Television has insidious effects and viewers should be more active in understanding them and controlling their habit, according to a Canadian researcher.
The researcher is Gaston Gauthier. He argued at the National Family Summit at Parliament House yesterday that when television arrived “”the family and society as a whole at the time were seduced”.
“”They did not see that their family relations would give way to very different ones,” he said. “”They did not see that, in watching television, their family relations would give way to very different ones. They did not see that in watching television, their relations became distant relations with imaginary beings.”
People who consider illusory beings as though they were real would change their behaviour, he said. Family members seemed boring against program characters with whom the viewer identified.
The location of the television set and program times determined the structure of family life: meal times, bed times and homework times.
The incessant discourse in society about events on television (sit-coms, documentaries and news), as in “”Did you see on television?”, had given rise to a television myth that made television far more attractive and seductive than the individual programs warranted. It persuaded viewers that they would find satisfaction of desires.
The myth raised television to a superior status over others aspects of life, above politics, the other media and the arts. The advantages of television are amplified while there is “”a strange silence in broadcasting circles on the social impact of violence on television”.
Violence on television was contagious and had “”a fearsome attraction for human beings”. The suggestion could simmer below the surface. Its repetition increased its suggestive power.
Mr Gauthier is a lecturer, researcher and consultant in family and social development at the Montreal Catholic School Commission and consultant to the Canadian Ministry of Health and Welfare.
He suggested that viewers learn more about television and its techniques to demystify it. He said viewers must join associations to promote their interests. Too much television research was either done on behalf of broadcasters or geared to their view.
He suggested a national body to lobby the Government about television.
This suggestion came the day after the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, told the meeting that violence on television should be restricted more. It came at a time the Federal Government is considering the configuration of pay-television amid reports of heavy lobbying by broadcasters and few if any reports of lobbying by viewer groups.
Indeed, the National Family Summit, whose chairperson is Ita Buttrose, intends to form a lobby group to promote family life and ensure resolutions of the meeting are acted upon.
Mr Gauthier said television had a huge economic impact. there were suggestions that television was affecting the economic competitiveness in the US and that it was costing Canada $14 billion a year _ far more than network funding costs.