自考英语综合一 上册 lesson15
Text Unreality of TV
Dr.Heinrich Applebaum recently completed a study
on the effects of television on children.
It is not about violence,but about
how television gives children a false sense of reality.
Dr.Applebaum told me,
"The greatest danger of television is that it presents a world to children
that doesn't exist,and leads them to expect things that never happen."
"I don't understand,Doctor,"I said.
"Well,let me give you one example.
Have you ever seen a television show where a person in a car doesn't immediately
find a parking place on the very first try?"
"Come to think of it,"I said,"I haven't."
"Not only is there always a parking place,
but the driver doesn't even have to back into it.
There are two parking spaces for him when he needs one.
Children are being led to believe that when they grow up
they will always be able to find a parking place available when
and where they want it.
"I never thought of it,but it's true.
What else do they show on television which gives a distorted picture of the real world?"
"Have you noticed that whenever a person walks out of a restaurant or
office building and says to the doorman,'Get me a taxi,'
the taxi immediately arrives?
I have never seen a TV show where the doorman has said,
'I'm sorry.I can't get you a taxi.You'd better take the bus.'"
"Of course,"I said,"I never noticed that.
There is always a yellow taxi waiting somewhere off the TV screen."
"Now",said Applebaum,"have you ever said to a taxi driver,
'Follow that car and don't lose him'?
"Not really."
"Well,if you had,the driver would have told you not to talk nonsense.
No taxi driver wants to follow another car
because that means he's going to get into trouble.
But on TV every taxi driver looks as if he had nothing better to do
than to drive 90 miles an hour through rain-swept street
trying to keep up with a carful of gangsters.
And the worst thing is that the kids believe it.
"What else have you discovered?"
"Kids have a false sense of what emergency wards of hospitals are really like.
On TV shows they take a kid to an emergency ward and
four doctors come rushing down to bandage his leg.
In a real life situation
the kid would be sitting on the bench for two hours before he even saw a nurse.
On TV there always happens to be a hospital bed available when a kid needs it.
What the kids in this country don't know is that sometimes
you have to wait three days to get a hospital bed
and then you have to pay 500 dollars before they give it to you.
Applebaum said the cruelest lie of all
is when TV shows a lawyer defending someone innocent of a crime.
"On the screen the lawyer spends day and night looking for evidence to prove the person is innocent.
The defendant might say,But I'm innocent.
The lawyer would say,So what?
I can't afford to find that out.I'm not Perry Mason.
Then what you're saying,Dr.Applebaum,is that
it isn't the violence on TV but the unreality that is doing harm to children."
"Exactly.Even the advertisements are harmful.
Children are led to believe that when they grow up
if they use a certain mouthwash they'll find the mate of their dreams.
When they don't find him or her after washing their mouth all night,
they fall into a difficult situation and many of them never come out of it."
