Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Television Commercials

Norman Mailer argues here that television commercials (1) undermine children's ability to concentrate, hence (2) undermining their ability to read, and therefore to learn.

He points out:
Soon enough, children develop a fail-safe. Since the child knows that any interesting story will soon be amputated by a kaleidoscope of toys, food, dolls, clowns, new colors and the clutter of six or seven wholly different products all following one another in 10-, 20- and 30-second spots all the way through a three-minute break, the child also comes to recognize that concentration is not one’s friend but is treacherous. For soon enough, attention will be turned inside out.
I couldn't agree more. Commercials teach children not just greed and lust for the products advertised, but more importantly, they teach children that you shouldn't expect to concentrate on a narrative for more than 7 minutes at a stretch. If you do expect a continuous story-line, you'll be sorely disappointed, because the story is going to be regularly interrupted for flashy advertisements that are completely irrelevant. Commercials are inherently antagonistic to the ability to concentrate.


Stuart Buck

3 Comments:

Blogger Jeremy Pierce said...

At least PBS and Disney wait until a show is over before having any commercials, and those are all just ads for other shows on the channel.

8:12 PM  
Blogger Jeremy Pierce said...

At least PBS and Disney wait until a show is over before having any commercials, and those are all just ads for other shows on the channel.

8:15 PM  
Blogger Stuart Buck said...

Hi there Paul,

Surely you have agreed with me before this? I don't see how you could possibly disagree with me as often as you seem to think. Just scrolling down my blog: Do you disagree that it is "troubling" (at the least) that government agents speak openly of questioning suspects by using "220 volts"? Do you disagree that the Harvard Law Review shouldn't publish 460-page articles? Do you disagree with my opposition to the flat tax (I've posted about that several times)? I could go on and on.

8:48 AM  

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