Television

TELEVISION, AS THE SPREADER OF THE MASS CULTURE, AND THE STUDENTS

After the fall of the iron curtain, which divided the East and the West, a heavy wave of mass culture, that phenomena of the modern culture, poured into Lithuania from the West.

The word “West” in the lips of the members of our society sounds as something magic. The things from there are considered to be good, and the West is considered as the aim. The West is not associated with tthe most prominent phenomena of the western civilisation, classical inheritance, intellectual culture or the forms of the classic art, but with the mass culture. The ideals of the western mass culture are identified with the ideals of the western culture.

First of all, the West for many people is associated with the word “freedom”, more precisely, with the freedom that is expressed in the mass culture – freedom with respect to “the system”, sexual freedom, freedom with respect to moral norms. SSuch freedom represents western liberalism and democracy to the bigger part of our society. The freedom expressed by mass culture is the negative one, freedom from, and not the freedom for. Differently from the positive, constructive freedom, the destructive one ““freedom from” can be achieved without any special efforts of will and consciousness. The speed of living is increasing constantly; the modern person is a person in a hurry that seeks to get the maximal benefit with the minimal expenditures of time and physical and spiritual efforts. It is natural that in such “world in a hurry”, in which everything is wanted right now and at once, and without any special efforts, the freedom that is propagated by the mass culture – freedom form is considerably more acceptable than the freedom for – freedom, which demands, freedom as the possibility to think, to create, to express ones_ thoughts freely, realise oneself by the creative process.

The Mass Media and the MMass Culture are closely connected. The rise and spreading of mass media created possibility for the rise of the mass culture, which is ignoring regional, religious and class differences of the subcultures. The television is paying particularly important role for the spread of the mass culture.

The mass culture offers sensitive, visual perception of the world, transforms person into visual creature. The subject of the mass culture is a visual person. In this way, television, as a visual mean, is vvery suitable for the spread of the mass culture.

Television is the main way of the leisure time in many countries, and in Lithuania as well. Not any other mean of the mass media seized people as strongly as the television did. Sometimes TV is even called “universal ritual”. It helps to spread culture, news, information. Television is an instrument of propaganda, social control and regulation as well. It presents the models of the way of living, the norms of behaviour, the system of values. Presenting certain models of behaviour, the means of mass media determine general conformism, as most of the people begin to blindfold the models of behaviour and the norms presented by the mass media. In opinion of some scientist, mass media penetrated into our perception of the exterior reality, and into the area our perception of ourselves as well: mass media gives as the criterion to value ourselves, forms our aims and the ways to achieve them.

As television is the spreader of the mass culture, the models in living and the behavioural norms presented to spectators are the production of the mass culture. Television is spreading mass images: what we should try to reach, to desire, how sshould we dress, behave, and so on. It dictates fashion, models the ways of living, feeling, thinking; forms opinions, tastes (as the result of the mass culture, the aesthetic and artistic tastes of the people are becoming worse). It propagates “consuming” psychology, as a part of the mass culture. By the way, the “commercialisation” of our lives, looking through the “glasses of the market” is one the factors that condition the spread of the Western mass culture here.

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