Skip to main content

Curbing the One-eyed Monster


Fiona Jenkins


This essay is written by a female writer. All TV stations are controlled by very wealthy American people. The programmers on TV are not according to our interests and needs but they are guided by the interest of tycoons. People are being cheated through their advertisements. They promise but they do not deliver.





Advantages of Television:

TV provides entertainment.


TV helps us forgetting trouble.


It gives knowledge and information.


We can watch scientific discoveries.


We get news and views of current events.


We can fallow mainstream of culture and mannerism.






Disadvantages of Television:

We lose opportunities for other activities.


Life is meant to be lived with experience and not by watching the experience of other people.


It provides an advertisement for junk food.


No informative and truth but only partial truth.


TV presents false ideas and tries to manipulate our mind.


Democracy suffers due to propaganda.



 American TV stations are controlled by a few wealthy, conservative Americans. As their main purpose is to deliver us to the advertisers, TV does not tell us the truth about anything, nor does it serve our interests. Having known that there was something wrong with television, many Americans protested against the TV stations, but they failed. So, according to the author, the solution to this problem is to restrain from viewing it.

 Watching television has also some advantages. Some programs are entertaining, valuable, interesting, useful or worth knowing. The TV is a big help when we want to forget our troubles. It also makes us up-to-date about mainstream culture. And the curbsiders have to give up these things.

 Watching TV has many negative aspects. It is like a type of addiction. So, as the author suggests, we should spend our precious time developing our talents instead of watching TV. We should also read books, talk to people, watch sunsets, and travel.

 Life is meant to be lived. So we should live an active life doing things ourselves rather than watching others do things. We should attempt to expose ourselves to the highest quality in art, music, and literature because we can’t get excellence from TV. It gives the picture of reality in fragments, and some of the important information is intentionally removed. So, our view of the world is incomplete.



 TV-viewers live in the unreal world. They accept everything they see as they can’t differentiate between the real and the unreal. The rich and powerful people use TV to mold public opinion to serve their interests. Besides, TV contributes to the injustice of our system. The writer, therefore, advises us to stop watching television to fight it. If people stopped doing so, commercials would become a thing of the past and the advertisers would not spend money on advertisements. We are, from cradle to grave, exposed to a lot of unnecessary messages. TV puts people in a worse mood instead of relieving stress. We can relieve stress more effectively by walking or yoga. Children are inclined to violence when they are exposed to killings and violent episodes on TV. Therefore, the author suggests we should throw our TV set away and install a lovely bookshelf in its place.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Then and Now: Finding My Voice

                                                                                                                       Elaine H. Kim, Korea Literal Comprehension “Then and Now: Finding My Voice” is written by Korean writer Elaine H. Kim, Korea. As she has come from Korea, she believes on fortune telling. Once she visited a popular fortune-teller to interpret her saju (horoscope), the arrangement of year, month, day and hour of birth. He said that her saju suggested disaster. On the other hand, women fortune- tellers looked at her saju and said she must have lots of fun in her life. Once, the Korean community center in Oakland sponsored a fund-raising party. Some fortune-tellers were also...

The Stub Book

Pedro Antonio de Alarcon Literal Comprehension  The story has been written by 19th-century Spanish writer Pedro Antonio de Alarcon. Uncle Buscabeatas was a farmer of Rota, a small town of Spain famous for the production of fruits and vegetables. He was already sixty years old and had spent forty of them working in his garden. He had grown some enormous pumpkins that were already beginning to turn yellow. He knew them perfectly by color, shape, and even by name. In one afternoon, he decided to sell forty of the pumpkins. But when he went to his garden the next morning, he found his pumpkins had stolen. He guessed that the thief must have taken them to the market of Cadiz. So he went to the Cadiz. He stopped before a vendor. After recognizing his pumpkins, he asked the policeman to arrest the vendor. After a brief argument between the farmer and the vendor, the latter said that he bought them from Uncle Fulano of Rota. When the inspector of the market asked the farmer fo...

The Four-tusked Elephant

                                                                                                                         Armand Denis Armand Denis, the author of this essay, was camping in a forest of Congo with two people Putnam and Texan. They had heard about the four-tusked elephant that lived in the forest. The elephant was said to speak in a human voice. Once Denis went to the pigmies, the residents of the forest, and asked if they had seen the four-tusked elephant. One of them said that they had seen it many times and that it was fierce and very wicked. Every pigmy of that place believed in the existence of the elephant and was frightened of it. Having heard the description...