The specific purpose of this review is to introduce Mander's book to conservative and religious readers--the sort of reader who assumes that any book written against television will embody a conservative view of society. If this isn't you, you won't find my review to be of much interest.
The approach that Mander takes in this book is interesting and unusual, because he's not a conservative--he's a liberal. In fact, he is WAY liberal. Some readers who are accustomed to traditionalist, conservative perspectives on the evils of television may simply not used to hearing the kinds of perspectives that Mander introduces, and may never have been exposed to his view of economics, society, personhood, and the natural world.
Many people doing searches on books critical of TV are doubtless unaware that liberal-thinking people can be against television--they've probably been told that the TV industry is run by liberals whose agenda is to proffer liberal ideas. The arguments against television that such a reader is accustomed to probably have to do with the immoral content of the programs, the violence, the sexuality, the language, corrupt views of relationships, images of children resisting their parents' authority, the inaccurate (and sometimes disturbing) worldviews embedded in the programs, etc. And of course, all of those things ARE matters for concern and constitute good reasons why we should not be exposing ourselves to television.
What Mander helps us to understand, though, is that there are other arguments that may be mounted against television, arguments that are not related to most of the concerns voiced by conservative and religious people--and he has done a great service in thus expanding the discussion. Mander's chief concerns are related to what TV does to us as persons, as thinking beings relating to the world around us, and how TV programming can affect us cognitively and socially. One of his chief concerns is one that many conservatives probably don't share: the fact that big corporations (the people who, for the most part, control the content of what's on TV) are using this technology in order to shape your view of the world, and, in essence, to bring millions of people like you under their control. Any conservative who is (rightly) concerned about "big government" ought to be equally concerned about all of the monolithic institutions that dominate our lives: "big" business, "big" communications networks, etc.
A word to the reader who simply can't wrap his head around the idea that a "liberal" might be opposed to TV: Not all "liberals" are the same, or believe the same things. (Neither do all veterans believe the same things, nor do all Christians, or all business people.) "Liberalism" is an enormous community, and includes a great many people who disagree with each other about pretty fundamental things. There are dozens of nuances within liberalism, and the view that Mander represents in this book embodies a liberal perspective that many readers have probably not encountered before. That may be confusing to some readers who are looking for the sort of book that might come out of James Dobson's neighborhood--you'll keep looking for traces of a mindset similar to your own, and will be baffled by the fact that this guy has a totally different worldview--not just different from yours, but also different from your understanding of what "liberalism" is all about.
It is possible for very different people to be opposed to the same things, although for very different reasons. Jerry Mander is deeply troubled by television and everything it represents, and his perspective is about as far from conservatism as you can get.
For what it's worth, i'm pretty strongly conservative in most of my social, political and religious philosophy. And i found myself sort of smiling indulgently at, or outright dismissing, about 10-25% of what Mander had to say in the book. Not only are there some basic problems with Mander's socio-cultural perspective, but he sometimes indulges in sloppy reasoning--as one Amazon reviewer who only gave the book one star points out in a very interesting and detailed review. That's okay. After the problematic stuff has been skimmed off, what's left is a truly important book--one of the most important books i've ever read. What Jerry Mander has done is produce a fairly cogent, occasionally strange, and wildly compelling argument in opposition to television, that in no way depends on conservative suppositions about society and the world. I think that's pretty exciting, and serves as an opportunity for conservative-liberal dialogue on this issue.
Mander has given us a take on what television is all about that simply cannot be ignored--and i'd like to encourage the more socially conservative reader to tackle the book, along with whatever more traditional / religious materials you want to read on the subject. Mander's argument has the virtue of being systematic, nuanced, and complete, and it is well worth struggling with.
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