Four Arguments for the Elimination Of Television: TV Content Is Without Life or Context

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In his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, Jerry Mander argues TV content and mechanically-reproduced images in general are without life essence.

The following is an excerpt from Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander, copyright © 1977. Reprinted with the permission of William Morrow and Company, Inc.

In a continuing analysis of the effects of watching TV, this installment examines how In a continuing analysis of the effects of watching TV, this installment considers the inherent limitations of mechanically reproduced images. They are incapable capturing the true essence of living things–their life force and the context in which they exist–thus turning them into objects. By extension, TV content is without life or real context.


In his novel Being There, Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski describes a man who is born and raised in a house that he never leaves. His only contacts with human beings are occasional encounters with a half-crazy maid, a crippled, senile old man confined in a room upstairs, and a television set. He watches television constantly.

In middle age the hero is suddenly thrown out of the house into the city. Attempting to deal with a world which he has seen only as reproduced on television, he tries to apply what he has learned from the set. He adopts television behavior. He tries to imitate the behavior of the people he has seen on the screen. He speaks like them, moves as they do, imitates their facial expressions. However, because these people were only images to him, and he has never experienced real people, save for the crazies in his house, he does not know anything beyond the images. He does not know about feelings, for example. He adopts the movements of the images but can’t connect this with anything deeper inside himself. Because he has not exchanged feeling with a live human, his ability to feel has atrophied. He is a mechanical person, a humanoid. He is there physically, but like the television images, he is also not there.

  • Published on Nov 1, 1979
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