Remotely Controlled - or, how I came to understand the Taleban

I'm just reading Remotelly Controlled by Aric Sigman. The subtitle is How television is Damaging our Lives, which just about tells you everything you need to know about this book. Actually if you want a review I would say that the book is a bit too strong in its subjectivity, which means that it is too easy to present counter-arguments to these parts, thereby allowing the sceptic to pronounce the book garbage without ever having to trouble themselves with the objective or more reasonable sounding subjective parts. However, as I start from the position of already believing the central premise (event though at age 15 I won a competition on the subject "Does television influence our lives for the better?" - with an unambiguously positive essay) I was quite happy to read on and add some colour and texture to my own arguments.

Although I'm still only part way through, I have already had my eyes opened to one significant finding, which I guess I already knew subconsciously, but have now been thinking about explicitly, which is that TV is damaging our lives in (at least) two different ways. 

The first way is what I was thinking about when I bought the book, which is that TV is damaging particularly our children's (but also adults') ability to concentrate, empathise, socialise, imagine, play/work independently etc. etc. (obviously I take this as read - read the book if you don't). Specifically it does this through the use of rapid movement, fast cuts, unnatural breaks in narrative (for adverts) and many other methods to do with the way TV actually physically works. But it also damages their/our sense of self-worth, promoting unrealistic aspirations through its content, in particular through a focus on the cult of fame and celebrity.

However, the second way in which TV is damaging our lives is in a way that I hadn't really thought about too much, and which actually I might not really have come to see as a problem, because I live in the West and don't travel much to other parts of the world. 

Unfortunately, because most media organisations are based in the West and most of the programmes are made there (or more specifically in the USA), then cultural imperialism (not sure if Dr Sigman actually uses this term!) is absolutely inherent in TV globally. Dr Sigman gives many many examples of how Western dress, diet, language, morals, music etc. are to his mind infecting and diminishing other cultures via the medium of TV.

Which brings me to my reference to the Taliban (sorry GCHQ, not much meat for you here). Of course, in no way do I support the extreme ideas, or more particularly the actions of the Taliban, or Al-Qaeda, or the Slow Food Movement (... hang on, yes, I do support the Slow Food Movement...), but what I have been reading did strike a chord and make me understand a little more about what these groups might feel they are fighting for. Leaving aside religion, maybe there are actually a lot of downsides to our so called liberal democracy. Maybe people do need to be protected from some of the "choices" that the west offers. I've never been to Bhutan, but maybe the people there would have been better off not introducing TV into the country in 1999 given that their crime stats have risen from "none" to "some" since then. Maybe Mali would be a more interesting place without the baseball hats and hip-hop clothing worn by some of the inhabitants of Timbuktu, even though they have never left the most remote town in Africa.

In short, this book leaves me with the feeling that not only is TV damaging individuals, and society both locally and nationally, but that it is also having an even greater and more serious effect globally. The phenomenon of bland and boring near identical high streets has already been much discussed and tutted over, but unfortunately it seems that TV is becoming a driver of bland and boring (or loud and aggressive) near identical everything everywhere. Maybe we need to do a bit more tutting about that, and even, dare I suggest, we might try a bit of self-censorship. Maybe then, some of those troublesome foreigners might start to think that we have (counter-intuitively I know) a bit more to offer.