SMALL SCREEN NEIGHBOURS TV’s SHADOW COMMUNITY AND ITS EFFECTS ON CHILDREN

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33963, 2 October 1975, Page 14

SMALL SCREEN NEIGHBOURS TV’s SHADOW COMMUNITY AND ITS EFFECTS ON CHILDREN

(By

SYLVIA CLAYTON

in the "Daily Telegraph.") > arrangement)

(Reprinted by

Traditionally a child used to acquire his notions of social behaviour from his parents, his teachers, his neighbours, and to a lesser extent from vicarious experience, through stories, books, films and radio. For the children returning to school the balance of pressures has changed beyond recognition. They belong to a twilight generation, spending much of their formative years as innocent bystanders in a community of shadows, as passive observers of fiction produced for the mass market.

British children between the ages of -five and 15, according to the most recent survey figures issued by the 8.8. C., watch on the average more than 24 hours of television a week. Since a school day seldom means more than four hours of actual study, for the majority of children the number of programmes viewed in a week easily outstrips the number of lessons attended. As viewers they have an illusion of intimacy with figures they will never meet. They watch a television work force dominated by policemen and doctors, spotlit for excitement. Children at primary school in Canada, asked to describe the Red Indians who form part of their national population and whose life style had been the subject of several lessons, still portrayed them as feathered savages fighting the cowboys, just as they had seen them on television. Yet although changes in the school curriculum or methods of teaching arouse

immediate public concern in this country from parents and educationists the influence of the shadow community is left largely unchallenged, perhaps because television dominates the leisure of so many adults, and also because it acts as a tranquilliser, keeping children quiet and out of mischief. When a child’s background lacks security, the television shadows grow in stature. A child from a broken home, taught in schools with a rapid turnover of teachers, may find the policemen in “Z” Cars” or the presenters of “Blue Peter” more stable constants in his life than the adults he knows. As Grant Noble mentions in his sometimes perceptive but ill-organised book “Children in Front of the Small Screen,” a recent survey in Canada showed that viewers could list more television characters known to them than personal acquaintances. Viewing habits British television- has a long and honourable record as a producer of programmes made specially for children, but the figures indicate that these now form only a small fraction of the children’s extensive viewing time. For the most part they are watching entertainment designed for adults. Reports on their viewing habits all agree that news and documentary programmes come low on their list of preferences, though the impact of a newsreel is often judged to be stronger than that of fiction. Grant Noble argues that television replaces to some degree the village community, the neighbours and kinfolk whom children knew in the days before the selfcontained family and the semi-detached house. But the emphasis in television fiction is not on everyday human experience, it is on sensation, excitement, crime and violence. The most familiar fictional •figure on television is the policeman, whether in the guise of Lieutenant Kojak or Superintendent Watt. There are seven regular police series in the schedules at present, and the other favourite professionals are private detectives, spies, doctors and lawyers. Viewers ( are more likely to encounter | an astronaut than a plumber. . Even in the long-running domestic serials such as . "Coronation Street” and ; “Crossroads” the dramatic , pattern is closer to Soap- i and, slyly defined by the late James Thurber, than to i ordinary living. “Next to physical ills, the commonest i misfortune in the world of soap is false accusation of i murder.” , I Public criticism i Where the shadow community has come under pub- 1 lie criticism has been mainly 1 in relation to the amount of violence that erupts regu- i larly on the small screen. Milton Shulman, the critic and former television executive, was so convinced of its harmful effects on children ;

i that he used the title “Cain’s i Kindergarten” for a chapter of his book, "The Ravenous • Eye.” Shulman alleged that fic- > tionalised violence was now the dominant cultural influence in most children’s lives and pointed cut that 60 per cent of television violence occurs before 9 p.m., the hour when planners assume that children will go to bed. But how is violence to be defined? Three years ago Mr William Price, a Labour M.P., suggested that “Tom and Jerry” should be banned on the grounds that it was ■ one of the most violent pro- ; grammes on television. Yet i the recent interim report of the Independent Broad- ; casting Authority working party on the portrayal of i violence on television, whose general tone is blandly complacent, says cartoon vio- : lence is “too fantastic or farcical to lend itself to imitation.” Grant Noble says roundly but without supporting evidence that nine times out of 10 televised violence has no effect on the viewer. "In the . remaining 10 per cent of 1 cases the effects depend first on the type of televised violence, and second on how aggressive the viewer feels.” He points out with some justice that westerns and war films do not show violence alone, but also express the virtues of comradeship, loyalty and self-sacrifice. Natural brake Both cartoons and westerns contain in my view a natural brake on the child's imagination. The children 1 have watched around the box have soon learnt that Tom and Jerry are resilient characters, who will bounce back quickly, however much they are flattened, stretched, battered or knocked about, and both will emerge unscathed at the end of the story. The western, too, is sufficiently remote from the experience of children to be viewed as a ritual or a game.

Whichever way stories of violence are presented, their underlying implication is that force offers a quick solution to life’s problems. The commercials which punctuate children’s viewing are often based on equally misleading assumptions. A study of four-year-old children in a New York play ?roup quoted by Grant Moble explains: "They used television commercials as a source of authority. These four-year-olds talked of products, food, vitamins and toys as though it was necessary for everybody to own them.” Even when the claims made by advertisers are as in this country subject to restraints, the basic message of the commercials is that to be good and happy you must keep on buying. Deprived children in particular are given a regular and colourful stimulus to envy. It is not surprising that some psychologists feel that this encouragement of conspicuous consumption contributes more than the presentation of violence to juvenile delinquency.