Life The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality
October 5, 2011 In his 1998 book, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, Neil Gabler wrote, “One does not necessarily have to cluck in disapproval to admit that entertainment is … mindless, formulaic, predictable and subversive.” What Gabler is trying to say is that you do not have to be against entertainment, to know it to be droll. TheDailyGreen.com reported that the average teenager spends over 50 hours submerged in the world of the media per week, that’s 30% of the week, an increase from five years ago. This lost time could be used to further education, play sports, or contribute to our country. We as members of a society must push for a change in entertainment, mainly in the form of television, before the amount of mind-numbing ‘pleasure’ we are being exposed to plunges our society into social disorder and personal atrophy.
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Celebrities such as Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, and Paris Hilton along with television programs like Jersey Shore and Teen Mom are raunchy entertainment.
Between the years of 2005- 2009 Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, and Paris Hilton have all been either arrested or caught in a series of erratic fits. A 2006 AOL poll asked people who the worst villain of the year was and coming in at number one was Britney Spears. The Sun, British newspaper got a private interview with Lindsey Lohan, back in 2007, when she stated, “I tried to mask my problems with alcohol, cocaine, and mind-altering substances.” These are the people that our society is looking up to and making their role models. Maybe Lindsey isn’t the only one on mind-altering substances. Why aren’t more people following educational programs and channels or people that can make a positive difference, or better yet why are we wasting away inside instead of going out and making a difference ourselves? This is exactly the point Gabler was communicating when he said that entertainment would dissolve the ties of our social
order. The youth of our society are being hit the hardest by this wave of bad entertainment. Television programs on average have between 13 to 15 minutes of commercials, in which time companies are promoting unhealthy foods which in turn means that food lead to the growing obesity problem in our country. According to a 2010 survey conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention nearly 20% or all American children between the ages of 2-19 are overweight, double the amount compared to 1985. The time that kids spend watching television, texting, or playing on the computer are also leading to a national decline in education ratings. Iman Sharif and James D. Sargent from the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics conducted a study in order to see if there existed a correlation between television exposure and school performance. They found that students whose parents who restricted television time, outscored students whose parents did not limit television time. Both of these studies serve to further exemplify the personal atrophy of members in our society. This is not to say that all of television is bad and detrimental to us. Some things are not just for hot heads. Programs like historical documentaries and scientific inquiries serve to further educate society, but we have to begin to limit and monitor when and what we are watching. This first occasion should serve as a stepping stone for us to revise the entire entertainment industry. We need to take a stand to change the television portion of the entertainment industry. Only then will our youth have a chance to humble their dark futures, and only then will our society be a shining light at the end of the tunnel.
Celebrities such as Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, and Paris Hilton along with television programs like Jersey Shore and Teen Mom are raunchy entertainment.
Between the years of 2005- 2009 Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, and Paris Hilton have all been either arrested or caught in a series of erratic fits. A 2006 AOL poll asked people who the worst villain of the year was and coming in at number one was Britney Spears. The Sun, British newspaper got a private interview with Lindsey Lohan, back in 2007, when she stated, “I tried to mask my problems with alcohol, cocaine, and mind-altering substances.” These are the people that our society is looking up to and making their role models. Maybe Lindsey isn’t the only one on mind-altering substances. Why aren’t more people following educational programs and channels or people that can make a positive difference, or better yet why are we wasting away inside instead of going out and making a difference ourselves? This is exactly the point Gabler was communicating when he said that entertainment would dissolve the ties of our social
order. The youth of our society are being hit the hardest by this wave of bad entertainment. Television programs on average have between 13 to 15 minutes of commercials, in which time companies are promoting unhealthy foods which in turn means that food lead to the growing obesity problem in our country. According to a 2010 survey conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention nearly 20% or all American children between the ages of 2-19 are overweight, double the amount compared to 1985. The time that kids spend watching television, texting, or playing on the computer are also leading to a national decline in education ratings. Iman Sharif and James D. Sargent from the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics conducted a study in order to see if there existed a correlation between television exposure and school performance. They found that students whose parents who restricted television time, outscored students whose parents did not limit television time. Both of these studies serve to further exemplify the personal atrophy of members in our society. This is not to say that all of television is bad and detrimental to us. Some things are not just for hot heads. Programs like historical documentaries and scientific inquiries serve to further educate society, but we have to begin to limit and monitor when and what we are watching. This first occasion should serve as a stepping stone for us to revise the entire entertainment industry. We need to take a stand to change the television portion of the entertainment industry. Only then will our youth have a chance to humble their dark futures, and only then will our society be a shining light at the end of the tunnel.