LETTERS FROM HOME: YOU ARE GETTING VERY SLEEPY .... VERY SLEEPY

Nov. 14, 1996

Dear Pat,

Years ago I read a book called "Four Arguments for the Abolition of Television." Must've just picked it off the library shelf for the sheer revolutionary spirit of the title. Three of the reasons for abolishing television did not remain in my memory but the fourth did. The author, a former big-league advertising executive, maintains that watching TV is nothing more than mass hypnosis.

His view: While we incredulously ooh and aah every year at the increasingly unbelievable sums Super Bowl sponsors pay for 30 seconds of commercial time, the sponsors line up to pay because hypnotism works.

His contention is that TV images, as opposed to print ones and radio commercials, are received by our brains at the subconscious level. We may think the drivel is having no effect but we can't screen out the images. As I recall, it has something to do with the way the images flash on and off faster than the eye can see.

While we may think we are rationally deciding whether to use Gillette or Schick blades, the decision we make has been programmed by the television commercials we've seen. When you're walking down the aisle at the grocery story, your choices will be based on positive associations with the product. Thus shaving commercials are creamy and sensuous when the actual act is irksome and often bloody.

With the ardor of anyone who puts the word former in front of their sins, he claims that sophisticated advertising agencies and sophisticated sponsors are playing us all for patsies. Why aren't cigarette ads allowed on TV? Because we'd all be smoking.

For some reason, the idea that there could be something insidious about the cathode rays in my television set still intrigues me. Much more than the fluoridated water conspiracy.

In the end, I think of television as a conscious mass dream, its blessings mixed so far. Much as we'd like to think our resoluteness won the Cold War, communication did. The yearning for democracy and freedom reached a critical mass because enough people had been exposed to enough truth. Communism imploded.

Word of impending wars and starvation crises now reaches the rest of the world instantaneously. Finally we understand that what happens to one of us happens to all of us.

The power of television is no argument for its abolition but reason to exercise control.

The worst television does is to glorify violence and to become a substitute for reality. There are people more involved in the lives on a soap opera than they are in their own.

These days, when you watch a football game it seems as if half the teams have Nike check marks on their jerseys. This is a commercial being playing during non-commercial air time. Same with golf telecasts only more so. Every professional golfer is a walking ad for various equipment brands. Many wear hats that endorse an automobile.

When you see Tiger Woods swing you think highly of Nike, even though Nike makes his shirt, not his golf clubs. When you see Michael Jordan soar you think highly of Nike. Watch out, Nike is taking over the world.

I started thinking about this because my feet hurt. New Nike golf shoes.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.