Raymond Williams in 1974 talking about the attractions of telly and advertising, from the truly dreadfully titled Television: Technology and Cultural Form — page 132:
Many people who are aware of the manipulative powers of television and radio, or of its apparently inexhaustibly appeal to children, react in ways which implicitly suppress all the history of communication.
Thus it is often indignantly said that television is the ‘third parent’, as if children had not in all developed societies had third parents in the shape of priests, teachers and workmasters, to say nothing of the actual parents and relations who, in many periods and cultures, intervened to control or instruct.
Against those real alternatives this switchable communication has profound attractions. Or it is said that people are exposed to propaganda by television, as if there had never been masters, employers, judges, priests.
It is interesting that many of the contradictions about capitalist democracy have indeed come out in the argument about television control. The British version of ‘public responsibility’ was an emphasis, in new terms, of the priest and the teacher, with behind them a whole dominant and normative set of meanings and values.
The American version of ‘public freedom’ was open broadcasting subject only to the purchase of facilities, which then settled freedom in direct relation to existing economic inequalities…
Many British working class people welcomed American culture, or the Americanised character of British commercial television, as an alternative to a British ‘public’ version which, from a subordinate position, they already knew too well.
In many parts of the world this apparently free-floating and accessible culture was a welcome alternative to dominant local patterns and restrictions…
Thoughts?
