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Television And Control

Control
"We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd be millionaires, movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."- (Tyler)
We are a generation babysat by the television and raised by sitcoms. The remote, we are taught at a young age will perform the magic ability of changing the channel and we can hardly imagine a world in which we have to physically get up and have to manually operate the television. While flipping through the channels we are constantly bombarded with ads that tell us everything, from what we should wear to what we should eat. When we go to the store the ads persuade us subconsciously to buy the product we see over another "inferior" product. Kids, at a very young age, are exposed to an extreme amount of material on television. Kids see life fitting neatly into an hour block and expect the same out of life. When this does not happen kids get bored and distracted. This behavior may lead to what doctors call ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (Howard and Peiper).
We watch television because it gives us something the world cannot give us: control. When we turn on the television we can be anything we want: a rich lawyer, a cop, a doctor. All these lives are fast paced and never have a dull moment. As a society we have denied ourselves our aggressive instincts, though in some small way watching television allows us release the primal instincts that we have been denied. We are losing control over our own lives because of all the flashy ads and fancy lifestyles we are exposed to when we watch television and we do not even realize it.
The remote was invented in 1957 by the Zenith Company ("Five Decades"), and we have been using it ever sense. Zenith Company said "that some day the remote will come to control every device in the home (Zenith Online)." The ability to control everything in the house is not a bad thing; however, how much control does a...