The Culture of Talk Shows Essay - 1092 Words

The Culture of Talk Shows If social order is not a given, if it is not encoded in our DNA, then to some extent we are always in the process of producing virtual realities, some more functional than others. Habits, routines, and institutions are the patterns that create the world taken for granted. Knowledge of how to behave is contained in cultural scripts that are themselves products of human interaction and communication about the nature of reality. Shame, guilt, embarrassment are controlling feelings that arise from speaking the unspeakable and from violating cultural taboos. Society is a result of its boundaries,of what it will and wont allow. As we watch, listen, and are entertained, TV†¦show more content†¦Rather than being mortified, ashamed, or trying to hide their stigma, guests willingly and eagerly discuss their child molesting, sexual quirks, and criminal records in an effort to seek understanding for their particular disease. Yet these people remain caricatures, plucked out of the context of their real lives, unimportant except for their entertaining problem. (In real life someone might question the benefits of publicly confessing to people who really dont care about you or dont have the expertise to give advice. Exploitation, voyeurism, peeping Toms, freak shows all come to mind.) The central distortion that these shows propound is that they give useful therapy to guests and useful advice to the audience. And that they are not primarily designed to extract the most riveting and most entertaining emotional displays from participants. This leads to such self-serving and silly speeches by hosts as: I ask this question not to pry in your business but to educate parents in our audience (Oprah, trying to get graphic details from a female guest who claims to have been sodomized by her father) and Do I understand, Lisa, that intercourse began with your dad at age 12, and oral sex between 5 and 12? Do I understand that you were beaten before and after the sexual encounters? (Phil, reading from prepared notes, to a crying teenager). The audience at variousShow MoreRelated Television and Media - Daytime Talk TV is Immoral Essay1152 Words   |  5 PagesDaytime Talk TV is Immoral Today’s society has become a visually based culture and, as a result, people learn and act from what they see. With the advent of television, many programs have been aired ranging from news programs to sitcoms and from game shows to talk shows, but talk shows, today, have the most effect on the public. Daily, viewers turn on their televisions and many are bombarded with images of sex, drugs, and violence on the talk shows. Unfortunately, many people areRead MoreCuban National Culture : Cubas Original People1719 Words   |  7 PagesThe article first talks about the development and character of Cuban national culture: Cuba’s original people. 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This is what Nikki Giovanni’s â€Å"Nikki Rosa† and Terrence Hayes’ â€Å"Talk† does. These two poems exemplify the issue of racial misinterpretations using different literary devices to describe the issues that many black people, faced and continue to face today. Both poems revolve around a veryRead MoreAnalysis Of Judith Cofer s Article And The Myth Of The Latin Woman Essay1648 Words   |  7 PagesStereotypes exist in many different forms with the most common referring to gender and culture. Roxanne Gay talks about the difficult struggles that women have to deal with such as the usage of birth control and the process of having an abortion. While Judith Cofer takes a similar route with a few differences. Her article talks specifically about the struggles of a Latin woman. 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Both of the poets feelings about their culture are triggered by something, which makes them think about how they feel. Alvi uses the presents to act as a trigger, which makes her realise, she isn’t as happy as what she could be. When she describes herself as †Staring through the fretwork,† she shows that she feels torn between the two cultures. She also feels that she is stuck within the English culture but wants to widen her knowledge to the Pakistani culture and maybe Read MoreMy Summer At An Indian Call Center1588 Words   |  7 Pagesloss of the value of the original culture? Andrew Marantz in his article, â€Å"My Summer at an Indian Call Center,† recounts his experience taking culture training that he was required to attend in order to work at one of the many call centers in India, discussing the reasons and the consequences of altering one’s own cultural identity. Meanwhile, Julia Alvarez uses the example of Quinceanera, a female coming-of-age tradition known among Hispanic communities, talks about the issue of redefining originalRead MoreCharacteristics Of Civilization938 Words   |  4 Pagesup of specific cultures and societies. The actual book definition of a civilization would be, â€Å"networks of cities that emerge from pre-urban cultures and are defined by the economic, military, diplomatic, social and cultural interactions among them.† Over the course of the past couple weeks, I have had the chance to listen in on a podcast actually provided by Stanford University. This podcast is being made while a professor is teaching a class covering the geography of world cultures. I believe that