Television, actually serves two functions in the class war of today.
Television not only fuels the class war - it is also used as a weapon of the rich.
Television (and other forms of mass-market advertising) reaches into nearly every household and business in the modern world. Because TV is such a simplistic medium, its messages are reduced to quick phrases and short 'sound-bites.' Complex ideas are anathema to a medium best suited for brief verbal exchanges, cartoons and constant gunfire. Academic concepts such as freedom, slavery, capitalism and socialism are treated lightly and quickly: freedom = good; slavery = bad; capitalism = good; socialism = bad. Television works to shape conventional wisdom and blur complex ideas into bite-size McNuggets™.
The idealized 1950s First, it must be noted that television is solely the domain of the rich and powerful. From its inception, ordinary citizens were not granted access. This can be clearly seen today through advertising rates which indicate that a 30-second commercial spot during NBC's The Apprentice costs $163,000; during CBS's CSI: Miami it costs $229,000; and during ABC's Desperate Housewives 30 seconds costs $440,000 (stats from AdAge Factpack 2006). Most political candidates don't have a prayer of winning public office without raising large sums of money to funnel into media advertising. Powerful corporations run media organizations and are monopolizing the industry at a staggering pace (see the essay Big Media 2007: For The Love of Money).
Television's control by the upper class can also be seen through TV news which only covers the thoughts and ideas of powerful politicians or wealthy businessmen. On CNBC's Wall Street Journal Report program in July 2006, billionaire George Soros told the show's host that his opinions only have value on TV because he is rich. "I'm sitting here, you're interviewing me because I made a lot of money. Right? That's why you are interested in my views," said Soros. "So you see if I were some university professor saying the things that I'm saying you probably wouldn't be sitting here . . . We don't care about the truth, sufficiently. If we are mislead by our leaders, we don't really care that much . . . What we care about is success."
Television has tremendous power to define social class expectations.
Two popular 1950s TV shows influenced an entire generation into embracing a "middle class" social status. In The Honeymooners, the families of a bus driver and sewer worker dream of being wealthy.
Nearly every episode involves ideas to 'make it rich.' The show Leave It To Beaver follows a fictional suburban family as they enjoy the idealized middle-class American lifestyle. Though the actual job of the show's patriarch, Ward Cleaver, is never revealed he is portrayed as a successful businessman who works every day "at the salt mines." Through the 1960s and 1970s, TV programming continued to focus on proper societal expectations and desires of the middle and lower classes. Shows such as I Love Lucy, The Bob Newhart Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All In The Family, Sanford and Son, Three's Company, What's Happening and Welcome Back Kotter all idealized the lives of common workers.
In the WB Network's Survival of the Richest, seven "rich kids" who had a combined networth of over $3 billion were forced to work together with 7 "poor kids" who were $150,000 in debt.
In the 1980s and 1990s, however, TV's idealized view of labor began to change.
Popular adult shows such as Dallas, Dynasty and Falcon Crest now focused on the lives of the super-rich.
Children's comedy programming also focused on wealth through programs such as Diff'rent Strokes, The Cosby Show, The Nanny and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air whose problems with money all revolve around having too much.
The show Family Ties epitomized the change in TV's view of the middle class.
The main teenage character, played by actor Michael J. Fox, wears a tie in every episode and dreams of making enough money to escape the social constraints of his liberal middle-class family.
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