8-9
大众文化的影响
几个世纪以前，家庭和教师是孩子的主要影响因素，有时候是唯一的因素。今天，大众文化的影响（广播媒体，报纸，杂志，互联网和流行音乐）通常更加显著。
到18岁时，青少年平均在课堂花费11,000小时，而在电视前花费22,000小时。他或者她可能上了13,000堂课，同时看了超过75,000个广告。这些人到了35岁，上课少于20,000次，但是看了近乎45,000小时电视和将近2百万个广告。
大众文化对我们有什么影响？要回答这个问题，我们只要考虑下媒体通常使用的方法和装备。现代广告的典型做法是用口号和名人推荐向公众密集轰炸。这个方法通过诉诸感情和制造人为需求来推销产品和服务。结果，很多人习惯于感情用事，易于冲动，易于轻信这些诉求。他们也倾向于认可那些与在家里和学校学到的非常不同的价值观。广告通常描述玩耍比工作更让人满足，自娱自乐比自律更让人称心，物质主义比理想主义更有意义。
电视节目制作人使用频繁的镜头切换，并使用汽车相撞，暴力，性邂逅这些感官刺激保证观众的兴趣不会消失。然后，他们频繁加入广告。本书作者分析过电视观众所承受的注意力切换。举例来说，在一个戏剧节目中，注意力的切换包括镜头角度改变，故事线索从一些角色（或者次要情节）切换到另外一个，或者从现在的场景切换到过去的场景（倒叙），或者幻想；还有切换到"插播新闻，"或商业广告，从一个广告到另一个，然后又回到节目。当然还包括在广告里的注意力切换。我发现除了广告里的注意力切换每小时有78次切换。商业广告中的注意力切换次数从6到54次，每个15秒的商业广告大约有17次。合计每小时注意力切换次数有800次，或者说每分钟14次。
这些操纵阻碍了人们延长注意力的能力。他们期待教室和工作场所能提供和电视节目一样持续不断的刺激。这，当然是不可能的要求，而当不能提供这些兴奋的时候，他们认为教师枯燥，工作乏味。因为这些人没有耐心去读需要思考的书，很多出版商已经用名人写的轻松消遣书籍代替了严肃的书籍。
甚至当严肃类书作者真的要出版著作时，在促销会上他们经常被要求提供短小，戏剧性的回答，有时候牺牲了准确性。一个指导作者进行脱口秀的人这样给他的客户建议:"如果我问你预算不足是好事还是坏事，你不能说，'嗯，它刺激了经济但是增加了负债。'你必须说'这是个好主意！'或者'这是个糟糕透了的主意！'哪一个都可以。"（即：不要给一个和谐的回答，给一个非常简单的回答，这样你就能获得注意。）
新闻出版业同样被煽情主义所控制。有位报纸编辑观察到，“从1到10的尺度内，记者们总是尽力去找处于1或者9的人，而不是绝大多数处于从3到7的人［更加温和位置的人］”另外一个记者说，“新闻不再是证实的事实，而正在变成观点。记者不再告诉我们想知道的确证事实，而是娱乐至死。”
今天，政客们经常比记者更加野蛮地操纵人们。政客不是表达出想法，而是发现人们的想法，然后假装分享他们的观念。很多政客雇佣人组织民意调查，集中关注一些人群，了解什么信息会“受欢迎。”他们甚至会测试某个特定的话语的影响-这就是这些日子里我们为什么听到这么多“信任”“家庭”“个性”还有“价值”的原因。政治学教授拉利萨巴托（ Larry Sabato ）说，在克林顿弹颏案件中，总统的顾问不断的使用“私生活”这个词-詹姆斯卡维尔（James Carville）在一个4分钟的演讲中用了6次-因为他们知道这可能会说服人们相信总统在宣誓后的谎言没什么大不了。
原文：
The Influence of Mass Culture
In centuries past, family and teachers were the dominant, and sometimes the only, influence on children. Today, however, the influence exerted by mass culture (the broadcast media, newspapers, magazines, Internet and popular music) often is greater.
By age 18 the average teenager has spent 11,000 hours in the classroom and 22,000 hours in front of the television set. He or she has had perhaps 13,000 school lessons yet has watched more than 750,000 commercials. By age thirty-five the same person has had fewer than 20,000 school lessons yet has watched approximately 45,000 hours of television and close to 2 million commercials.
What effects does mass culture have on us? To answer, we need only consider the formats and devices commonly used in the media. Modern advertising typically bombards the public with slogans and testimonials by celebrities. This approach is designed to appeal to emotions and create artificial needs for products and services. As a result, many people develop the habit of responding emotionally, impulsively, and gullibly to such appeals. They also tend to acquire values very different from those taught in the home and the school. Ads often portray play as more fulfilling than work, self-gratification as more desirable than self-control, and materialism as more meaningful than idealism.
Television programmers use frequent scene shifts and sensory appeals such as car crashes, violence, and sexual encounters to keep audience interest from diminishing. Then they add frequent commercial interruptions. This author has analyzed the attention shifts that television viewers are subjected to. In a dramatic program, for example, attention shifts might include camera angle changes;* shifts in story line from one set of characters (or subplot) to another, or from a present scene to a past scene (flashback), or to fantasy; and shifts to “newsbreaks,” to commercial breaks, from one commercial to another, and back to the program. Also included might be shifts of attention that occur within commercials. I found as many as 78 shifts per hour, excluding the shifts within commercials. The number of shifts within commercials ranged from 6 to 54 and averaged approximately 17 per fifteen-second commercial. The total number of attention shifts came out to over 800 per hour, or over 14 per minute.†
This manipulation has prevented many people from developing a mature attention span. They expect the classroom and the workplace to provide the same constant excitement they get from television. That, of course, is an impossible demand, and when it isn’t met they call their teachers boring and their work unfulfilling. Because such people seldom have the patience to read books that require them to think, many publishers have replaced serious books with light fare written by celebrities.
Even when writers of serious books do manage to become published authors, they are often directed to give short, dramatic answers during promotional interviews, sometimes at the expense of accuracy. A man who coaches writers for talk shows offered one client this advice: “If I ask you whether the budget deficit is a good thing or a bad thing, you should not say, ‘Well, it stimulates the economy but it passes on a burden.’ You have to say ‘It’s a great idea!’ or ‘It’s a terrible idea!’ It doesn’t matter which.”12 (Translation: ”Don’t give a balanced answer. Give an oversimplified one because it will get you noticed.”)
Print journalism is also in the grip of sensationalism. As a newspaper editor observed, “Journalists keep trying to find people who are at 1 or at 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 rather than people at 3 to 7 [the more moderate positions] where most people actually are.”13 Another journalist claims, “News is now becoming more opinion than verified fact. Journalists are slipping into entertainment rather than telling us the verified facts we need to know.”14
Today’s politicians often manipulate people more offensively than do journalists. Instead of expressing their thoughts, some politicians find out what people think and pretend to share their ideas. Many politicians hire people to conduct polls and focus groups to learn what messages will “sell.” They even go so far as to test the impact of certain words—that is why we hear so much about “trust,” “family,” “character,” and “values” these days. Political science professor Larry Sabato says that during the Clinton impeachment trial, the president’s advisors used the term private lives over and over—James Carville used it six times in one four-minute speech—because they knew it could persuade people into believing the president’s lying under oath was of no great consequence.15
