Rating: 
Summary: A clarifying blast aimed at the real national pasttime
Review: I wholeheartedly agree with the other opinions posted here; Mander has written a wonderfully lucid and sane examination of television. Like most, I always knew TV was 99% insipid garbage, but Mander does an excellent job of showing the deficiencies in the medium itself, content aside. I found myself wanting to shout from the rooftops after every chapter. This book is a gem -- read it and then act on it. Nothing could be worse than turning 40, 50, 60 years old with nothing but TV viewing and work as your legacy. A must read, especially for parents of young children.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone should read this book.
Review: Everyone should read this book. Even if you don't agree with the arguments or the presentation of the arguments, it is worth a read. I first came across this book as a senior in high school (raised on TV) eleven years ago and read enough of it for the extra credit it represented. I also specifically remember thinking how absurd it all was at the time. I came across it again four years ago and haven't viewed much television since. The main idea I came away with was how telelvision is essentially an advertsing medium designed to bring across the narrowest view to the most amount of people. The advertsing dictates the content and not vice versa. The Super Bowl is the most obvious example. The commercials are the real show and the game itself is secondary. It is the same with other shows, such as Friends, ER etc, but just subtle. Mr. Mander also explains how even nature shows on PBS are the worst example of television, regulate the experience to the subjective view of a camera lens and high production values. Mr. Mander also agrues that going to the movies is acceptable because your eyes are able to look all over the whole screen and the movies are experience by a group off people at the same time. This book is an eye opener and must addition to every personal library (and public library for that matter).
Rating:
Summary: In Defense of Jerry Mander
Review: I had to write this review to rebut those disatisfied with Mr. Mander's book. The medium is the message, and Mander makes a very convincing case for its darker side. As for those critical of the science he quotes, I must contradict them. The psychological studies referenced may not have gotten a lot of airplay, but they are sound and have withstood the test of time (50+ years in some instances) without being put aside. Any reading, thinking person who watches television these days would see that the corporate agenda Mander posits is being consistently realized in front of us, chillingly so. TV does an excellent job of selling, so much so that billions of dollars are spent every year to put a certain kind of TV show on the air; television programming is so dreadful because that's what plays best on TV, and sponsors know it. I'd get rid of your television if I were you.
Rating:
Summary: The best book about television
Review: Jerry Mander shows how TV is an integral part of late capitalism.Although it was invented in the 1920's,TV was not put to use until after 1945, to promote the consumer society with advertising and a materialistic lifestyle.Most critics of TV are concerned about program content, but Mander shows that TV by its very nature is detrimental to human well-being.Like modern society as a whole, TV creates artificial experience, causing people to lose touch with their own nature, their true needs, other people and the natural world.TV puts the viewer into a passive hypnotic state.Mander shows how TV implants images in our brain, even against our will.Although nothing on TV is really "real", it tricks our mind into thinking that the pictures portray reality.Negative behaviors such as fighting, killing,rage and hate are very suitable for TV, but gentleness, affection,caring and the like is boring on TV.Mander says you cannot make TV "better", it must be eliminated.This book deserves a wide audience, because Mander gets to the root of what is wrong with television.
Rating: 
Summary: TV-noia
Review: Don't get me wrong. I haven't watched TV in 10 years, and I am quite comfortable blaming TV for many of society's ills. But this book is a mess --- lots of mostly anecdotal evidence damning TV (that capitalist tool), but in the main, the author, Jerry Mander (if that's really his name), seems wrapped a little too tight. To accept the book's major premise, you gotta believe in dark conspiracies to control, control, control in order to profit, profit, profit. Mr. Mander says TV's mission is to condition us as workers/consumers, to create happy robotic shoppers whose sole function is to keep the capitalist wheel turning smoothly. It's all very Orwellian (indeed, the book invokes both "1984" and "Brave New World"). ... But people have always been worker/consumers. (Doesn't the Bible say that when we lost our lease on the Garden of Eden, we were condemned to get our living by the sweat of our brows?) You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain the workings of television. The "mission" is to sell advertising; to do that, TV must create an audience. To do that, it must appeal to something in us humans that impels us to watch. You may not want to meditate on THAT particular heart of darkness, but it doesn't require a cabal of Big Capitalists plotting to own our minds. Now, the Soviets may have used TV that way. But who really wanted to watch? Mr. Mander argues that consumerism (as seen on TV!) is all smoke and mirrors; creating the illusion of choice between competing products obscures the fact that none of the products is actually necessary. He wonders, for example, if we really need soap and suggests we've been conditioned by advertising to prefer "artificial" scents to good old-fashioned body odor. (BO -- it's all natural.) But I think the simple truth is soap smells better. Hey, we're human! Artifice R Us.
One interesting factoid that does not appear in the book but should: The crime rate in South Africa, which had been stable for 50 years, began climbing sharply within one year of the introduction of television there in the early '60s. Coincidence? I don't think so.... I'm not saying you shouldn't read the book. There's some good stuff in there. Besides, it beats watching television.
Rating: 
Summary: This is insane
Review: Television is the only thing I have to look forward to, my life is sad and depressing and oh god I am going to cry *** :( Get rid of television? are you insane?, how else would you get the children to shutup
Rating:
Summary: Cuts to the heart of what's wrong with this society
Review: Written in the late 1970's by a former advertising executive, Four Arguments is a coherent diatribe against television. He explores four areas: (1) Television as a poor mediator of experience; (2) television as a way to influence audiences' perceptions en masse; (3) the "dumbing-down" effects of TV on the human being; and (4) the inherent biases of television and how they limit real information flow. The first couple of arguments are more attacks on capitalism and the development of television as a capitalist tool, but overall, they are solid statements that stand on their own. However, TV has become a central part of the American lifestyle, and it would be hard, if not impossible, to get rid of. But I definitely feel the truth of his arguments. When I was in India, much of the time at my host family's place, they would sit around watching television while doing chores. It felt empty somehow. Where was the richness of the culture? Here I am in India, and I'm sitting here watching a stupid Hindi movie instad of interacting in a meaningful way. And when I came back home, I felt the shock of the media doubly. Everything on TV looked slick, fake, contrived, absolutely ridiculous. We have been so inoculated to all of this by now that it's hard to see unless you go away and come back again. It's tough to break any sort of addiction, and I think television is an addiction. It is part of the problem of a society that always looks for the next best thing, that promotes the loudest, noisiest, most violent thing, that can't sit still for half an hour to soak in the beauty of quiet stillness. In some ways, this book is hard to read. It's easy to grasp but it's difficult to take this kind of attack on such a commonly accepted lifestyle even though you know it's wrong. Plus it's a lot of information coming at you at once; I had to digest it in little bits and pieces to give it time to sink in.
Rating:
Summary: APOLOGIES FOR ENTERING A 2nd COMMENT
Review: The reviewer "thecodingmonkey" says in her review below that she depends on the TV to keep her children quiet. My wife's sister Helen also uses the TV to baby-sit her children. At age 11, her oldest boy Edward was diagnosed as dyslexic. After examinations and tests, they found there was nothing physically wrong with him. It turned out that his dyslexia was induced. He had watched so much TV that the part of his brain that processes written words and sentences had not developed. Edward's years from ages 12 through 15 were awful because he had to learn to read and write while his classmates zoomed ahead of him.
Rating:
Summary: GOOD ADVICE (THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE)
Review: The other reviewers have already explained what the book is about. "Four Arguments . . ." very clearly explains what TV does to you, and how it damages you in many different ways. My wife and I were married 32 years, and we haven't seen a TV program since 1971. Of course we were very busy with work, gardening, hiking, and mountain climbing (and reading!). We both read, and we didn't miss TV at all. When "Four Arguments" came out in 1978, we bought it. What it says is true. You become impatient because TV teaches you to expect instant gratification. So you have difficulty in your life with things (like relationships or school) that require stamina and self-discipline. You find that you have no interest in reading a book or newspaper (you're impatient, see above). Do you find it odd or unusual that you (or your children) don't like to read and have no interest in books? When you go to the dentist or doctor, do you find yourself fidgeting because you have to wait 30 or so minutes before you see him? You don't have anything (any TV, that is) to occupy you while you wait. Of course the other people sitting around you are perfectly happy reading books. You become shallow and stupid because you get all your information from TV soaps and TV news. Of course TV news isn't information, just headlines with no backup. No explanation of whether it is true or not, or why it was fed to you. A year later you find the TV lied to you ("WMD," or "9/11," or "the Patriot Act" sound familiar?), but you don't do anything about it because now TV is distracting you with a whole new series of lies. If you want to see very clearly exactly how people think you are stupid and that you will believe anything they tell you, read "Lies, and the Lying Liars That Tell Them," by Al Franken. Instead of watching TV, you should be reading the NY Times and your local paper. Buy books from Amazon.com (or borrow them from your library) about things in which you are interested. If you (or your children) want a full and happy life, put your foot through the TV and set it out on the curb with the other junk.
Rating:
Summary: Gives great clarity to a common thought many people have..
Review: While most of what I would say about this book has already been said in other reviews, one reviewer put it very aptly for me: "Nothing could be worse than turning 40, 50 or 60 years old with nothing but TV viewing and work as your legacy." I totally agree.
| 
