Sunday, April 15, 2012

Television the plug-in drug


Television has become a large part of our culture not just here in the United States, but all across the world. However, I believe it hasn’t completely destroyed all the traditions that Marie Winn thinks that it has taken. Instead, I believe that the television has given a new traditional that our culture has become accustomed to. It seems as if she is talking to people that didn’t exactly grow up with televisions and instead as they came out, life started to change for them. Growing up with television my whole life I have not seen changes to the family traditions I had growing up to life now. Other parts of my life have changed, but not the traditions in which my family had.

We grow up in a society where everyone is considered different and where some people truly strive to be different than their parents and friends. Also, where television might have destroyed families when it first came out, it isn’t doing it now. Ms. Winn is using compare and contrast through personal feelings rather than using actual research and actual numbers to support her thesis and topic. I believe some parents due depend too much on television to teach their children right from wrong rather than doing it themselves. Ms. Winn makes a very valid point in that regard because my wife and I know people who just sit their child in front of the television so they may do what they would like to do.

As far as rituals go I do not real as if my family lost any while we were growing up. We actually had a big time tradition on Sundays in particularly. Every Sunday my family would sit down and watch football together on the television and picked who we thought was going to win. After this my brother and I would go outside and play football or any other sport or activity that we could think of doing. My father would go to work and my mother would clean up the house. That was a Sunday ritual for my family, whether it may seem like a ritual to Ms. Winn or not I don’t know, but it was something my family and myself enjoyed.

Looking someone squarely in the eye or looks to the side or shifts one’s gaze from side to side is something that parents teach their children. If a child doesn’t learn this aspect from a parent and the parent expects the television show to teach it then this falls more on the parents than the actual television program.

After reading this essay I have taken away from it that Ms. Winn doesn’t like that the invention of the television. She feels as if television has destroyed some of the family traditions that she grew up admiring. What I believe she fails to realize is some of the traditions that have been created from the invention of the television. Or some of the times when family members do become closer because they get a chance to sit them and enjoy being together watching a movie or a sporting event.

No comments:

Post a Comment