In our society people spend countless hours watching their favorite sitcoms and dramas. It is amazing how television has turned us into a society of couch potatoes. With all this time spent in front of it what is it that makes us watch? Is it that we’re too lazy to get up from the couch or that it creates real life situations placing the viewer at the mercy of the invisible characters that can conquer, adapt and amazingly survive any situation they encounter? Therefore, television is not an accurate reflection of our society because life is dramatically exaggerated, showing things that are not a reality for us and can ultimately skew people’s perspectives of what can and can’t be done.
Although some things on television are realistic, the majority of them exaggerate what our society is really like. Shows like Fastlane have excessive violence with two undercover cops who are in constant gun fights and numerous car chases in every episode. Then there is Sex and the City which has women portrayed as whores who go around not practicing safe sex or not having to worry about contracting an STD. These shows and others exaggera
te life and are unrealistic for showing a no-worry, perfect world. Harry Crews states in his essay “Pages from the Life of a Georgia Innocent” “It seemed immoral and dangerous to show too many smiles without an occasional glimpse of the skull underneath.”(84) Instead of television showing abstract views of life it should show the hardships and pains involved in the real world. Although some mini-series do touch on realistic issues such as families having their children kidnapped the realism is lost when the father goes above the law and kills all the kidnappers to rescue his child. All together television does show realistic situations but overall exaggerates what our society is like.
Television with all its exaggerations can give people false standards that they try to hold themselves to. With everything that’s on television people start to think they should act or look like what they see. Shows like Sex and the City can make people think they can just run around and sleep with everyone and everything. Teenagers have increased in sexual activity which is partly due to all the sexual content seen which they simply mimic. For Instance, the series T
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