Growing up with TV results in stereotypes of language and
attitudes representing a background of shared expressions,
gestures, and values. To see in these only the negative, the low
end, is easier than to acknowledge that previous backgrounds,
constituted on the underlying structure of literacy, have become
untenable under the new pragmatic circumstances. Due to its
characteristics, television belongs to the framework of rapid
change typical of the dynamics of needs and expectations within
the new scale of humankind. There are many varied implications
to this: it makes each of us more passive, more and more subject
to manipulations (economic, political, religious), robbing (or
freeing) us from the satisfaction of a more personal relation (to
others, art, literature, etc.). Nobody should underestimate any
of these and many other factors discussed by media ecologists
and sociologists. But to stubbornly, and quite myopically,
consider TV only from the perspective and expectations of
literacy is presumptuous. We have to understand the structural
changes that made TV and video possible. Moreover, we have to
consider the changes they, in turn, brought about. Otherwise we
will miss the opportunities opened by the practical experience of
understanding the new choices presented to us, and even the new
possibilities opened. There is so much more after TV, even on
500 channels and after video-on-demand!
Language is not an absolute democratic medium; literacy, with
intrinsic elitist characteristics, even less.
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