Part One :Turn Off The TV (by Dr.Azly Rahman)

a brilliant piece from Dr.Azly Rahman

watch the programme, the higher the ratings, the more expensive the advertising slot.

We are watching too much TV. We have way too many channels that disseminate a variety of propaganda, sell dreams and illusions, create false consciousness, discuss non-issues, fragment the self, and numb our creative and critical senses.

Our children are bombarded with thousands of images daily as they sit passively in front of the television set. Their brain cells are slowly being turned into miniature advertising billboards.

These billboards become field of dreams and consciousness, turning the self into whatever the producers of propaganda wish them to turn into. These brain cells are conditioned by the nano-technology in smart TV programming.

TV is a powerful weapon of mass deception. TV is the mother of inner battles in all human beings. It is slowly killing the mental capacity of our children to sustain reading and to engage in critical reflection. An uncritical mind is a fertile ground for mental colonisation. A mind, essentially, is a terrible thing to waste.

Print and broadcast media are powerful tools of propaganda. While many Malaysian parents struggle to have their children read well so that they may not be perpetually confused and brain dead, TV is rigorously producing more and more programmes that will make children have four eyes and no mouth. Their mind cannot sustain good reading.

How many TV channels are there in Malaysia to help baby-sit the children? How many hundreds of programmes are we watching weekly to turn us into scatterbrained people?

How many different lifestyles of the rich and famous are we exposed to, so that we may learn to become replicas of the stars of Hollywood and Bollywood? How many universities in Malaysia are teaching critical media analysis?

Selling them junk

The owners of the satellites are smiling from the heavens looking down at Malaysians opiated and stoned in front of the TV set. The mantra is this: Feed the masses with all the ads and sell them junk through TV programmes. Sell them dreams so that they will buy and buy and let the media control and create their lives.

Whoever controls TV gets to control storytelling. Whoever controls the station controls the means of producing mass propaganda. Whoever controls the government controls the means of controlling the minds of the people. It is a mind-control game.

We learn from TV programmes. We learn to have choices of what to buy and what to believe through the propaganda. One is made to have choices to believe what kind of information is to be funneled into one's brain and next what kind of reality to believe, based on those presented by TV.

Malaysians complain that they only read half a page of a book a year on average, but why not complain that more and more TV stations are sprouting racing with one another to produce more and more sophisticated junk.

Producers have their ideological biases in what they produce. They answer to profiteers. Whatever sells can and ought to be mass-produced. The more people watch the programme, the higher the ratings, the more expensive the advertising slot.

Producers are not interested in producing ‘truth’. They think they are depicting ‘reality’ and therefore we see ‘reality shows’ to exploit human gullibility.

What is Malaysian TV producing? Better programmes or better propaganda?

One is bombarded by split-second images that hits the brain and colonise the mind.

Watch a 30-second commercial when you're tired, and you will discover that you are not watching TV, but the TV is watching you and washing your senses with subliminal messages that makes propaganda artsy and scientific





...to be continued...inshaAllah :D