Television: The Plug-In Drug

Marie Winn, in her essay “Television: The Plug-In Drug” writes about the history of the television and its effects on families since it was introduced to our homes. She conveys that the television was initially seen as a great benefit to families by bringing them closer together. However, as society and television evolved it started becoming more and more obvious that the television was driving families to opposite ends of the home rather than gathering them together on the sofa. Now, families are hooked on a drug they can’t kick, because it allows them to avoid their problems and sometimes create new ones.

“Kill Your Television”. You’ve all seen the bumper sticker. Today, killing your television may actually be possible. Your television promises glimpses into reality by allowing you to watching people live in a house with strangers, or by watching people trying to survive on an island with nothing but their cunning to keep them alive (except for the crazy obstacle course in the jungle that can save them for another day). You can also take your TV with you wherever you go through the miracle of mobile phones. Have to go to work? Not a problem. Just pull out your phone and watch today’s edition of One Life to Live in the comfort of your cubicle. Television has become an almost living and breathing organism that is such a part of all of our daily lives that it has become another member of our families. Rather than slaying the TV beast, people and families are being murdered in their living rooms.

The television is such an integral part of American family life that it would be a miracle to think about the American family without it. The average American’s need for TV is almost staggering. Winn writes, “the medium has become so deeply ingrained in daily life that in many states the TV set has attained the range of a legal necessity, safe from repossession in case of debt along with the clothes and cooking utensils” (457). Is this scary to anyone else? Clothing could keep you alive if you were trapped in the woods eating bugs and tree branches. I could understand the need for cooking utensils as a necessity because in order to eat, some kind of utensils are needed, but the TV, why the TV? It just doesn’t even sound right. Clothes, check. Cooking utensils, check. TV, oh thank God they didn’t take that, check! We have become so reliant on it as if it was our life support and it was the only thing keeping us alive. Without the nightly news we’d never know what was going on, without the Daily Show we’d never laugh. One would never think about picking up a book or newspaper to learn about something. The fine art of trying is a thing of the past. All we have to do is hit the power button and use our thumb. We can claim that we’re learning or investing in something important but if asked about what we watched the night before, many of us would fail to remember. It wasn’t because it wasn’t interesting or we didn’t learn something but because there was no effort involved.

What is on TV isn’t even necessarily important to us anymore, especially our kids, they just need the security of the noise coming from the big black box. Maybe their parents don’t listen to them when they try and share or maybe their parents aren’t even around. Parents know that the TV is always there for the child if they can’t be. Winn writes, “They (kids) watch their favorite programs, and when there is “nothing much on I really like,” they watch whatever else is on – because watching is the important thing” (460). Barney cares about the child. You know the song, “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family”. Why wouldn’t a child want to be part of that. Without the white noise coming from the other room, parents might actually have to raise the kids themselves. It’s ok though, if the program that makes them feel the most comfortable isn’t on, it doesn’t matter; they can watch an infomercial with Billy Mays and be enraptured with how interested he is in their needs and interests.

Kids aren’t the only ones that rely on Television for an escape though. Adults are just as guilty as using TV as a coping mechanism. TV has made it so easy for parents to just plop the kids down in front of it and go about their lives without the demands of the pesky kids running around. Winn describes a scene of the kids watching the TV while a couple enjoy a peaceful meal together, “surely the needs of the adults in that family were being better met than the needs of the children. The kids were effectively shunted away and rendered untroublesome, while their parents enjoyed a life as undemanding as that of any childless couple” (460).We’ve all seen the mother ignoring her child as she continues a conversation with another adult, totally unaware that little Billy is about to jump out of the shopping cart and land on his head. Parents can be totally unaware of the fact they have children and then when they realize that they have a child and have to care for it, it ticks them off. It’s almost as if they had nothing to with the child coming into existence, it just showed up in their house one day and now they’re really annoyed that they have to deal with it. The child is yours! Billy needs parents to love him and actually care about him. What if parents didn’t have a TV to babysit their kids? What if parents realized that the moment they became parents their goals in life changed forever. Their job became raising up the child to contribute to society, to respect others, and to learn about hard work. Are the parents exhibiting these traits by sitting the kids down in front of the TV while they enjoy a nice meal together? No, they’re taking the easy way and only thinking about their own well being and happiness and ignoring the child’s needs and desires.

Human nature is lazy and selfish. We are all like this. Paint us all with the same brush, there is no escaping ourselves. This laziness and selfishness becomes very evident in a family situation where things outside of the home have caused additional stress such as divorce, job loss or financial troubles. When the Television is added to this fragile situation the effects can be frightening. Winn writes, “the medium’s dominant role in the family serves to anesthetize parents into accepting their family’s diminished state and prevents them from struggling to regain some of the richness the family once possessed” (465). It is the role of the parents to pursue the kids and draw them out, and not be drawn to the one thing that may be causing all the damage in the first place. Parenting is a responsibility that a lot of parents don’t understand and shift that responsibility over to a black box. Dad used to come home and want to play with the kids and tell them what he did that day. He longed to visit with his wife and see what her day was like. Unfortunately, now he just comes home and plops himself down in front of the TV and zones out. It wasn’t always like this. The kids felt the richness of being in a family that loved each other, a richness that couldn’t have been replaced with anything. As Dad started to model to his kids what relaxing and comfort looked like, they began to pursue the same outlets and eventually the whole family got hooked.

The selfishness and laziness that we all have breeds a state of unconsciousness in a family. Life goes by outside the window while we get distracted by the next “Biggest Loser”. Parents become unaware that the TV is doing their job and kids are unaware that they are worshiping a plugged in piece of electronics. What we worship takes our time, and our money. Americans spend more on TVs than most people in third world countries make in a year. Then once we get the perfect TV, we sit and stare at it like we’re waiting for it to ask us how our day was. Winn writes, “In spite of everything, the American family muddles on, dimly aware that something is amiss but distracted from an understanding of its plight by an endless stream of television images” (465). Images come to mind of Alex from the film A Clockwork Orange sitting in front of all those disturbing images with his eye lids pried open, unable to close them. The only difference being that he didn’t want to be there, we however willingly subject ourselves to the influx of millions of images every week. We crave watching people hurt themselves; we crave other people’s misfortunes. The happy ending will someday be replaced by the divorce and splitting up of the assets. Kids need parents though. Parents who care enough about them to not let the TV raise them, no matter how educational the program is. Nothing can replace the interaction between a parent and child if done in love. Parents are real people. An actor on Sesame Street doesn’t know your child’s problems or what they learned in school that day. A parent can ask specific questions and find out what makes their child special and different from any other child. They can learn to love that child for who he or she is. To a TV program, a child is just a customer that they’re trying to please, and they’ll do almost anything to get the child hooked.

What is the Television turning families into and what will become of the family in the years to come? Kids come home, grab something to eat from the refrigerator, sit down on the couch or their bed and turn on TV for the next couple of hours. Parents get home, yell at the kids for not doing their homework, and tell them to come get their dinner before it gets cold. They take it back to their rooms, pretend to do their homework and fall asleep. This cycle is endless. What if the TV wasn’t the most important household appliance in the house? Imagine a child coming home from school, ignoring his homework to play outside with all the other kids whose parent’s decided the TV was tearing their families apart and got rid of it. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening anytime soon because we and our future generations are hooked on a drug that there isn’t a support group for. A drug that feels better than any hallucinogenic or upper, it’s a drug that knows us, speaks to us, and numbs us while the outside world just floats by.