From the New Yorker
When the subject of children’s television comes up, Emily Nussbaum writes in the current issue of The New Yorker, everyone knows the drill:
egin with the sinister idiom “screen time.” To show you’re no prig, make a warm remark about “Sesame Street.” … Then begin the lament, and lay it on thick, with comparisons to candy and drugs. Decry the trend of marketing to newborns, the co-branded toys, the childhood obesity, the dwindling attention spans, the fate of the picture book, the wasted hours the American child spends in front of the tube (three a day, on average!), and all those selfish, shower-taking parents who use TV as a babysitter.
Concerns about the effects of TV on children have been around since the medium’s birth. In a 1948 Talk story, E. J. Kahn, Jr., and William Shawn wrote about a four-year-old boy named Jeffrey “who has never known life without television.” They saw in Jeffrey’s upbringing, “a glimpse of what, in the dawning age of television, may soon be the experience of all parents.” In order to see the effects of his lifelong exposure to television, the writers accompanied the boy’s father, who took his son to Central Park to play baseball for the first time. “I’ll be damned if he doesn’t look like Joe DiMaggio,” the father remarked of Jeffrey’s batting stance and swing. Handed a baton, the lad imitated Toscanini, who’d made his television début a month earlier. Kahn and Shawn catalogued the other ways access to television set Jeffrey apart from his peers:
He plays cops-and-robbers a good deal more realistically than boys raised merely on radio; he knows, for instance, how to frisk a man for a concealed firearm by patting his armpits and hips. He has seen three prizefights on television…. Accordingly, whenever Jeffrey plays at boxing, he crumples to the floor, in an altogether professional manner. He takes television so much for granted that on a number of occasions, while visiting the homes of friends or relatives, he has looked around their living rooms and asked, “Where’s the television set?”
What terrible fate awaited this progeny of the new television age? Unemployment? Poor socialization? A life of solitude? None of the above, in fact. The four-year-old that Kahn and Shawn wrote about was none other than Jeffrey Lyons, son of the New York Post columnist Leonard Lyons. Jeffrey, of course, went on to be film critic for WPIX and MSNBC and to author numerous books, including several on baseball. Clearly, his early and frequent exposure to television ruined his life.
What does it all mean?
For discussions of subjects relating to television and music.
-
- Site Admin
- Posts: 19339
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
- Location: Jersey Shore
Jump to
- Announcements
- ↳ General Announcements
- Introductions
- ↳ Let Me Introduce Myself...
- The Academy Awards
- ↳ The 10th Decade
- ↳ 97th Academy Awards
- ↳ 96th Academy Awards
- ↳ 95th Academy Awards
- ↳ 94th Academy Awards
- ↳ 93rd Academy Awards
- ↳ 92nd Academy Awards
- ↳ 91st Academy Awards
- ↳ The 9th Decade
- ↳ 90th Nominations and Winners
- ↳ 90th Predictions and Precursors
- ↳ 89th Nominations and Winners
- ↳ 89th Predictions and Precursors
- ↳ 88th Nominations and Winners
- ↳ 88th Predictions and Precursors
- ↳ 87th Nominations and Winners
- ↳ 87th Predictions and Precursors
- ↳ 86th Nominations and Winners
- ↳ 86th Predictions and Precursors
- ↳ 85th Nominations and Winners
- ↳ 85th Predictions and Precursors
- ↳ 84th Nominations and Winners
- ↳ 84th Predictions and Precursors
- ↳ 83rd Nominations and Winners
- ↳ 83rd Predictions and Precursors
- ↳ 82nd Nominations and Winners
- ↳ 82nd Predictions and Precursors
- ↳ 81st and Other 9th Decade Discussions
- ↳ The 8th Decade
- ↳ The Damien Bona Memorial Oscar History Thread
- ↳ Other Oscar Discussions
- General Film Discussions
- ↳ 2020s
- ↳ Coming Soon
- ↳ 2024
- ↳ 2023
- ↳ 2022
- ↳ 2021
- ↳ 2020
- ↳ 2010s
- ↳ 2019
- ↳ 2018
- ↳ 2017
- ↳ 2016
- ↳ 2015
- ↳ 2014
- ↳ 2013
- ↳ 2012
- ↳ 2011
- ↳ 2010
- ↳ 2000s
- ↳ 2009
- ↳ 2008
- ↳ 2000 - 2007
- ↳ The First Century
- ↳ Dream Projects
- ↳ The People
- ↳ Other Film Discussions
- Miscellaneous Discussions
- ↳ Help Forum
- ↳ DVD Discussions
- ↳ Current Events
- ↳ Broadcast Media
- ↳ The Cam Dagg Memorial Theatre and Literature Forum
- ↳ General Off-Topic