unquestions about television content because images derclassman, I realized that any one character on Hill cannot be slowed down nor speakers interrogated Street meant much more to me than any other character on television. I found myself becoming emo(61). As one of my students remarked about the tionally stirred by the joy, fear, frustration, and nightly news, There is not time to really think portrayed by Hill Street's cast. Now, at the maabout what is being reported or to question it beture age of twenty-one, I am in college, yearning to cause just as a story sinks in, sometimes even beunderstand how the Hill Street director, producer, fore, newscasters switch to another story. and creators could convey the characters' emotions so powerfully to me. Consequently, I tell students that they have become accustomed to not questioning their reIf the idea of spending time in the classroom sponses to television, and because there is no pubstudying Hill Street Blues, a product of the vast lic encouragement to engage in TV analysis, we wasteland, strikes you as a waste of time, perhaps need to practice three kinds of analysis in our it is because television is so seldom praised for its classes: (1) individual detailed logs of text, (2) power to elicit empathy and so often blamed for group dialogue about TV programming, and (3) social problems: creating citizen passivity, promotresearched essays documenting and interpreting ing materialism and violence, reducing public litdetails of television programs. eracy, and so on. The Tube of' Plenty, as Eric Therefore, my first step in teaching TV analysis Barnouw (1979) labeled television in his account is to ask students to keep their own individual writof its origin and evolution, has been attacked in ten logs of program content. I describe these viewFour Arguments for the Elimination of Television ing/writing homework assignments as being sim(Mander 1978), The Plug-In Drug (Winn 1985), ilar to anthropologists' field notes, which Clifford Television as an Instrument of Terror (Berger 1980), Geertz (1973) calls thick descriptions. Everyone and Amusing Ourselves to Death (Postman 1985). in the class is to make as thorough a written record However, even if every concern about the effects as possible of observations about, for example, the of television on society suggested by the titles of televising of a sporting event; this requires stuthese books is to some extent valid, educators still dents to record as much as they are able to write must acknowledge that students in today's classdown of what they see and hear as a telecast prorooms grew up emotionally stirred by the joy, gresses. Invariably, students say afterward that fear, frustration, and anger they saw on their logging television is a frustrating experience betelevision screens, and they want to understand cause so much transpires that cannot be logged