Caveats

Despite all that has been presented, it is important to appreciate several caveats inherent in our thesis. First, while television's biases alone do not create the Huxleyan nightmare, they are nevertheless a vital component. The human drive for pleasure, fueled by so many aspects of a highly capitalistic and technological society, is greatly accelerated by the amusement medium. Second, although studies linking commercial television to cognitive and behavioral effects are indeterminate, ⁹² more than ample experiential evidence supports the obvious conclusion that a medium that is all­pervasive has a significant effect on the structure of individual and cultural discourse; that a society that dedicates more than a quarter of every day to television is less likely to embrace the Madisonian ideals of critical discourse and civic participation; and that billion­dollar commercial efforts to institutionalize the pleasure principle have more than a negligible effect on traditional first­amendment values. Third, the ascendancy of the television culture may not affect everyone in the same way. Nonetheless, just as its appeal is mass, so too its effects are mass, and increasingly global. ⁹³ Fourth, television is not without its social benefits. ⁹⁴ For example, it "'can seem a blessing to old people, [and] to the ill;" ⁹⁵ it may produce the likes of a Bill Moyers, ⁹⁶ Ted Koppel, ⁹⁷ or William F. Buckley, Jr.; ⁹⁸ and it may furnish information (albeit suitably packaged) at electrifying speeds. ⁹⁹ But, the larger point remains that the cultural costs of commercial television far exceed its benefits: ¹⁰⁰ a vacuum of serious public discourse has been filled by a television culture of spectacle and a "'democracy of images."¹⁰¹

If our communicative culture is indeed tending toward Huxley's antiutopia, what can or should be done? From a first­amendment vantage point, how do we deconstruct or reconstruct our television culture? Is it possible to draw first­amendment lines that will address the distinct harms posed by Orwellian censorship and Huxleyan triviality in our amusement world? Against the backdrop of the dancing­pig syndrome and two­second sound­bites, we proceed to examine these questions.