Television Bashing: Reviving an Old Tradition
The thesis of political scientist Michael Budde's book: the global culture industries present a huge obstacle to spiritual formation. Budde's book is a wake-up call to the Christian Church, to help it recognize the extent to which the culture industries subvert the following of Jesus.
By "culture industries" Budde means mass communications media, telecommunications firms, computer interests, and marketing firms. The construction of consumption is the job of the culture industries. It is Disney, and not Exxon or the State Department, which typifies power in today’s economy. Beware of Mickey Mouse.
The facts are sobering: culture industries have an enormous influence over what we desire, what we value, what we buy, and how we behave as citizens. We are not stupid or easily fooled, but but our choices are increasingly channeled by the culture industries. We are playing poker against an opponent who has already seen our hand (42).
Television receives its usual share of justifiable abuse in Budde's book. No matter how many times we have seen the statistics, they still cause a jolt: the average person will spend thirteen years of his or her life watching television, three years of which - twenty-four hours a day - will have been commercials. Budde pays much more attention television's form (rather than its content), the way it seduces and immobilizes people through its manipulation of space and time. Add to television the constant exposure to the Web, logos, and radio, and you have a convincing argument that, yes, it really is that bad.
Culture industries present obstacles to prayer, Church space, religious symbols and narratives. Above all, the global culture industries rob the Church of time. "One would be hard-pressed to learn any demanding set of skills or competencies with the amount of time most Christians in advanced industrial countries devote to their faith tradition. On the other hand, there are few competencies that cannot be acquired with three to four hours per day of time invested - and people in the West use that much time to develop 'competence' in television-watching" (82).
