StoryBoard Tv

This weekend I read about a study which found that fiction television may be more effective at convincing young women to use birth control than a news program offering the same information. Researchers at Ohio State University found that college-age women who viewed a televised drama about a teen pregnancy felt more vulnerable two weeks after watching the show, and this led to more support for using birth control. However, those who watched a news program detailing the difficulties caused by teen pregnancies were unmoved, and had no change in their intentions to use birth control. (Read more about it here).

And then today, a study was released on how medical dramas give bad information about seizure treatment (read it here). The study looked at the depiction of seizure care for all episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy,” House, M.D.,” and “Private Practice,” and the last five seasons of “ER” and found that in 46 percent of seizure cases, characters on these shows delivered inappropriate treatments such as holding the person down, trying to stop involuntary movements or putting something in the person’s mouth. (In case you are wondering, the appropriate thing to do is to clear the area of dangerous objects, put something soft under the head, rotate them onto their side, make sure they don’t hurt themselves while convulsing, and NOT to stick something in their mouths).

The seizure study did not look at how many television watchers ended up utilizing this misinformation, but in light of the birth control study, I’ve been thinking about how people process and store the information they see in a fictional program. As a person who easily cries at anything I see on TV, I can understand how college women were swept up in a teen pregnancy story and then able to apply it to their own lives. I mean, isn’t this what good fiction is suppose to do – make us identify with the characters we are watching? In contrast, a news program feels almost alienating. When watching the news, we see what’s happening to “other people” whereas on the OC (or what have you) we see what’s happening to people just like us. So as a public service announcement, I can see how drama would be more effective.

That said, because we are so easily taken in by a fictional narrative, is it important for that fictional narrative to be 100% accurate at all times? If I stick a wooden spoon in a seizure victim’s mouth, whose to blame? The episode of ER where I saw a doctor do it, or me for believing that the doctor on TV was accurately treating a patient? The answer to these questions, of course, comes down to whether or not we believe that TV audiences are taking factual guidance from the shows from which they are already reaping emotional and ethical guidance. It’s an interesting question.

For instance, I watch HOUSE – a show predicated on the simple fact that Dr. Greg House (played by Hugh Laurie) is a brilliant doctor and diagnostician working at a hospital in Princeton, NJ. And over the course of many seasons, I’ve gotten to love this character and even trust him to do “the right thing”. So, if House does something medically inaccurate on TV, it’s very unlikely that I will ever realize it. Does this mean that if I find myself in a similar “House” emergency, I will reference the show to figure out what to do? I might just.

Your thoughts?

An article came out earlier this year in the May issue of The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, which reported on four studies by two different universities suggesting that people use TV to drive away feelings of loneliness or rejection.

The first study found that subjects felt less lonely when viewing their favored TV shows. Study 2 found subjects whose “belongingness needs were aroused” wrote longer essays about their favored TV programs. The third study found that thinking about favored TV programs buffered subjects against drops in self-esteem, increases in negative mood and feelings of rejection. And study 4 found that subjects verbally expressed fewer feelings of loneliness after writing essays about their preferred TV programs. For more on this, check out: http://www.livescience.com/culture/090429-fiction-relationships.html.

The question I’m posing today is: is this a good thing? a bad thing? Sure, human contact should be the ideal, but when your friends/family fall short of this ideal connection, shouldn’t it be ok to connect with your fictional friends?

Just something to think about as the year nears its close, and re-runs of everything have taken over the airwaves.

An article in the NY Times today has got me thinking about my own ability to suspend disbelief when it comes to TV.

An anecdote: I’ve known since I was little that some television shows are taped on sound stages in studios. And yet, for some reason, up until a few years ago I never thought that The Cosby Show was one of them. I know, it makes absolutely no sense – especially considering all the times I’ve heard “the Cosby Show is taped in front of a live studio audience.” But it wasn’t until I started living in NYC and actually went to see the exterior of the house (in the West Village, it turns out, and not in Brooklyn) that it occurred to me that there was no way a living room and kitchen that large can fit inside a house that small. Strange to have one’s illogical bubble burst in that way.

Suspension of disbelief is a wondrous and powerful thing. It allows us to escape into worlds where magic is everywhere and where change is a possible. In some instances, it also allows us to peer into the future – to see a world where an African American can be president and a limb can be replaced with a bionic arm. (The latter example, by the way, is already here. See this review of “The Department of Mad Scientists” and prepare to freak out a little…)

Do you have any stories about where suspension of disbelief has led you? Share!

“The influence of Reality TV has been insidious, pervasive. It has ruined television, and by ruining television it has ruined America.”

The above is a quote from December’s VANITY FAIR article, written by James Wolcott. I feel like I’ve been saying it for years, but it’s nice to hear someone else shouting about it. He actually makes a great argument in this article and I encourage you all to read it.

But, if you are feeling exceptionally lazy, I am going to cut and paste some choice points. Feel free to throw them into holiday party conversations:

– “Reality TV wages class warfare and promotes proletarian exploitation… In an eye-opener published in The New York Times of August 2, reporter Edward Wyatt revealed the sweatshop secrets of Reality TV’s mini-stockades, where economic exploitation and psychological manipulation put the vise squeeze on contestants. ‘With no union representation, participants on reality series are not covered by Hollywood workplace rules governing meal breaks, minimum time off between shoots or even minimum wages,”
Wyatt wrote. “Most of them, in fact, receive little to no pay for their work.’”

- “Emotionally, Reality TV is emaciated, envy and spite being the alternating currents…Nearly everyone conforms to crude, cartoon stereotype (bitch, gold digger, flamboyant gay, recovering addict, sofa spud, anal perfectionist, rageaholic)…”

- “Reality TV encourages and rewards vulgar, selfish, antisocial, pissy-pants behavior.”

“I think we underestimate the power of entertainment narratives to influence the way we look at the world. And storytelling, when it’s good storytelling… orients us to possibilities and helps us structure the way we look at things.”
- Diane Winston, journalist and scholar of media and religion at USC

This summer, I listened to an episode of the NPR show Speaking of Faith called “TV and Parables of Our Time”. Diane Winston (quoted above) was the guest and if you have an hour to spend listening to someone speak thoughtfully about how television feeds the collective soul, I suggest you listen show. You can find it here: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/tv/

In a nutshell, Diane Winston discusses the importance of storytelling in our culture and rightfully puts TV at the center of this storytelling. She speaks of TV as a ritualistic, or religious act – it is individualistic in one sense (watching tv alone in your house) but also community building as well (we discuss what we’ve seen, join fan sites, make up our own stories and share them with eachother). Good TV grapples with everyday topics as diverse as medical ethics (House), religious fundamentalism (Battlestar), and race inequity (The Wire) in order to show us not only where we as a society are right now, but also where we are going. An interesting point she brings up is that television helps “normalize” what may once have been unimaginable – allowing a community to make a slow, paradigm shift. Example: black president on TV, black president in real life…

Anyway, I highly recommend that you listen to the show.