Summary Of The Worst Years Of Our Lives By Barbara Ehrenreich

It has become so common in our life that there is at least one television in every home. They have become an inevitable part of our lives. We have to admit that we live in a consumption society where we are always surrounded by technological devices. For instance, while we are sitting at home, we watch television shows, series and TV commercials in general. While watching it, we spend less energy than we spend while sleeping. We do not use our imagination because it is all ready and complete in it. The television affects us with its so-called beauty and supervising our lives by telling us what we should do and not do. Almost all of the things shown on TV are enforcing people to want, to consume or act according to the ideas on it without questioning. On the other hand, it blocks the communication between people because it is so absorbing that we cannot even turn our eyes from it. Hence, we start to behave and think only for ourselves. It drags the society to be an individualistic one where everyone seeks for his own pleasure and be selfish all the time. We are being pushed to create unnecessary needs and wants. Some may think that we can shut television down any time we want and stop its effect on us. However, as it is some kind of addiction, certainly people will not be able to get rid of them right away. Some see it as their “family” which may sound creepy but even if one will

In “Life According to T.V.” written by Harry Waters and published in Newsweek in 1991, Waters examines the effect that television has on everyday lives. He says that TV has given Americans an unrealistic view of how life works. From jobs to minorities to how women are portrayed to crime rates nearly all aspects of TV are unrealistic or exaggerated. George Gerbner was used to back up Water’s theory on how television impacts people. Water states that heavy viewers of TV are more unrealistic in their view of the world than light viewers because they are exposed to more of the unrealistic ideas portrayed in TV shows than light viewers. The jobs on TV are often expressed as high ranking jobs like lawyers, doctors and athletes rather than blue collar or service jobs such as small businessman or teacher. According Waters the elderly are depicted as being sick and weak when they are actually the opposite. Women are also portrayed as mothers and lovers more often than successful working women.

     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.

In the book, The Worst Years of Our Lives, Barbara Ehrenreich describes the current American response to the modern television. She believes that television had changed overtime as over a decade ago, a majority of things shown on television were things people could do themselves. Today, however, television is full of violence, close-range shooting, racing, etc. This worries her because today's people are unable to do what they see on television and eventually become "couch potatoes" when they watch for hours at a time. Her belief is that there's no reason for a person to continue watching television due to the boredom and jealousy it causes.

In today’s society, people often choose to watch T.V. over other activities. They read less, spend less time outside, and spend less time interacting with their family and friends. People often eat their meals while watching T.V. One research study done by The National Endowment for the Arts and reported in Information Please Database showed some alarming trends: People age 15-24 spend 1hour and 57 minutes each weekday watching T.V., people age 35-44 spend 1 hour and 53 minutes each weekday watching T.V., and people age 55-64 spend 2 hours and 35 minutes each weekday watching T.V. All of these age groups spent even more time viewing T.V. on the weekends than they did during the week. This study shows that people spend a great deal of time “vegetating” in front of a T.V. screen rather than interacting with others or using their minds to think.

While modern day television programs contain enjoyable or unrealistic material that makes the viewer seem like he/she is actually doing it in real life without having to lift a finger, they have transformed most modern day Americans into lazy technology absorbed individuals. In "The Worst Years Of Our Lives", Barbara Ehrenreich makes it evident that our modern day televisions do not correctly portray the negative transformation of the American people through her use of comparisons, descriptive details, and figurative language. Ehrenreich notes that these fantasy-driven activities (chasing fast cars, drinking lite beer, shooting each other at close range, etc.) give the illusion that the viewers are actually performing these tasks in real life without having to actually give

“Television is providing some sort of compensation for the social atomization that it itself has contributed to , and thus , all the simulated conviviality , while being a pleasant “dream,” is “pure wish fulfillment,” indeed, rather “phony,” and, perhaps, sad”(315).

In the passage, The Worst Years of Our Lives, Barbara Ehrenreich makes a broad assertion that television is turning Americans into couch potatoes. There are lazy people, but it is due to their lifestyle, not because they watch TV. Ehrenreich gives the TV too much credit and power for the couch potato phenomenon. Clearly, the blame for this must fall on the individual sitting on the couch. Personal responsibility, work ethic, and self-motivation are the problems, not TV.

In the novel Fahrenheit 451 people are more inclined to spend their time watching television than they are spending time with others as they believe that television can help fulfill their lives while books cannot. This is shown in the conversation that Mildred and Montag have, “‘Will you turn the parlor off?’ He asked. ‘That’s my family’”(pg. 48-49).

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).

Ehrenreich, in “The Worst Years of Our Lives,” talks about how we watch too much TV and how, “the force has transformed the American people into root vegetables,” and I mostly agree with her. It seems almost anytime I go over too a friend or family’s house, they have a TV on. In my own house, almost anytime my mom or brother is home the TV in the living room or his bedroom is on. Almost anytime we are doing something the TV is on. When we eat, the TV is on, when we talk about something, the TV is on.

Some negative health outcomes are attributed to television. There is that of becoming the “couch potato”, many of us base television around our lives, and some of us get lazy and spend too much time watching television which can result in health problems. Not only is watching too much TV and being sedentary a bad thing, but the overwhelming amount of advertising and marketing that we see on television causes an increase in intake of a range of unhealthy products. Each hour per day increases the risk of developing diabetes by 3.4%. A variety of other potential behavioral and physical effects exist such as poorer social relationships, less

Today, mostly everyone has a television at home. Who doesn't? Yet, had we considered what effects television does to us when we spend hours watching it for a long while? Ehrenreich assertion of television are accurate because people spent their time sitting in the couch being slothful, doing nothing interesting, and spending their whole time watching tv.