Destroy your televsion ... something. [Book]

Cafe Society
1

There was a book, it may have been written in the 1970’s or 1960’s, it detailed the evils of television. That’s a simple enough topic, there’s no shortage of such opinions, but I’m looking for a specific book.

The first third or half was a soclarly phycological and social science treatise on the effects of TV. I want to revisit its arguments in light of modern developments. And I know there’s no shortage of those. People love this guy’s arguments, and would quote them any time.

The second part goes completely shape-it, off the rails and weird. Summarizing as best as I can remember, he said the real problem with TV is that it fosters certain religions at the expense of others. Those religions with a central figure, often male, like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism are promulgated, while more abstract faiths, more natural shamanistic faiths, suffer. He makes no secret that he’s a practitioner of these latter belief systems.

I need to find this book, and what people think of it, nowadays, because its a source of two forms of disconnect for me. First of all, the selected Eastern religions I give as examples above seem very different to me relative to the Abrahamic religions, so I think the argument is loony tunes. (Hope that sentiment doesn’t send this factual question to Great Debates.) Furthermore, as reactionary as this is, I think his bad logic invalidates his entire premise. And like a natural disaster, I have to study it, just to learn what not to do.

Can anyone help with the title, based on the content, sloppy as my memory is? As I said, it was a really useful source of scholarly arguments against television back in the day.

2

Huh. This crosses into my area of interest (and era) but I can’t bring any such book to mind.

Possibly a garbled recollection of McLuhan? There were a number of books vaguely along this line in the late 70s or so. In re reading them, what you’re likely to discover is how naive they seem now, having been long surpassed by reality.

3

Since this is about a book about TV, let’s move it to Cafe Society. Title edited to better indicate subject.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

4

I remember the phrase “Kill your television”, but google tells me that was just a bumper sticker.

Then there’s this.

5

The Glass Teat, The Cool Fire, John Prine’s “Spanish Pipedream” ("…blow up your tee-vee, throw away your paper…")… it was an omni-trope in the era.

And then the real aliens landed and it wasn’t funny any more. :slight_smile:

6

Prolly because they read We Will Destroy Your Planet: An Alien’s Guide to Conquering the Earth.

None of McLuhan’s work has the religious angle mentioned in the OP, as far as I recall. Neither does Jerry Mander’s Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.

I wonder if the OP is thinking of the work of Harold Innis. He passed away in 1952 and his (arguably most important book) Empire and Communication was published in 1950, but it touches on some of the same things the OP is talking about, a phenomenon Innis called"monopolies of knowledge". The structure of the book isn’t as described in the OP, tho.

Perhaps someone who built on his work… lemme see what else I can recall from my own time in college studying mass media.

7

Annnd that’s the dilemma. Everything I can think of has become a cliche and Google gets me nowhere: Kill your television, Throw out your television, Smash your television, Get rid of your television. They all lead to Innis or McLuhan, but without t he weird religious angle that makes the idea interesting for me.

8

Huh. I am probably more familiar with this niche of lit’rachure than most, and I can’t bring anything to mind that involves such a combination. Generally, the anti-TV types were not religious, and the religious just brushed TV aside.

Possibly a private or very small-circulation rant by a Jesus-freak-era writer?

Possibly a conflation of two similar books? Preferably neither of which had “Big” in the title? :slight_smile:

9

Neal Postman’s 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death was fairly anti-television. But as with other options mentioned, the religious angle wasn’t there, as I recall (haven’t read it for some years).

10

Amusing Ourselves to Death does deal with religion to some extent – I remember there’s a section about televangelists – although I’m vague on the specifics at this point. But since religion does come up and Postman would have often been cited by people debating television, I was wondering if the OP is perhaps conflating Amusing Ourselves to Death and some other book.

11

Could be–I suppose we’ve all done something like that–memory is tricky. Certainly it’s unlikely that Postman would have been trying to persuade readers to try shamanism or such.

12

I’m guessing that it’s Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978) by Jerry Mander.

13

From that book:

*Religions with charismatic leaders such as Billy Graham, Jesus Christ, Reverend Moon, Maharishi or L. Ron Hubbard are far simpler to handle on television that leaderless or nature-based religions like Zen Buddhism, Christian Science, American Indians, or druidism, or, for that matter, atheism. Single, all-powerful gods, or individual godlike figures are simpler to describe because they have highly defined characteristics. Nature-based religions are dependent upon a gestalt of human feeling and perceptual exchanges with the planet. To be presented on television, they would need to be too simplified to retain meaning. *

I downloaded a pdf of the book, and there is a section where he talks about televised rituals of Native Americans, and he seems to be familiar with them in practice (if you’ve ever heard real chanting, then you know… that sort of thing) but I have just skimmed through the pdf quickly.

14

That may have been it, it has reached the religions angle I remembered. I’m going to have to see if the author really had those religious points of view, and espoused them elsewhere.

15

Not sure if you’ll be able to find accurate info, bio or biblio, on “Jerry Mander.” :dubious:

16

Here is an interviewwith the author, and of course, a rather brief wikipediaarticle.

He had other books about indigenous people - there is a bibliography at the wikipedia page.

17

Despite the jokey sounding name, the first hit I got for “Jerry Mander” on Google was the Wikipedia entry for the author of Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. According to Wikipedia he comes from a Jewish family, although I don’t see that it says anything about his personal religious beliefs or practices. He is the author of several books about indigenous peoples though, and so presumably has some familiarity with the religions of these cultures.

I was a bit disappointed to learn that his (now ex) wife was not named “Sally”.

ETA: Ninja’ed by raventhief!

18

Huh.