Premium Essay

Wtvmysmarter

In: English and Literature

Submitted By richlove71
Words 1368
Pages 6
Watching TV Makes You Smarter
In the article Watching TV Makes You Smarter by Steven Johnson, the author argues that by watching television shows various television shows, people actually become smarter. In many television shows, the episodes connect the lives of its characters within the defined "story arc." The Hollywood jargon says: "a defined personality with motivations and obstacles and specific relationships with other characters. By drawing a web of these interconnected plots and personalities, the structure resembles a hit TV series such as Bonanza. Furthermore, the culture is becoming more cognitively demanding. This is seen in the TV series 24. To make sense of an episode, one would have to integrate far more information than they would have several decades ago. "To keep up...you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting relationships." Johnson calls this the "sleeper curve," which is the most debased forms of mass diversion, such as video games and violent television dramas, and juvenile sitcoms, turn out to be nutritional after all. "The sleeper curve is the most important new force altering the mental development of young people today" says Johnson. He believes it is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down. He also says that the morals of stories on television shows have grown. A counter argument by a critic says that the media has lost in moral clarity, and has gained in realism. Johnson believes, however, that there is another way to assess the social virtue of pop culture, one that looks at media as a kind of cognitive workout, not as a series of life lessons. The thinking one has to do to make sense of a cultural experience is very important, and this is where the sleeper curve becomes visible. Additionally, for some "quality entertainment" shows, the intelligence arrives

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