Television

TV as an Escape

Television is a medium widely enjoyed by the majority. It is not only a medium aimed to inform but also to entertain the viewers.

As we look on the stream of Philippine TV today, you yourself can observe that Filipino viewers are bombarded with fantaserye and programs casting imaginary characters swarming TV channels in the prime time slot. ABS-CBN has Pedro Penduko, Kookey, Super Inggo, Super Islaw, Marina, Krystala and Lastikman among others. GMA, on the other hand is widely promoting, Zaido, Super Twins, Encantadia, Darna, Fantasticman and Mulawin among others.

The audience has been enticed to addictively follow the program via the story’s fictional plot and setting. Adding to that is the impact brought about by the magical special effects and colors manipulated and made easy using technology. Imaginary heroes fly and act at the Director’s will. Viewers are given set-ups where they are expose to the smell and feel of what they can see in TV.

With that, you can see that TV is being used as a form of “escape” to what is real. This is a study supported by many theories like Uses and Gratification theory. It states that the medium is used by the viewers to satisfy his different needs including the medium’s “escape function”.

Filipinos as observed, are fiction-lovers, deeply emotional and always longing for a hero-figure. This is the reason why in every Philippine revolution be it in the Spanish, martial law, or present period, Filipinos are always plotting for a “leader” to follow and to look up to. With this, came the skyrocketing popularity of Rizal, Ninoy, Ramos and even Estrada and FPJ among others.

The warm acceptance of the public with this type of program is patterned according to the behavior of Filipinos. The white lady in the balete drive is not real It was just created to create publicity and the following events created history.

What is certain is that, these heroes when worse came to worst will definitely not save and help me neither my country. The warm acceptance of the public with this kind of programs is the main motivation why TV networks are continually producing Fictional series like what we are seeing today.

What is important is for the viewers to develop a “discriminating attitude” towards the medium. The viewers should learn how to “decode” or “read” the messages the programs are giving them to make the activity an active one since TV viewing by nature is passive. TV has its “addictive power” in which viewers are underpowered to do other things. This is where the couch potato syndrome takes in.