Life According to TV

In this week’s reading, George Gerbner talks about the misrepresentations and biases of the world according to television. He did an experiment where he asked questions about these biases to heavy television viewers and light television viewers. He found that the heavy TV viewers chose TV influenced answers and the light TV viewers chose answers that were closer to real life. He talked about how males get most of the leading roles and females are given small parts on TV shows. I don’t completely agree with that statement because there are more and more shows today with females as the main characters. For example, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Girlfriends, and many others have strong female characters with real jobs and responsibility, both in and out of the home. He also talked about how people over the age of 65 are showing up less in television. I agree with that because it’s hard to find a show nowadays with the main characters all around that age. He said that young people think that older people are less healthy because that’s how they are shown on TV and don’t necessarily agree with that. I don’t think that just because someone is older it means they are unhealthy. For the most part, I agree with the other points he brought up about race, work and crime.