The Moral Imperative in Television
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 10:10AMThat's right, I said it! There is a Moral Imperative that is represented on television...or at least there was and I'm wondering what happened. When I was a kid watching TV in the seventies and eighties, but particularly the shows of the seventies that I used to watch in re-runs, there were shows that had a real moral theme at their core. Think about All In The Family, The Jeffersons, One Day At A Time, M*A*S*H, The Planet of the Apes, Mork and Mindy, Good Times, The Cosby Show etc... I can go on and on. So in a world of action/adventure and Reality TV I ask what happened?
Well, let's first look at the time those shows were airing. Civil Rights legislation had literally just been passed in the sixties by LBJ and we were entrenched in what many saw as an immoral war in Vietnam with a draft so that people could watch their neighbors going off to war to die. It was a very confusing and tumultuous time with the country split in a very polarized way and the art reflected that, fortunately for me on the liberal side. I went to a basically all white private school and learned about racism and the struggle for equality from Archie and Meathead on All In the Family. I learned about the human condition and laughed my ass off, watching Mork and Mindy. I learned about animal cruelty from the Planet of the Apes. I learned about what it's like to be a single Mom from One Day At A Time or to live in a ghetto from Good Times. I learned about the horrors of war from M*A*S*H. It's crazy, but thank God for Television.
So I ask again, what happened? Where is the moral imperative in Television today? I've been looking hard and I can't find it. Have we been purposely dumbed down as a society? What do you guys think?
- Jeff
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Reader Comments (1)
Lack of morality… yes that description seems to fit. I’m not one to shove my beliefs down another person’s throat, and I’ll admit Family Guy is as funny to me as to anyone else. However, it’s not exactly on the same level as M*A*S*H.
I think being dumbed-down as a society pretty much hits the nail on the head. The question is whether someone else is doing it to us, or are we really doing this to ourselves? There is definitely a sickening resonance of "give them bread and circus" in McDonald’s and Reality TV.
So, is someone to blame? Are the writers too lazy to write real dialogues, so they relay on actors (excuse me “real people”) to adlib in Reality TV? Have we become so lazy as spectators that we accept the garbage that is thrown at us? Or are we so fed-up and exhausted as a society that we just want to escape the constraints of morality during our viewing time? Maybe the lack of morality comes from a society of people who have become too cynical. Or, maybe this is our own sick form of vicarious existence.
As for me, I find reruns of old cartoons are pretty enjoyable when I have to be entertained by a TV. Otherwise, there’s always a guitar or a book close by…