DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT THEY'RE MANIPULATING YOUR KIDS

Why do you think television brings you the stories that it does? You answer, "Television brings us the stories it does in order to promote a message or a point of view the writer(s) want to get across to the public."

Let's get down to tacks of brass--why does television offer you the stories it does? I mean, why does television ultimately offer you the stories it does? You're right, the writers have an agenda, a message of some sort that they want to disseminate; that's the way writers are. But we're asking the question, "Why do the stories ultimately come to you via the TV screen? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out: because ultimately the sponsors want you to buy their cars, clothes, their washers and dryers.That's the bottom line: the sponsor who pays for the stories and the actors wants to sell you something. In order to do that, they hire writers to manipulate the viewers. And, that desired manipulation is in the contract.

LET'S BACK UP

A leading educator, John Taylor Gatto, is talking about the majority, the huge majority, of kids out there and what he says is scary. He says, "I'm confronted, whether they're rich or dirt-poor kids, with kids who go home, turn on the television set, watch it until 11:00, go to sleep, get up, go to school, come home, and watch the television set." They get up the next day and do it all over again. 

"BUT WAIT," YOU SAY 

You're thinking, "The kids today who are fairly well off go to lessons--music lessons, tennis lessons, acting lessons; all kinds of lessons are out there today."  (I've often wondered, since there are so many lessons available, are there lessons on how to take lessons?) Mr. Gatto will grant you that, but he adds, "I don't think the difference is substantive. They're really consumers of someone else's point of view and they've lost all critical judgment." Kids as consumers, kids being manipulated as they sit passively watching a story being projected on them. (That's different than going to a movie, because the viewer is watching something being projected on a screen, but with television. Television projects its stories outward onto the viewer.)

If the above is true, then there's another bottom line--the sponsor isn't bringing the child the stories because he cares about children; he doesn't care one bit. His concern is to sell the kids the cereal, the toy, or the cool clothes with his designer label on them. That's it--he cares about the child only as a consumer. 

ANOTHER LEVEL

This takes us to another level: the sponsor (and the writers) know that to sell the goodies, they have to offer stories which will hold the child's attention and keep holding it long enough to get to the commercials, all the commercials in the 30-minute program. "So," Gatto asks," how's the best way to get people's attention? By punching people, shooting them, screams, monsters, and so on."  

OK, OK, NOW TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW

All of the above may be yesterday's news for you, but do you know that, according to John Gatto, "in the contracts for Saturday TV they stipulate that there will be sixteen violent episodes per show"?  Therefore: the writers must write one violent episode into the show every two minutes by signed contract. [This statistic may be somewhat dated, there may be more, but that's the way it used to be.]

When the villain appears and grabs the hero or heroine, they cut to a commercial immediately. This instantly transfers the attention of the child to the cereal, the clothes, or the candy. And what has the story become? Manipulation. So, we're talking about manipulating young, very young children. But that's not new: Nazi Germany began the manipulation of the German mind early: "The propaganda picture books published by Der Stürmer, the organ responsible for the dissemination of many of the anti-semitic publications during the Hitler years, demonstrate that anti-antisemitism was taught before children were six or seven or eight." (Mary Mills) 

WHAT TO DO? 

Half the battle is being able to recognize manipulation for what it is. But television, by its very nature, makes such recognition difficult because it short-circuits the intellect and appeals our emotions. 

A college professor friend of mine often asked his classes, "What is the purpose of life?" [This was on a secular campus.] To a person, they said, in different words, "To have fun." These students were raised on TV; their manipulation had been a success. 

But what if the parents, the grandparents, among others, say others at church, point the child away from continuous "fun," and instead, teach and model for the child that a person "needs to have a plan or a purpose for being alive and getting up in the morning? It cannot be just to have a good meal, or fun, or a good experience, or get an A on the test. [What if they taught and modeled that one's life is] "part of an arc, and each piece is part of a whole?"(John Gatto)

TRY THE SPIRITS

Because of television, how many kids are manipulated to believe that, whenever celebrities speak, they're authorities on the subject? "Kids really need to know how to recognize and challenge the assumption that everyone who acts like an authority is an authority, because so many people masquerade as authorities around them. Not only television shows and newspapers and schoolteachers, but we get authoritarian statements from everywhere. That doesn't mean you have to be rude or ill-mannered, but you really need to be able to see what the assumption is behind what someone else wants you to do, and then how to challenge that assumption, how to test it," the educator Gatto says.

What's the ultimate authority they need to make the tests on the pronouncements of all so-called authorities? The Bible. To use the words of Paul, they need to have models of men and women, parents and grandparents, who "take pains in these things, [who are] absorbed in them" (I Tim. 4:15). Instead of segregating children from adults at church, they need to hear, see, touch, and converse with adults as they discuss the faith, the Bible, and the working out of the Christian life. They need to see adults witnessing for Christ and living the life.

This means active parents and grandparents, active examples in our churches. Manipulation preys on and produces passive people. The Christian life isn't lived in the passive voice. It's lived in the active voice by the power of the Spirit. (Gal. 2:20; I Tim. 6:11-12)