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The critics of television have always argued that it has the power to turn
otherwise intelligent people into glass-eyed zombies. As early as 1950,
for example, Readers Digest described television as "hypnosis in your
living room." And if the low-brow programs on the "boob-tube" did not turn
our brains to mush, then surely television could harm us in other ways.
Educators feared we would suffer from videocy, optometrists feared we would
all develop spectator-itis, and as at least one orthodontist told TV Guide
in 1953: "television could cause malocclusion --an abnormal arrangement of
the teeth likely to be caused by Junior's cradling his jaw in his hand as
he watches television."
Many of these early worries may seem laughable to us today, but the
uneasiness about how television effects us is still going strong.
Concerned parent groups still lobby for kinder and gentler cartoons,
politicians still claim television is eroding the very fabric of society,
and even technological innovations such as the V-chip (designed to
automatically censor specific programs) are premised on the fear that
television is doing something to us.
Yet, love it or hate it, television has undeniably become the world's most
dominant medium... and the most important medium of the 20th century. It
is significant, as this century comes to an end, that we are able to look
back at the various histories of television --be it technology, design, or
programming-- and consider what television's place has been in our culture,
and what its place might be in our future.
The MZTV Museum's collection of historical televisions, the largest
collection of North American sets in the world, provides an opportunity to
look not just at TV but at ourselves. We are fortunate that the MZTV
collection exists at all, since anything as routinely disparaged as
television almost never makes it to the level of a museum artifact. The
Watching TV exhibition is a chance for all of us to reflect on the way
television has been a part of our homes, a part of our fantasies, a part of
our lives.
Contrary to what it's critics have charged, television is not merely a vast
wasteland but is in fact a vibrant medium of cultural expression... a
medium that has changed as the world around it has changed. In its 70-plus
years, television has been more than just a great entertainer. It has also
educated and informed us, it has sparked our imaginations and challenged
our world view, it has made Presidents and toppled Kings. At its best,
television has also brought us closer together --whether it was an entire
nation watching Paul Henderson score the winning goal for Team Canada in
1972, millions of people around the world watching Neil Armstrong take
those first steps on the moon in 1969, or simply a group of friends
watching a favorite sitcom together in 1996-- television has become part of
our shared experience, part of our common culture.
Yes, television has helped to shape us, but as this exhibition illustrates
we have also shaped it. We have influenced the way television technology
has advanced, we have influenced the way the sets have been designed, and
we have influenced what is shown on those sets. Far from just passively
watching television, many people experience it as a dynamic part of their
lives --a part that allows them to express themselves and to find others
with similar interests. In order to understand our culture and the people
in it, we must try to understand television.
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