The FCC Goes to Court

So, the Supreme Court is going to hear another case asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to ease up on its regulations. Since 1975 we've had rules that disallowed certain language and visuals during hours that children were more likely to be watching or listening. Comedian George Carlin was famous for his "seven words you can't say on TV" routine which came out back in '72. We are all familiar with the censors, those bleeps, "expletive deleted", or blurred out body parts that aren't suitable for the American public.

Well, we've come a long way, baby, as they say. The "seven words", of course, were never codified. They were just Carlin's version of humor. Steven Tyler from Aerosmith, of all people, thinks they ought to keep this stuff off television. (I didn't really understand his reasons.) Others see it as a matter of First Amendment rights and all. "We have the right to express ourselves as we see fit, and you don't have the right to live an unoffended life." (Perhaps, I suppose, as long as you're not the one being offended, right?) And in a day when children have ready access to free hardcore pornography on the Internet and parents appear to lack either the ability or the stomach to do anything about it, one might begin to wonder about the grounds for censoring just those areas of our little world.

I'm likely going to surprise some people, but I probably have a different view on the question than you might expect. Well, the truth is, I'm not sure what my view is. There is a part of me, however, that almost wishes they would lift the restrictions. Show what they want on TV. Say what they want. Do what they want. No limits. Just do it. "Are you crazy?" some might object. "Do you know what they'll do?" Yes, yes I do. "So ... why would you say such a thing?" Here's my thinking.

I think that television is an insidious, dangerous device that has wormed its way into our everyday lives so much that it has become a part of the definition of life. For the vast majority of Americans, imagining a world without television would be like imagining a world without sunshine. "Oh, sure, too much is bad, but you have to have some, don't you?" And, of course, there would always be those charred, brown souls who would say, "Who says too much is bad?" But I have to wonder, for all that television takes, what it offers in return?

What does TV take? It takes time. Without even evaluating content, every minute you're in front of that screen you are not doing something else. Time. Time with family, friends, the Word, the Lord, taking care of things that need tending, reading, whatever. Time. It takes imagination. No, I don't mean that it requires imagination. I mean that it requires no imagination. When you read, for instance, you have to conjure images of the people, places, and things. You have to build this stuff yourself from your own imagination. Television, on the other hand, shows you everything you need to see. You get the sights and sounds you need to absorb what they want you to absorb. And you're not thinking about it, analyzing, examining. You're absorbing. No imagination at all. Studies indicate that your brain is more active when you're asleep than when you're watching TV. That's bad. And that's without even examining content.

Then there's the problem of the medium itself. Watching a flat, two-dimensional screen is not healthy for humans. "In the wild", we're used to changing depths, shifting focal points, shades and movements. In small children, studies show that it damages their developing brains. Some studies suggest that it is a key element in the rise of ADHD and the like. Beyond that is the problem of the image you're watching. It's not constant, you know. It's not "analog". If you look at a tree in your yard, that tree is a constant. If you look at that same tree on your TV screen, it's not. It's a flickering image, a series of photos, depending on your brain to fill in the gaps between incarnations. In contrast to that imaginary screen tree, TV shows are worse than that. They're images, jumping around here and there, from viewpoint to viewpoint, radically shifting points of reference not natural to any human being. The result on the brain is to make you spaced out, essentially. We've all seen and likely experienced that "zoned out" look from just being absorbed into the images on the TV. Not the content; just the medium.

Examining the content doesn't get better. In our censored television world the primary content appears to be sex. "Sex sells," they tell us, and so they try to sell us a lot of what sells. Scantily clad women are the norm. Pushing the envelope of "acceptable" or "legal" is the given. Between the advertisements that assure us, directly or indirectly, that we will "get lucky" with their product and the shows themselves that confirm it, it is the message of the day. Look at any given popular TV series. It is about doctors having sex with their peers and, oh, treating patients or detectives having sex with their peers and, yeah, solving crimes, or lawyers involved in all sorts of sexual activity and, sometimes, managing legal cases or ... well, you get the idea. The content has worked hard over the past decades to revise American morality from "Leave it to Beaver" and the like to "Desperate Housewives" and "Sex in the City". "Family" broadcasting used to have some sort of family values, but today it includes "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" which is about ... you guessed it ... teenagers having sex with their peers and, oh, doing whatever else teens do. Yeah, that's "family" programming.

Here's the point. Right now most Christians convince themselves that television is morally neutral. Some try to be careful about what they watch because, you know, there's a lot of bad stuff out there. Others have just jumped right in with both feet because, after all, it's just TV. What's the big deal? It's not like we're actually doing those things. It's just ... entertainment, amusement. So we surrender hours of time that could be used far more productively, allow the stripping of our imaginations, give up our frontal lobes and critical thinking skills, and veg out in front of the screen. Cautious or not, we seem to all succumb to some degree or another. At best television is worthless; at worst, it's dangerous. We know that dangerous is bad. David said, "I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless" (Psa 101:3). So if the tenuous controls of the FCC were lifted and the gloves came off, I wonder if it might not be the slap in the face that Christians need. If the stations simply dumped whatever they thought the populace wanted to see -- nudity, language, and all -- would Christians wake up and say, "Well, maybe that's not the best place to be spending my time"?

I said earlier that "I'm not sure what my view is." That's because I fear that the answer to that last question is "No." I fear that American Christians really have been sucked into this notion that "television is a fundamental right and a key component of any sort of quality of life and you can't really get by without a TV. What were you thinking?" And as we shift our moral viewpoints away from biblical morality more toward the world's perspective, we won't notice it (as we have not so far) and we might even protest against those who suggest that a biblical morality is where we should be. But this problem is something that God is going to have to address with His people because the change of heart needed here is not something that I or the FCC can accomplish.