Analysis Of The Worst Years Of Our Lives By Barbara Ehrenreich

Some people think that the fictional violence portrayed on television is harmless entertainment . Others disagree and think that it encourages violent behavior.

     But, for most part, author feel television is 'drug'; that is corrupting today's society. Many of us fail to recognize how it has caused the decline of family rituals, the avoidance of relationships and the destruction of the family. Our addiction to this daily habit cause us to escape the real world.

The world is not a replica of what is portrayed on television, and it was never proclaimed to be, however, Barbara Ehrenreich advocates “The worst years of our lives” which reflects the 1980’s in which is believed couch potatoes did not exist, yet. Ehrenreich implies the idea that modern people aren’t “real people” anymore, as they would be in the 1980’s era because they actually performed the activities presented on television. To a certain extent, I concede with Ehrenreich’s theory, because Americans have become inactive, the youth generations are being brainwashed, and we portray ourselves to the virtual world.

Television is the mainstream of our culture. Violence on television has been a topic of conflict since before 1950. There have been repeated debates on how to protect children from the harmful effects of violence on television. Television is one form of modern media that influences the everyday lives of people. Televised violence has a major effect on how children perceive the world and how they behave. "American television has become the most violent in the world. It is for this reason why researchers have focused their attention toward television violence" (Cantor & Hoffner 424-4-25). Children enjoy watching television and now with the increased technology of cable and movie

     What role does television play in society? For decades we have seen many parts of our world rapidly going through changes in technology. Today’s society has been transformed by means of communication and the available information through mass media. Most Americans rely on television for news, sports, and entertainment. Television is just one of the many examples of how technology has changed our lives. Since the invention of the television in the early 1900’s, it has played a very important role in our lives. Having a television set in the home has become very essential in today’s society. We depend on it to entertain us with its sitcoms and to inform us about current world issues. The

Television has been keeping me entertained for as long as I can remember. I have always been a big fan of watching television such as shows, movies, and especially sports. For movies and shows, I love how it forces me to make me use my imagination even though in the back of my mind I know that everything that’s happening is completely fake. It’s caused me to think deeper about things I never thought I would think about, and given me a lot of great memories. Even though television has been a very positive part of my life, there has also been some downside to it as well. Television has affected me in a negative way because it paints a picture reality that sort of tricked me into thinking it was true. When I was younger I was extremely gullible and easily influenced and really wanted to be able to live like some of the characters that I saw on the screen. An example was in about 7th grade I started watching this hilarious show called How I Met Your Mother. My parents refused to let me watch it but I would always find a way to watch it on my laptop without them knowing. There was this character name Barney Stinson who I really admired and was determined to be like when I grew up. In the show he was rich, well dressed, ladies man who seemed to have everything going for him. He was a total hound dog in the show who expressed the joy of constantly going to bars, sleeping with random women, and then never calling

Television is incorporated into my daily routine whether it is watching the news in the morning or a movie at night. When I watch the news in the morning I catch up on current events and other news. On the other hand. At night I watch movies for entertainment and enjoyment. Television is not just changing people into couch potatoes by watching “chasing fast cars, drinking lite beer, shooting each other t close range, etc.”, it also can be a daily tool to learn new things and catch up on current events.

Barbara Ehrenreich expresses her utter distaste for television in The Worst Years of Our Lives based in the 1980’s. Ehrenreich writes numerous assertions in regard to television’s unrealistic portrayal of every day life. She raises a valid argument when she points out that TV watchers will never see the commonplace facets of human life depicted on their TV screen. Instead, they watch shows filled with fake people, plastic smiles, ungenuine conversations, and unrealistic tasks all combined into a program that epitomizes the way in which we don’t live. Television distracts people from actually living their lives so instead they live vicariously through TV shows, wasting their lives away.

According to Barbara Ehrenreich in The Worst Years of Our Lives, she discusses that television was consuming much of many of the individuals in the 80’s time. Television in the 80’s became a very addictive drug which produced a different reality. The amount of television used should be kept to a minimum and not be exceeded to where you would always need more.

Television has been used for decades to shape the human psyche. It has also played a major role in the development of American lives, and at times we fail to notice. “People are sheep. TV is the shepherd.” (Jess C. Scott, Literary Heroin (Gluttony): A Twilight Parody).

It’s amazing to know that people can lose their freedom and their ability to be human if they don’t learn to protect certain things. An example is, when people lose happiness and fun. “Happiness is important. Fun is everything. And yet I kept sitting there saying to myself, I’m not happy, I’m not happy” (Bradbury 82). Another example is Guy Montag’s wife, Mildred is so obsessed with her television that she doesn’t pay attention to anything. She doesn’t pay any attention to her husband, nor does she cares about his feelings. This shows how there is a really big obsession with television in the society, “It’s really fun. It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed. How long you figure before we save up and get

When cable TV was introduced in the 1940’s, it opened up a whole new spectrum for channels and broadcasting. From that point on TV channels were expanding on ideas that people wanted to see, while also expressing themselves by making shows that people can relate to. TV both does, and does not have an effect on our American culture, due to the massive spectrum of channels and shows that we have in the present day. TV is so varied that you cannot make generalization or answer this question in Yes or No. There are television programs, which do reflect American society, but in itself are variable. Through programs like A&E’s “48 Hours”, and

It is clearly obvious from the research already done concerning television and its effects, that violence is quite prevalent on British television. Of more concern however is the effect that those can have on its viewers. Does the violence on television really increase the violent attitudes and behaviour in individuals? Violence on television can do one of three things. The first is make us more violent (Huesmann 1982), the second is make us less violent (Feshbach 1972) and the third is to have no effect at all (Freedman 1984, Kaplan and Singer 1976). Most evidence has supported the first argument namely that television violence does increase our own violent behaviour. There are four main effects that cause this violent behaviour when viewing it on television.

Kenny Fuller Health The Impact of Media Violence I was reading in some of my information and it was talking about how “monkey see, monkey do” is a popular saying now days. Sixty years ago the television was invented. People looked at it as a technological curiosity (I got that part from the info). For some people now days TV is there best friend. Most of them are little kids. TV shows the news, tries to make us buy certain things, and it also shows violence. The only thing that it can do is replace written materials (Got that to). The bad thing is that these violent shows are dangering our society. Certain things on TV and movies have inspired people (I could think of any other word to use so I used theirs) to set their wives on fire, lie

The television is also a very important aspect of popular culture that affects the American Identity. Watching television is such a common part of contemporary society, that most Americans adopted it as a part of their daily routine and watch television for at least an hour a day. Stanley Crouch, a poet, music and cultural critic, writes that whenever people pretentiously and proudly announce, “I don’t watch television,” they should follow it up with “I don’t look at America either” (Masciotra 79). Television has become a part of many people’s lives. When the mass population watches the same TV shows, movies, etc. they can all relate to each other, and thus unite them as an American. We look to TV shows to see how other people like us act