Effects of the media, tv advertising and commercials to individuals, families and to society - Essay Example

ASSIGNMENT EFFECTS OF THE MEDIA, TV ADVERTISING AND COMMERCIALS TO INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES AND TO SOCIETY.. NUMBER: INSTITUTION: Present globalised atmosphere is ruled by media and television and the commercial advertisements are the most important, annoying part of it that fetches money to the media companies. Audience, unknowingly patronize these commercials in the process of self-entertainment. Marketing of any product is done worldwide very easily through media and television. It has shrunken the world, brought a kind of eerie uniformity amongst cultures and has resurrected the 'survival of the fittest' syndrome. There are both good and bad effects from the media and TV commercials. There is no doubt that hitherto unseen visuals with rare insights backed up with untiring effort and perfection are being offered by TV today. Any corner of the earth, Mars, or Moon arrives on the TV sets with stunning magnificence. Wildlife portrayal, mysterious rainforests, deep jungles, mountainous terrains, Polar Regions, hidden cultures and tribes are all a flick away. We are also grateful to the television for enriching the otherwise eventless days of the elderly, or the ailing, by offering varieties of entertainment and unlimited information. Many people have improved in health after seeing such images and visions, that had been nothing but encouraging. The effort and single-minded devotion that produced visuals of such inaccessible regions are enormously appreciable. These could stimulate us into dreamers and music makers, as Ronald Dahl said: "We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams." Sad effects of TV commercials begin with the pressure they lay on various sections of the society. There is a pressure on women to place undue focus on their bodies; body-beautiful, and stay as slim and pretty as possible and this motto continuously renders an inferiority complex to not so pretty/slim bodies. To improve the body image, teenagers go fasting getting into unhealthy cycle of malnutrition, anemia and become an open field for attacking diseases. At the same time, young men devote their focus on a well-built, athletic body to make their mark in the female arena, and in the world at large. Both these pressures hardly give the youngsters any time for their intellectual or educational development. All advertised images of men and women are full of perfectly shaped bodies, drooled over by the lesser fortunate mortals. The average viewer watches 400 to 600 advertisements every day and this enormous amount of messaging can create a permanent mindset. Fatty foods are shown with awfully thin bodies triggering off a confused and strange eating tendency among the really younger sets. Acceptance of violence, almost expecting it, is another tendency that is unhappily growing among viewers. Children are becoming more and more bloodthirsty. Recent media story about a TV game where the little viewer had to blow up President Kennedy's head was an ultimate example of the horrifying intellectual bankruptcy. Children know all names in the TV game world, but cannot recognize the next-door kid, as they hardly play in the open. Perhaps a positive and encouraging, almost ethical approach is necessary for TV to make the right impact on viewers. Same goes for the beauty and beauty products. Beauty has been given so much importance that there is hardly any scope for mental development or intellectual improvement. One cannot find a single advertisement where it is told that mental enhancement or intellectual growth is necessary for a perfect human being. As commercials glorify trivia, the younger generation is getting hooked into it like being addicted to drugs, hoping to achieve unrealistic standards of body measurement and beauty. "This constant exposure to female-oriented advertisements may influence girls to become self-conscious about their bodies and to obsess over their physical appearance as a measure of their worth." http://www.mediascope.org/pubs/ibriefs/bia.htm Some people even believe that advertisers tamper with the imaged figures, so that they could look almost impossibly true, only to create more desire among the viewers, which is perhaps probable. Reports from psychiatrists and psychologists show very bleak picture of their effects on people. Girls are known to complain that very thin models made them feel insecure and unhappy. Constant self-comparison with the dizzy heights of perfection is making viewers feel perpetually inadequate, mainly because advertisers do not allow viewers to forget the images. They force it upon them continuously till they become dissatisfied psychological wrecks. Horror of getting fat is driving the TV hooked into distraction. Stringent dieting can end in serious eating disorders that could be long lasting. Considerable number of younger people has started smoking to control the healthy hunger. Males spend most of their time in the gyms trying to look more muscular. This pursuit sometimes ends up in taking unprescribed drugs and steroids, as men tend to develop pathological shame about their normal bodies. Average American girl is said to be watching 5000 hours of television and 80,000 ads even before she starts the kindergarten, hence the media rules their minds, in the formative years. Before their self esteem starts taking shape, it is already shaken with the bombardment of TV commercials. Another horrifying feature of television advertisement is showing very young girls as erotic material, as young sex is the saleable commodity today. "The most cursory examination of media confirms that young girls are being bombarded with images of sexuality, often dominated by stereotypical portrayals of women and girls as powerless, passive victims." http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_girls.cfm The gender portrayal unabashedly done by the media targets the men and women differently. "For example, advertisements aimed at women stressed beauty and youth while those aimed at men valorised ambition and physical strength." http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/lmg9309.html Craig has detailed the characteristics of Primary Visual Study, and the underlying issues. TV and the media have the most tremendous influence over the entire families. There is no doubt that media consumption is affecting family lives and social relationships. TV should be a choice, not an insurmountable bad habit. In today's society, next to the parents, television is the most important teacher. Violence in the media with eye-catching and enormously thrilling special effects is another worrying factor. Watching the commercials and buying whatever had been trendily advertised, is not limited only to teenagers, but also to the other members of the family. The popular and entertaining TV has eclipsed all habits like looking at the nature, or indulging in creative activities, reading or writing. The effect could be negative with possible and inescapable adverse health effects. Alcohol, cigarettes, unprotected and urgent sexual activity, resulting in AIDs, unwanted pregnancies, and venereal diseases, could be the unfortunate results of extensive TV watching. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM THEORY: This is one of the most powerful theoretical perspectives of Sociology, concerning with social behavior, pragmatism and human behavior. Interactionists focus on the subjective aspects of social life and macro-structural aspects of social systems. They base it on their ideal image of humans and become pragmatic actors, who perpetually try to imitate their idols. They keep rehearsing and emulating imaginatively their main actors and become symbolic objects in the process. Human being is acting in the present, uninfluenced by what happened in the past, only concerned with what is happening now. It deals with what is happening within an individual and not simply what is happening between people in the society. These theorists argue that human being is free to choose his actions to a large extent, and adapt his own definition of the world. Also theory says, man is unpredictable and acts according to the situation or current influence. Humans develop attitudes, perspective and behavioral symbols reacting to the current influence on their psychology. They play roles, and such roles place us in the close proximity of certain other individuals who had inspired these roles. "We play many "roles," each role having another perspective, and each role placing us around certain others. Thus, we cannot predict how any given individual will define an object in his or her situation - it all depends on the interaction and the perspective used," says Charon, (1979, p.23). Viewers of TV commercials are turning into symbolic interactionalism in their devotion towards their idols. They are forever involved in role making and role creating. But in this process, they are active and not passive onlookers and hence, they are active participants of social scene. These minds are forever changing, highly receptive and they are dreamers of fertile imagery. They perform based on symbolic meanings found in any situation and thus accept their goals and create shared meanings. They develop their self-concept depending on their interaction and communication with others. Eventually, they become part of this mythical world created by the commercials and media. Another perspective of Symbolic Interactionism is Micro perspective, which is a form of analysis and it focuses only on the subjectivity of the individual. It refuses to focus on the social structures of thoughts. Its only concern is the individual who could be fitted into symbolic interactionism. This is entirely opposite to the macro-perspective and the effect of commercials on the TV could be traced in both the perspectives, in individuals as well as in the larger society itself. When the TV commercials started, they did so in a small, apologetic way. They neither had today's technological backing, nor the glamour. Initially people avoided watching the commercials as unnecessary interruption. Another point here is that commercials of early years never interrupted the TV programs, but appeared only either in the end or the beginning of such programs, in a rather unobtrusive way. As the people started getting bamboozled by them, they spread their tentacles and slowly acquired importance, till they became the most important part of TV show. The popularity of these commercials shows clearly how the theory is gripping the societies increasingly. Ways of conversation, language, gesturing, dressing, imitating, walking, slangs and facial expressions usually show the effect of some current idol. It becomes so common, almost every person imitating the most prominent idol that an onlooker can identify the idol involved. The same applies to the language, drawl, style of talking, and style of dressing. Micro perspective in individuals slowly spreads around till it attains the macro perspective like an epidemic. An individual might have developed attitude in the past. This theory focuses on the perspective of an individual by describing 'a picture of the human being interacting, defining, acting in the present, and active.' Attitudes are comparatively fixed, while perspectives are dynamic and changing according to interpretation of the situation. Human sees the world in perspectives and according to perspectives, each person has an individual personality of the world when he looks beyond himself. Symbols that are simply interactions are mostly conventional and significant. They are everywhere, complex and associated with what they represent. Language is a special symbol. "Not only are words symbols, but without words other symbols would not exist. Symbols-acts, objects, words - have meaning to us only because they can be described through using words. Meaning involves understanding what symbols stand for. All symbolic acts and all objects that are symbolic are defined using words," says Charon (1979, p.43). Symbolic interactionism has its own limitations. It is a bit confusing to apply the theory to everyday behavior. Behavior of attitudes had been connected; but attitude less behavior had not been explained. A human being cannot be suffering from attitudes all the while. Micro attitudes are always difficult to be identified. Trend of macro attitudes could alter over the years. At the same time, it is the most brilliantly coded theory in social perspectives and is the only theory that could measure the media effect on ordinary people. TV commercials and their effect on individuals and societies could be explained through symbolic interactionism better than any other theory. The change in behavior over the years could be measured by research applying symbolic theory. Future of TV commercials and their viewers, if not controlled, is stunningly bright for the commercials and rather bleak and complicated for the viewers. Commercials are superbly achieving their targets by impressing on the gullible minds their need to psychologically getting hooked up into them and the individuals are positively responding to this brainwashing influence. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Charon, Joel M. ((1985), Symbolic Interactionism, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs. 2. Duncan, H.D. (1969), Symbols and Social Theory, Oxford University Press. 3. Doise, Willem (1976), Groups and Individuals: Explanations in Social Psychology, Cambridge University Press. 4. Duncan, Hugh Dalziel (1969), Symbols and Social Theory, Oxford University Press. 5. Debord, Guy (1994), The Society of the Spectacle, Zone Books, New York. 6. Elliott, Anthony and Ray, Larry (2003), ed., Key Contemporary Social Theorists, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford. 7. Strecker, Ivo (1988), The Social Practice of Symbolization, The Athlone Press, London. ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://www.mediascope.org/pubs/ibriefs/bia.htm 2. http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_girls.cfm 3. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/lmg9309.html 4. http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/soc/s00/soc111-01/IntroTheories/Symbolic.html Read More