I’ve had a long love-hate relationship with television. In some ways, I credit it for making me who I am today - which could obviously be a really good or really bad thing, but probably both. While in the past few years I have really minimized my exposure to the so-called “idiot box,” I can still see the appeal of it for people: namely, that it is a world which you can slip inside of at any time.

I don’t think what people are doing with television is escapism - as is so often alleged - but instead borders more on some kind of religious fulfillment. Which doesn’t make it good or bad necessarily; it’s just a way of exploring television’s implications.

One of the most common pieces of wisdom I hear repeated among people who are opposed to television is that, apparently, watching tv somehow “turns your brain off.” An article on Disinfo repeats this info:

Levels of brain activity are measured by an electroencenograph (EEG) machine. While watching television, the brain appears to slow to a halt, registering low alpha wave readings on the EEG. This is caused by the radiant light produced by cathode ray technology within the television set. Even if you’re reading text on a television screen the brain registers low levels of activity. Once again, regardless of the content being presented, television essentially turns off your nervous system. […]

Psychophysiologist Thomas Mulholland found that after just 30 seconds of watching television the brain begins to produce alpha waves, which indicates torpid (almost comatose) rates of activity. Alpha brain waves are associated with unfocused, overly receptive states of consciousness. A high frequency alpha waves does not occur normally when the eyes are open. In fact, Mulholland’s research implies that watching television is neurologically analogous to staring at a blank wall.

Alpha waves seem to be associated by various sources with everything from hynosis, to a state of unfocused alertness, to a trance state. One source even says that alpha waves “bridge the conscious to the subconscious.”

The idea that you go into a trance or that your brain “shuts down” while watching television is a pretty interesting one. And it is one of those things that you can easily verify while trying to hold a conversation with someone who is fixated on a television. Depending on the situation, there’s a good chance they won’t hear you fully. Or you can go to a bar and stare at people who are staring up at the televisions. Their faces will have a sort of blank, expressionless look, reminscent of a zombie.

But does that mean their brains are shut off?

I’ve not got any kind of EEG readings to back this up or anything, but I have a hunch that this is not the case. In fact, I think it may be quite the opposite. I think television actually stimulates some part of the brain, but it may be a part that we don’t yet know how to measure. My hypothesis goes something like this: when someone is staring at the television blankly, their brain has not shut off. Their consciousness (or some element of it) instead has been projected into the space created by the television. They are, in essence, inside the television.

Unfortunately, all I have is a third-hand quote here, but Rev Max left a relevant comment on a recent post of mine where he said:

Another study I recall showed that peopel who watch a lot of TV imagine that they have more active social lives then they really do, on some level their subconscious identifies the “Friends” as actual friends. Sad!

If we could get our hands on this study, it’s results might lend credence to the theory that I am beginning to build here. In any event, identification seems to be a natural human reaction to story-telling. Whether it is empathy or hard-wired into the human brain, people seem to automatically project themselves into stories, blurring the boundaries that separate your internal life from that of the story you are experiencing. Television and movies seem to enhance this natural occurrence greatly thanks to the multi-modal sensory stimulation which they offer. When we watch television it may be that - under the “best” circumstances - we enter into a sort of religious state of ecstasy in which what’s happening on the screen becomes our experience and vice versa.

And if we are to follow McLuhan, then “the medium is the message.” And the message isn’t just an alternative way of conveying information as opposed to print formats, but the message is to train a population to psychologically identify with a totally manufactured and controlled on-screen reality instead of their own.

The point is that most of us know characters on television and/or the actors who play them better than we know our next door neighbors or family members. People on-screen tend to be more real and important to us than people we share physical space with. We go around imagining that our life is a television show or a movie, that the music we hear is the soundtrack and we play games imagining which actors would play us best.

Reality television helps bridge the gap, entertaining us voyeuristically with the ordinary lives of people we’d never interact with on purpose. And also extending the fantasy for us that anybody could be a star at any moment. Meanwhile, television bombards us with ads that help us bridge the gap as well: if we want to feel all the time the way we feel when we watch tv, then we can buy x, y & z products.

Where does it all end though? Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff (somewhere) talks about how the remote control destroyed the hold of television over the mind, turning passive receivers into active controllers. But does the choice of trance environments indicate true freedom from them? What about video games, which rose in prominence roughly in sync with the remote control? What do video games teach you to do? They teach you to quite literally project your consciousness inside of the screen, and identify your life and well-being with that of an on-screen character.

Then there is the internet, which is yet another powerful talisman for projecting your consciousness into far-off on-screen worlds. Many people who loudly denounce television spend more than their fair share of time in front of the computer screen, projecting and identifying with people who aren’t really there. Is that bad? Is any of this ultimately any different from reading a really good book and getting absorbed in it?

It’s hard to really give solid answers to these questions. But for a generation of people so entranced by the electronic image, it may be one of the most important issues we need to come to grips with. More on this theory and its implications as I work pieces of it out for myself. Input is, as always, very welcome!