TV Turn-off week

It's TV Turn-off Week - started by the fabulous AdBusters, who are Canadian (not America as some have billed them).

It's all a bit puritanical but they're trying to get this video (score by Philip Glass and footage by Godfrey Reggio, NB, it's Art) to go viral.

It has something to say about kids and TV.




Aric Sigman

"TV is so hugely powerful because, compared to the pace with which real life unfolds and is experienced by young children, it portrays life with the fast-forward button fully pressed. Rapidly changing images, scenery and events, and high-fidelity sounds are overly stimulating and, of course, extremely interesting.

"Once you are used to food with monosodium glutamate flavour enhancer, real food doesn't taste as interesting. Television is the flavour enhancer of the audiovisual world, providing unnatural levels of sensory stimulation. Nothing in real life is comparable to this. Television overpays the child to pay attention to it, and in so doing it seems to physically spoil and damage his attention circuits."