Media Deprivation

This Media deprivation assignment was a lot harder than I thought. I choose to the assignment on the Friday after thanksgiving. I figured it would be easy because it was just a Saturday. I told my entire house what was going on and that they should not disturb my assignment. So I woke up in the morning around 10 and yelled that I was coming downstairs so if anything was on, they needed to cut it off. So I come down and see breakfast so I eat. While im eating I can hear my brother talking on the phone, I just shook my head in disgust. So after I was done eating I went to my room, my original plan was to get some school work done. But that plan quickly became something different when my phone started to ring. So the next thing I know I am ignoring 5 different calls and about 3 different text messages in less than 10 minutes!!! I never realized my phone did that much in so little time. So I cut my phone off and that distraction was eliminated. Once my phone cut off I was going to go back to my original plan of getting some school work done…did not happen, I ended up dozing off. When I woke back up it was about 3pm. I walked around my room looking for ANYTHING to do, and there was nothing I could do that would not violate the rules. There was no face book, no cell phone, no television. I just knew I wouldn’t be able to finish the assignment. So after my meltdown I went to go help my father rake leaves. I never realized how many trees we had in our backyard, It felt like I was raking forever. But after raking my father went to watch the LSU game…I wanted to go so bad but of course there was nothing I could do. This assignment was way harder than I expected it to be. I expected it to be a breeze, but I did not know 24 hours was such a long time. This experience taught me a whole lot well basically that my life is a giant media circus and I love it that way. I regret to say I almost made it but when LSU and Arkansas went into overtime, I had to take a peek. I did not want to but the sports fan inside of me had to take a look. But this assignment was a fun and tough at the same time, I think it is a great challenge for us as college students.

TV vs Print

I never really thought about the argument of print versus television until I read this article. Neil Postman put up some excellent points on why print is important to our lives. But Camille Paglia had some excellent points of her own. While Postman;s points made me think that books have more reason than television. “By its nature, reading teaches us reason. Television, with its random, unconnected images, works against this linear tradition and breaks the habits of logic and thinking.” It was still Paglias’s argument that Television is often misinterpreted and my biasness to the television that led to Paglia winning me over. Paglia did not have to much to win me over, I LOVE TV.

Early in the defense of television Paglia argued that television is important in everyday life no matter if we like it or not. “Television is the culture”. Paglia also talked about how people mainly adults often talk about children not learning anything from watching television, but children often do recall many of the facts they learn on television rather than what they read from a book. I agree with Paglia when she says “We are born into an imagistic and pagan culture ruled by TV.” To end the article she talks about enlighting the children in our schools, so that can understand the logocentric and apollonian side of their world.