by Ron Kaufman

I'm watching TV, But I find it hard to stay conscious
I'm totally bored, But I can't switch off

Only apathy from the pills in me, It's all in me, all in you
Electricity from the pills in me, It's all in me, all in you
Only MTV, cult philosophy

We're lost in the mall, Shuffling through the stores like zombies
What is the point?
What can money buy?

-- Porcupine Tree in the song Anesthetize from the album Fear Of A Blank Planet

For nearly 3,000 years mankind has been at war with itself. Of all the thousands of wars that have been fought, there has really been only one real war. The war began on the Ides of March (March 15) 44 B.C. It was then that Julius Caesar, the sovereign of the Roman Republic, was murdered being stabbed 23 times. Powerful men, Senators and wealthy military generals and land owners, conspired to kill Caesar. The Roman citizens loved Caesar and considered him a 'man of the people' and 'champion of the poor.' The policies of Julius Caesar favored the small businessman, farmers and poor by equalizing the wealth of the nation. When the dust cleared, the assassination of Caesar signaled the end of the Roman Democratic Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire, ruled not by the people, but by a succession of wealthy oligarchs and politicians. The Class War had begun.

"The Senate aristocrats killed Caesar because they perceived him to be a popular leader who threatened their privileged interests," writes Michael Parenti in the book The Assassination of Julius Caesar. "Wealthy Romans made no secret of their fear and hatred of the common people and of anyone else who infringed upon their class prerogatives. History is full of examples of politico-economic elites who equate any challenge to their privileged social order as a challenge to all social order, an invitation to chaos and perdition."

The struggle between social classes, wealth vs. poverty, has overshadowed nearly every event in human history. Kings ruling over peasants has been the way societies have functioned for nearly all of recorded human history. "Human society has always consisted of masters and slaves, and the slaves have always been and are today, the foundation stones of the social fabric," spoke Socialist Eugene V. Debs in 1904. "Since the race was young there have been class struggles. In every state of society, ancient and modern, labor has been exploited, degraded and in subjection." The United States Government threw Debs into prison in 1918 for his comments opposing World War I and defining the class war in America. Times have changed and today the class war is highlighted every night on TV screens throughout North America and the world.

Whether we like it or not (and I don't) the medium of television has the capacity to shape society. "Television influences human behavior because their are 'routes' or mechanisms whereby the content of television can have an effect on what we do, and on how we act," explains John Condry in the book The Psychology of Television. "Part of television's influence comes about because of how we learn (by observation and imitation), because of how we respond to certain kinds of story material (arousal/desensitization), and because of the structure of our inhibitions and the way television provides the kind of stimulation necessary to release them (disinhibition)."

By shaping our attitudes, beliefs and judgments, Condry argues that TV watchers are subjecting themselves to behavioral mechanisms that may guide future actions. The images TV places in our minds (see the essay Video Memory Implantation: The Changing Human Brain) will inevitably mold and distort our reality into one we believe is true.

Television, actually serves two functions in the class war of today. Television not only fuels the class war - it is also used as a weapon of the rich. Television (and other forms of mass-market advertising) reaches into nearly every household and business in the modern world. Because TV is such a simplistic medium, its messages are reduced to quick phrases and short 'sound-bites.' Complex ideas are anathema to a medium best suited for brief verbal exchanges, cartoons and constant gunfire. Academic concepts such as freedom, slavery, capitalism and socialism are treated lightly and quickly: freedom = good; slavery = bad; capitalism = good; socialism = bad. Television works to shape conventional wisdom and blur complex ideas into bite-size McNuggets™.

First, it must be noted that television is solely the domain of the rich and powerful. From its inception, ordinary citizens were not granted access. This can be clearly seen today through advertising rates which indicate that a 30-second commercial spot during NBC's The Apprentice costs $163,000; during CBS's CSI: Miami it costs $229,000; and during ABC's Desperate Housewives 30 seconds costs $440,000 (stats from AdAge Factpack 2006). Most political candidates don't have a prayer of winning public office without raising large sums of money to funnel into media advertising. Powerful corporations run media organizations and are monopolizing the industry at a staggering pace (see the essay Big Media 2007: For The Love of Money).

Television's control by the upper class can also be seen through TV news which only covers the thoughts and ideas of powerful politicians or wealthy businessmen. On CNBC's Wall Street Journal Report program in July 2006, billionaire George Soros told the show's host that his opinions only have value on TV because he is rich. "I'm sitting here, you're interviewing me because I made a lot of money. Right? That's why you are interested in my views," said Soros. "So you see if I were some university professor saying the things that I'm saying you probably wouldn't be sitting here . . . We don't care about the truth, sufficiently. If we are mislead by our leaders, we don't really care that much . . . What we care about is success."

Television has tremendous power to define social class expectations. Two popular 1950s TV shows influenced an entire generation into embracing a "middle class" social status. In The Honeymooners, the families of a bus driver and sewer worker dream of being wealthy. Nearly every episode involves ideas to 'make it rich.' The show Leave It To Beaver follows a fictional suburban family as they enjoy the idealized middle-class American lifestyle. Though the actual job of the show's patriarch, Ward Cleaver, is never revealed he is portrayed as a successful businessman who works every day "at the salt mines." Through the 1960s and 1970s, TV programming continued to focus on proper societal expectations and desires of the middle and lower classes. Shows such as I Love Lucy, The Bob Newhart Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All In The Family, Sanford and Son, Three's Company, What's Happening and Welcome Back Kotter all idealized the lives of common workers.

In the 1980s and 1990s, however, TV's idealized view of labor began to change. Popular adult shows such as Dallas, Dynasty and Falcon Crest now focused on the lives of the super-rich. Children's comedy programming also focused on wealth through programs such as Diff'rent Strokes, The Cosby Show, The Nanny and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air whose problems with money all revolve around having too much. The show Family Ties epitomized the change in TV's view of the middle class. The main teenage character, played by actor Michael J. Fox, wears a tie in every episode and dreams of making enough money to escape the social constraints of his liberal middle-class family.

The shows of this century use no deception to disguise their upper-class bias. The titles alone are revealing: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (ABC), Dirty Sexy Money (ABC), Joe Millionaire (Fox), Las Vegas (NBC), Survival of The Richest (WB) and American Greed (CNBC). The VH1 network is showing a program called The Fabulous Life Of... and its spinoff program, VH1's Fabulous Life Presents: Really Rich Real Estate. This VH1 series is an updated version of the early 1990s program with the apt title of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

In the online journal In These Times, Senior Editor Christopher Hayes describes how the CW/CBS show Veronica Mars (which ran from 2004-2007) uses a California high school as a fictional allegory to describe the class war. The title character, Veronica, is the daughter of a "working-class private investigator" who solves crime in her spare time. As Hayes describes it, the program centers on the class struggle in a small fictional town and high school pitting the rich popular kids against the middle class ones. Hayes notes that Veronica, who gets kicked out of the rich kids' clique during one story arc, has mixed feelings about the local wealthy families "with whom she at times frolics is another mind-bending mess of contradictions: She loathes them, she envies them, she wishes they’d take her back, she knows she’s better off without them."

Though Hayes may not realize it, Veronica Mars is yet another example of how television works to establish class distinctions. Though the character Veronica Mars may be happy with her middle-class social status, she doesn't stay solely within her own social strata. What this program succeeds in doing is reduce issues regarding wealth to the individual's faults or problems and not comment on the overall system. Veronica Mars works to improve her own situation, not find ways to enhance the greater good.

Of course this is only a miniscule sampling of show titles. Yahoo!TV lists more than 8,500 different television show titles throughout the medium's history. However, network programming is really only one facet of television's overall effort to define social class distinctions.

At its core, TV is an advertising box. Through endless commercials, product placement and TV show sponsorships, companies utilize the hypnotic power of television to project their vision of the ultimate consumerist society. For example, the previously mentioned Veronica Mars is really just another marketing tool by a huge corporation, in this case the CW Television Network/Time Warner Inc. The Veronica Mars website (pic) lists all the products placed strategically throughout the show so watchers can purchase goods to match the TV characters. The website breaks down all the stylistic commodities by brand, character, episode and product. Did you know Veronica Mars wears Lucky Brand Jeans and a trenchcoat from the GAP?

All human needs can be met through the purchase of a product. Don't have the money? No problem, there's always credit and debt.

Media critic Robert McChesney calls this effect "hyper-commercialism." In the book The Problem Of The Media, McChesney explains that "hyper-commercialism and its effects on consumers lead to deeply troubling implications for the exercise of democracy . . . Truth is far less important that what one can convince people to believe in order to get them to serve your commercial needs."

"In hyper-commercialism, corporate power is woven so deeply into the culture that it becomes invisible, unquestionable," writes McChesney. "People have the 'freedom' to pick from commercial options provided to them by marketers."

The use of advertising as a method of class domination is not a new phenomena. In 1934, advertising critic James Rorty noted in the book Our Master's Voice, that no truth existed in advertising. Even in the middle of The Great Depression, Rorty realized that capitalism was about making profits and therefore everything was focused to that end. Advertising was used to enrich some at the expense of others. Consumerism was the vehicle through which advertising works.

Though America and the world were mired in a severe economic downturn, loyal consumers continued to purchase products with abandon. "Their homes are museums of advertised toothpastes, soaps, antiseptics are gadgets," described Rorty. "From themselves, their wives and their children, they exact the last full measure of devotion. They are alternately constipated with new condiments and purged with new laxatives, while their lives are forever being complicated with new gadgets."

Rorty commented that advertising and the industries that rely on its revenue will never take a position against the economic and cultural forces that promote capitalism. "Advertising has to do with the shaping of the economic, social, moral and ethical patterns of the community into serviceable conformity with the profit-making interests of advertisers and of the advertising business," he stated.

Class distinctions were developed and marketed through the areas of advertising, propaganda and education. "Advertising is propaganda, advertising is education, propaganda is advertising, education is propaganda, educational institutions use and are used by advertising and propaganda," wrote Rorty. "Shuffle the terms any way you like . . . what emerges is the fact that it is impossible to dissociate the phenomena, and that all three, each in itself, or in combination are instruments of rule."

He noted that advertising, propaganda and education "are instruments of rule. Our ruling class, representing the vested interests of business and finance, has primary access to and control over all these instruments."

The American working people have been bludgeoned with the idea that our 'consumption culture' can only prosper through the continuous purchase and disposal of new products. The result of this constant propaganda is a nation with stagnant wages, negative savings and increasing debt.

Incomes have been falling since 1999: While personal savings have been negative since 2005: And household debt skyrockets:

Additionally, wealth distribution in the United States is quite uneven. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke spoke about the massive growing inequality in the U.S. during a February 6, 2007 speech. "Although average economic well-being has increased considerably over time, the degree of inequality in economic outcomes has increased as well," he said. "Importantly, rising inequality is not a recent development but has been evident for at least three decades, if not longer." Bernanke explained that between 1979 and 2006, the real wages of the poorest full-time workers increased 4 percent, the salaries of those in the middle increased 11.5 percent, while the richest people in America saw their incomes rise 34 percent over the same period.

As the chart below clearly shows, income for labor in America has stagnated while productivity has grown. Americans are working longer and harder for no extra money.

This economic situation hasn't happened in the United States since the 1930s and 1940s, during The Great Depression and World War II. Tony Fratto, a spokesman for the George W. Bush White House told The New York Times that, "the fact that nearly all of the growth in incomes was among those in the upper reaches of the income ladder and that the majority of investment tax breaks went to those making more than $1 million 'is not a very interesting story.'" Fratto is correct in noting that TV news won't cover a story that works against their economic interests. Economics is not an interesting story. Certainly when one realizes that the top two TV shows in America involve dancing and singing celebrities, it is clear how TV works its magic in prosperity obfuscation.

By masking monetary issues, the wealthy elite use television as a weapon of pacification and control. The last thing the "top percenters" want are the masses becoming unhappy with their economic fate. Money is created by the Federal Reserve and backed by the government. If the government is "of the people, by the people, for the people" as Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in 1863, then the government can set monetary policy to favor any social classes or income levels in the country.

It should come as no surprise that rising inequality in the U.S. is due decades of 'trickle-down' economic policies which favor the super rich. Billionaire Warren Buffett, the third-richest person in the world, complained in July 2007 that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Buffett aired his comments at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser in New York for Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Television programming, both fictional shows and commercials, define class lines overtly through programs and advertising. The television viewing masses are not only distracted by ubiquitous commercialism and frantic consumerism, but also by a belief that "anyone can become rich." Television plops the super wealthy right into the laps of the viewer. No extra effort is involved. Some may say they even "know" wealthy TV celebrities they have never met.

It's not just that TV watchers feel a closeness to the rich and powerful, but TV and the mass-media culture revere wealth over all other personal attributes. The issues and problems of the super-rich are treated with empathy, even where none is possible. Television's focus on wealth has softened any hostility toward the upper class.

Additionally, television news ignores the entire issue. If TV were truly an instrument of the masses, then it could be a powerful tool for social change and equality. However, the lives of ordinary people are usually only highlighted through freak events or as "news of the weird." Certainly, news of unequal income distribution, globalization and outrageous corporate profits make the news from time to time, but ultimately, television will never challenge the system. Those working in television would not commit personal or network suicide by inciting a rebellion from the lower classes. TV is the playground of the wealthy and everyone else just gets to watch.

The fixed glaze of the television viewer never blinks. The public is enamored with wealth and fame because this is what TV teaches. Television, however, does not exist in a vacuum. Mass media advertising and hyper-commercialism work to pacify the masses with electronics, new fashions and fads. While none of this is new, what one should question is the sustainability of such a system. Modern humanity is producing and consuming products at rates unseen in history under the belief that continued constant income growth must be achieved.

What television does not communicate is that in any economic-societal system there are winners and losers. Wealth and resources are used by those in power to enrich themselves and rarely do they give up their privileges to those below them. During years of the Roman Republic, before Julius Caesar's murder, land reform was the most unsettling political matter facing the public. The wealthy wanted control of public lands for their own power and profit, while the plebeian farmers wished only to grow food and live a comfortable life. In the end, money and power won and the democratic Roman Republic turned into an Empire fueled by a lust for power and conquest.

The United States has not yet gone down the same fateful road as the Romans did centuries ago. But, there is a class struggle brewing. Make no mistake that no matter what events have yet to influence the course of history, television will always side with those who control its airwaves. Television fuels the class war and fights for the wealthy. The truth is that any society has the capacity to hold human nature at bay and control the improprieties of greed, gluttony and lust - but on TV, you will see these sins celebrated.

© 2007 by Ron Kaufman, TurnOffYourTV.com

Mentioned Works and links:

Advertising Age. AdAge Factpack 2006. Crain Communications Inc. February 27, 2006. (AdAge.com)

Condry, John. The Psychology of Television. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. 1989. (Amazon.com)

Hayes, Christopher. Veronica Mars, Class Warrior. In These Times. June 9, 2006. (InTheseTimes.com)

Johnston, David Kay. Average Incomes Fell for Most in 2000-5. The New York Times. August 21, 2007. (article link)

McChesney, Robert W. The Problem Of The Media: U.S. Communication Politics In The 21st Century. Monthly Review Press. 2004. (MediaProblem.org)

Parenti, Michael. The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome. The New Press. 2003. (MichaelParenti.org)

Rorty, James. Our Master's Voice: Advertising. 1934. (Archive.org)

Zap2it TV ratings. (Zap2it.com)