Saving ourselves from the Television onslaught

Today, TV has become a powerful means of our cultural degradation and the only way to save ourselves from it is to promote visual literacy

Hyderabad: What are the programmes we watch on television? News, serials, sports, films. Since 24-hour TV channels started operating, there is a pathetic lowering of the quality of news items. The same news is repeated ad nauseam and when there is not enough news available, channels start telecasting nonsensically sensational news of little value.

As far as serials are concerned, they promote conservative values and keep on dragging stories to just advertise jewellery and branded clothes. These serials find a way to bring the market to our home, to stimulate our desire for consuming plenty of unnecessary objects. TV channels have converted sports into a permanent spectacle. Rather than playing games, young people are encouraged to watch sports.

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Sometimes, some quiz programmes and debates are screened for students. While watching quiz programs, one realises that they promote a disconnected mass of information that has nothing to do with knowledge. Isolated pieces of information do not develop an understanding of any subject, they do not increase our capacity to analyse. TV debates drown the arguments by excessive use of lung power and most of the time they create false debates on non-issues.

It’s not that a few good programmes are not available on TV but most of the time we do not choose the programmes but the programmes choose us. Rather than reading books, we waste our time watching worthless programmes. Today, TV has become a powerful means of our cultural degradation and the only way to save ourselves from it is to promote visual literacy. Just as we learn to read a book, we have to learn to watch programmes, so that we can watch selectively in a controlled way with a critical mind.

(The author is a teacher at French Department of Delhi Public School, Nacharam)

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