Беликова Е.К., Саратовская Л.Б. - The United Kingdom and United States of America in Past and Present (1268141), страница 41
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Over the years, technology andeconomics have produced more and more ways of occupying people’stime: more television channels, more magazines, more theme parks, andnow besides traditional media video and computer games, chartroomsand all other delights of the information age.Advertising through CommercialsNumerous books and articles were written about American commercialtelevision and its programs, their quality or lack of it, their effects,symbols and power. Commercials take up about ten of every 60 minutes160during “prime-time” viewing (roughly 20% of the broadcastingtime).Every performance, except the sacred baseball matchcommentaries, is interrupted by commercials. Even the News is shown inparts.Commercials range from witty, well made, and clever to those that aredull, boring, and dumb. Advertisers have learned that unless theircommercials are amusing, viewers will either switch to another channelor use commercial “breaks” to get up and do something else.
ManyAmericans, who pay no fee for either commercial or public TV, simplyaccept commercials as the price they have to pay if they choose to watchcertain programs.The money for the advertising, which is a fine art in the USA, isprovided by the manufacturers of cars, soap, cigarettes, spaghetti,cosmetics, etc. Advertisements are often short plays with actors andminimoviemakers command of: famous actors and actresses.Commercials are declaimed in prose and recited in verse, sung bysoloists and choirs, persuading, cajoling, threatening, warning andordering people to buy X underwear or Y canned beans.
Everyperformance, except the sacred baseball match commentaries, isinterrupted to tell you that you will become reach and beautiful if you eatZ cheese or else you die young, poor and neglected. Once during aperformance of King Lear, the tragedy flowed on in its majesty until at itsclimax King Lear broke in a ferocious malediction, condemning all hisdaughters for not drinking ‘Optimus’ orange juice for breakfast.Freedom of speech means: freedom of great commercial firms to pulldown all the rest of the people to their own intellectual level.
“The bestbrains in our country go into salesmanship.Any fool can make a thing.What takes real brains is to sell it when the customer has got one alreadyand doesn’t want another.”,- said one American journalist. Advertisingmakes you feel that you really must have it.
To do this a number adifferent effects are used:-The snob effect. This tells you that the product is most exclusive and ofcourse rather expensive. Only the very best people use it.-The scientific effect. A serious-looking man with glasses and a whitecoat, possibly a doctor or a professor, tells you about the advantages ofthe product.161-The words-and-music effect. The name of the product is repeated overand over again, put into a rhyme and sung several times, in the hope thatyou won’t forget it. The sung rhyme is called a “jungle”.-The ha-ha effect. The advertiser tries to make you laugh by showingpeople or cartoon figures in funny situations.-The VIP (Very Important Person) effect.
Well-known people, likeactors or football-players, are shown using the product.-The super- modern effect. The advertiser tries to persuade you that hisproduct is a new, sensational breakthrough.-The go-go effect. This is suitable for the teenage market. It showsyoung people having a party, singing, laughing, having a wonderful time,and, of course, using the product.Television and ChildrenWhat children watch on TV change the way they think about theworld.
There are excellent television programs for children. Theseprograms include valuable lessons about good and bad things, and aboutpositive and negative actions. There are also terrible, upsetting programson TV made with violence, sex, or horror as the main subject. Childrenwho watch violence every day on TV begin to think that violence isnormal.
And one day, these children will become violent, too.The effect of violent TV shows on children is an important issue in theUnited States. Most research (one study proved that the averageAmerican child will have watched 8,000 murders on television by the ageof twelve) has shown that watching violent TV shows often leads to moreviolent behavior of children.How can violence on TV be reduced? One solution is for thegovernment to regulate the content of television programming.
However,this is not a popular solution. In general, Americans do not likegovernment regulation. They do not like laws that tell them how tobehave; instead, they prefer individual choice. Some people think that ifyou don’t want your children to watch violent TV shows, you shouldsimply turn off the TV. Some groups, particularly civil liberties groups(groups that try to protect the rights of American that are set forth in theUS Constitution), say that government control of TV program contentmay be a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech..In general, the television industry agrees with civil liberties groups. Inaddition, industry leaders fear that the ratings system will have an impacton the number of viewers watching certain shows.
As a result, industry162profits will be reduced. Television program writers feel that the ratingssystem will affect the creativity and content of their work. Pressured bythe ratings system, they may produce shows that are less interesting, lessentertaining, and less provocative. So how can TV violence be controlledwithout the government censoring TV content? This is an issue thatconcerned parents, the television industry, the federal government, andcivil liberties groups. The problem must be resolved.Soap Operas and TeenagersSoap operas are plays that originally were sponsored by soap advertisers, hencethe name.
They are called “operas” because they present highly emotionalsituations like European operas. Over the past few years, television soap operashave attracted a larger audience. Approximately thirty million people watch soapoperas, 70 percent of them female. Once thought of as entertainment for lonelyhousewives, dull melodramas that featured depressed middle-aged charactersengaged in long conversations over cups of coffee, the soaps have becomepopular with a new group of younger viewers. Millions of American teenagersare “hooked” on soap operas. “General Hospital” has been the number one soapfor several years among teens – partly because its 3:00 airtime means they candash from school bus to the living room in time to tune in.Just like many others teens, Christie Clark gets home at 3:00 and turns on herTV set to one of her favorite soap operas “The Guiding Light”. During the onehour show, she tapes “General Hospital” on her new video tape recorder, abirthday gift from her parents.
She then watches another soap for a half an hour.At 4:30 she plays a tape “As the World Turns” which her machine recordedwhile she was at school. After dinner with her family, Christie plays the“General Hospital” tape. At 8:30, she calls her best friend Tina, to tell her allabout the soaps Tina missed. Afterward, Christie does a few hours ofmathematics, history, and psychology homework and goes to bed at 11:00.All the programs began to feature teenagers in important roles. Soon, theyoung characters became involved in the plot lines that make up the world ofsoaps.
Next, they were involved with some every adult problems, among thempregnancy, drugs, and almost every possible aspect of sex and romance. Howcould teenager viewers resist such thrills? They couldn’t – and they didn’t. Thereason for the soaps’ success in winning the teen audience is clear: they offerescapist entertainment featuring young characters with which teens would like toidentify themselves.
The serials provide an escape from the routine of school,family life and homework. Christie Clark says, “When I’m bored, I come homefrom school and it’s fun to watch them”. The years from twelve to nineteen areones of great questioning of identity. It’s also a time of communicationbreakdown with authority figures. Soap operas serve as model for situationsteens might face. Some of them say that watching a soap character deal with adifficult situation has helped them work out problems in their own lives.163Studies among teens in the US Northeast have yielded some surprisingconclusions. One is that teens who watch soaps tend to take fewer drugs thanthose who don’t. In the long run, soap operas with all the shortcomings upholdmany traditional American values.
Despite the scandals, the good guys alwayswin in the end, and villains repent, die, or are banished to a prison or a mentalhospital. Some psychiatrists think that soaps bridge the gap between generations.Grandparents and parents can watch the serials together and talk about difficultproblems with their children. (Based on “What it is like in the USA” by NataliaTokareva and Victor Peppard).I.Read the texts and express your opinion on them:1. Products and Commercials. Take any commercial with a simple message,repeat it again and again, and the product, if it’s good, will sell, even if the spotis mindless and annoying. It’s fixing the name of the product in the consumer’smind with a quick, catchy phrase that’s important. The moral, delivered, is plain:“Ladies, who’ve learned - buy…” This is very much the rule for women’sportrayals in thirty-and sixty-second spots, which occur with alarming regularityduring the daytime hours, when stations may sell up to sixteen commercialThe cumulative effects of commercials are awesome.
An endless procession ofcommercials on the same theme, all showing women using household productsin the home, raises very strong implications that women have no other interestsexcept laundry, dishes, waxing floors, and fighting dirt in any form.
Seeing agreat many such advertisements in succession reinforces the traditionalstereotype that women’s place is only in the home.Ask anybody in advertising why commercials still show a woman bumblingaround in a fearful daze, and you’ll find always the same answer: “Because ourresearch tells us it is so”. Agencies devote hundreds of thousands of dollars tofind out who’s buying their client’s stuff and why.
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