The Edutained American Essays - MTV, Now You See It, Brain Rules

The Edutained American The ?Edutained? American You may try to deny it; many of us do. We are our own people, with our own thoughts, feelings, and opinions. We are individuals, and nothing influences us without our knowledge and permission. Certainly not the media; we create the media, after all, and direct it with our own tastes and preferences. It is merely a part of our lives, a not-too pervasive part. We say this with absolute certainty and still know that we lie. For the media is not a part of our lives, it is our lives. It directs us, moves us towards what its creators, directors and sponsors want us to see. Everything we do is not media influenced, it is media-dictated. In some ways, our modern information systems are helpful. They are, after all, informative. From these systems we learn, we process the information they bring on current events, popular culture, and every other subject known to man. But the information is tainted. It is filtered through the corporate sponsors and the agendas of those who bring it to us. Therefore we bow to the opinions of those who give us our knowledge on every subject they expose us to, from the clothes we buy, to the music we listen to, the films we see, books we read, politicians we vote for, religions we believe in. Our thoughts are not our own. What does this mean to the world in which we live? How does this effect our leaders, our schools and our families? And in a society so permeated with media, how do we regain ourselves? Part One: What are our influences? For many of us who attend college now, the media has been around us since birth. The television was a effective babysitter, and we grew up accustomed to the quick, joke-a-minute style of cartoons and situation comedies. With the advent of MTV in 1981, we learned to absorb information through the two and three minute stories offered on that channel, as well as VH1 and BET. These channels opened to us a world that most of our parents simply didn't see as children. One hour of MTV's Total Request Live can show a child a re-enactment of JFK's assassination, done by Marylin Manson, in one of the most popular videos of the week. The words of the song, however true and relevant they may be, are lost in the image, in closeup and slow motion. Vidoes by pop bands, while less violent, are no less disturbing in their objectification of humans and in their motion sickness inducing, rapid-fire images. They cater to a generation that already suffers from shortened attention spans by providing whirling sights that can be easily understood in the half-second they are shown. They show a world of anger, violence and cynicism. True, they often reflect the feelings and actions in parts of the nation, but also bring those to the sight of impressionable children who would not otherwise have known of it until they were much older. At the same time, the video-babysitter separates child from parent and makes us reluctant to ask what these images meant. After all, we are led to identify with the musicians and models in the videos, and they often assure us that our parents do not understand and cannot be trusted. The information we soak up through these vignettes generally point to a distinct set of values, at odds with those of our parents. While they ask for respect and obedience within reason, we learn that adults are the outsiders, the butt of jokes and objects of ridicule, probably not very bright either. The regular television shows that we sit down to watch, often with our parents, are not much better. It has become much cooler to defy and be irreverent than to listen. This is certainly nothing new, one need only look at the flappers of the 1920s to see that youthful rebellion has been around for as long as anyone still alive can remember. It does seem, however, that the adolescent exuberance and resistance of the Baby Boomer generation became something very different for their children, something darker and dangerous. Of course, the television that they were raised with stressed old-fashioned family values: respect for elders, kindness to neighbors, do your homework, eat your broccoli. The shows that children and young adults watch now are very different. We see insults thrown left and right, especially