Control

I came across this picture while looking for new wallpapers for my computer. This picture – although not so great a wallpaper – has a hidden message to it. Most people would think of it as just a harmless picture, which animates televisions, but only some would see it for what it really is. It is a message to everyone that instead of having our own minds and thoughts, we are being controlled by the media and by other sources of entertainment. The television sets placed where the heads should be gives a great representation of that and makes that thought come to life.

In the 50’s, it was often that Americans kept themselves busy. The children had school, the mothers had housekeeping, and the fathers had work. There only time for leisure on the weekends and even then, the average American family would go out together and spend time. Sure many houses did own television sets but it was more like a furnishing, just to show how wealthy you were. Plus back then, there wasn’t too many shows being broadcasted. A few movies sometimes, a cooking show here and there, presidential events and news, but that was pretty much it. Today, in the average American household, each room has at least one T.V. There is a disconnection between families and something even more terrible, brainwashing. Today’s shows seem to have an awfully heavy effect on people, especially kids. Whatever they see on T.V. they duplicate it. If a T.V. program is showing that brothers and sisters hate each other, then that is the example they will follow. Television and movies weigh heavily on a child’s development. A child of three that I know, watched the Incredibles, a seemingly harmless movie rated ‘G’. After watching it the second time, he was already trying to quote them. By the third time, he was pretending that he had super-strength and went through the house like a tornado. By the fourth time he started to relate objects in real life to the things he had seen in the movies for example; he came running to me one day screaming and from what I understood he wanted me to come with him to see something, so I followed. He stood behind me and pointed to an ornate Faberge egg yelling and screaming that at the slightest touch, it would explode. After watching the Incredibles with him the fifth time I realized that the Faberge egg looked somewhat like the bomb that one of the villains had thrown at a super hero. When I was telling his family that he was affected by this movie, they said that he was just having fun and it was all good fun and pretend. It was indeed just pretend but wouldn’t it be better if it came from his own imagination? He was just reenacting what he had seen in the movie and unfortunately that is how all kids are raised. They are controlled by movies and T.V. convinced that whatever they saw on the screen was the truth and that you would be a fool to think other wise.

But it doesn’t just stop when you are a kid it carries on even in teenage years. I know plenty of teenagers of my age and younger that speak as if they were in a movie, quoting from them and making no sense at all. It’s sad to say that they will most probably end up growing up and being an adult with a television mind, just like the people in this picture. Now I would be a liar to say that I never follow shows on the Internet, that I never quote from them, or learn things from them but the only difference is that I filter what I see. If you are educated enough and know all that I have just said, it gives you the advantage to filter what you watch and see what is real and what is not. What is fact and what is folly. What is palpable and what is not. Hopefully our generation of kids will be able to break free of this whole movie and television control otherwise, I fear the worst. How can a country function when all of its citizens can be turned and persuaded by a quick broadcast? What type of country will our country be? Just something to think about.

Sources:

Picture