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> Why shouldn't television reflect reality? Because there's a cycle. TV reflects reality, but it also shapes reality. It shapes us. > the evidence was [...]

• pessimizer 13y ago
  >Because there's a cycle. TV reflects reality, but it also shapes reality. It shapes us. If you take the cultural studies view that our media is a reflection of our cultural unconscious, rather than a form of corporate speech from power. >And without protest. I believe TV has made our society comfortable with torture, and thus we allow it to happen. There was a ton of protest, and it didn't matter. It was the subject of hundreds of articles, and congressional questioning, and it didn't matter. There's an illusion of control here. If you are arrested, and US intelligence agencies feel that you may be a friend of a friend of a Muslim of interest, you may be tortured - largely dependent on whether anyone knows you were arrested, and on what soil you were arrested on. We allow it to happen because we love it, are indifferent to the suffering of foreigners and minorities, or are afraid of being tortured ourselves. Same reason they allow it to happen in Egypt, Turkmenistan, or anywhere else. Blaming it on TV is like blaming gun violence on video games. That being said, when something purports to be a depiction of a historical reality, such as in Zero Dark Thirty, it is a travesty - but it's always a travesty when history is rewritten to glorify the powerful.