Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter - Hardcover

Hart, Roderick P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195086562 ISBN 13: 9780195086560

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1994

Synopsis

In our television age, we may believe that politics has become more immediate, even more personal. After all, the drama of debates, Congressional hearings, and summit meetings unfolds before us as we lounge comfortably in our living rooms. And with call-in shows where the "average citizen" can offer opinions as Al Gore and Ross Perot slug it out over NAFTA, we may even think that we are more a part of the political process than ever before. But as Roderick P. Hart reveals in this fascinating new book, while television may make us feel informed and clever about contemporary politics, it is actually distracting us from the realities of political power in American life.
In Seducing America, Hart offers a strikingly new interpretation of how television has changed us as citizens and as voters. While other researchers have examined the ways in which television has influenced politics--as in the use of negative campaigning--this book focuses on the changes television has made in how we feel toward the whole process. Despite ubiquitous political talk shows, Ross Perot's infomercials, and Jerry Brown's 800 number, voter turnout decreases at an alarming rate and studies show that Americans are more disillusioned with politics than ever before. Hart shows that television's seeming empowerment of viewers is spurious, and it is from this false sense of intimacy that our distrust and disillusionment spring. Television flatters viewers by making us feel close to our leaders, when we are, in fact, far removed. It makes us feel informed (when we are not), feel busy (when we are politically inactive), and feel clever (when we adopt the cool cynicism of political insiders). Most of all, it makes us feel important by substituting symbolic victories and media access for real, substantive power. While television stirs in us strong emotional responses to political issues, we remain unsatisfied. Why? And, more important, what can we do to stem voter apathy and dissatisfaction?
With its fresh and incisive examination of television's role in American politics, this book offers some important--and often surprising--answers to these questions. What we need, argues Hart, is a New Puritanism. As an antidote to the disillusioning electronic world we now inhabit, Hart advocates a return to the values of our ancestors, a rediscovered understanding that duty, community, and hope--not television's wry uncertainties--offer the keys to political wisdom.
A penetrating and witty analysis that shifts the focus from the public arena to the private home, Seducing America shows that much of the blame for our political dissatisfaction rests not with the spin doctors, journalists, and politicians, but with ourselves. It is a book that all Americans should read before the next election year begins.

About this title

About the Author

About the Author:
Roderick P. Hart is F.A. Liddell Professor of Communication and Professor of Government at the University of Texas, Austin. His previous books include Modern Rhetorical Criticism (1990) and The Sound of Leadership (1987).

Reviews

In this stimulating meditation, Hart, who teaches government and communications at the University of Texas, contends that more important than hand-wringing over TV's superficiality is the recognition that the medium has revolutionized politics by altering how we relate to events, encouraging viewers to "feel good about feeling bad." Television has fostered personality politics, the author maintains, because it is better at presenting emotions--simple and sexy--than ideas. Coverage on an emotional level produces what he calls "a kind of shirt-sleeve imperialism," in which viewers "possess" politicians but ignore policy. Hart cogently shows that the Rhetorical Establishment--a totemic system that concentrates on a limited number of activists as spokespeople--often distracts us from the true powers in society. Diverging from those who urge greater substance on the tube and those who suggest that viewers learn doublethink, to believe and doubt simultaneously, Hart proposes a "New Puritanism," a reclaiming of civic consciousness in the home, school, church and union hall.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A savvy look at how the feelings aroused by TV contribute to our political alienation. TV has changed politics, says Hart (The Sound of Leadership, 1987); but attempts to quantify those changes fail to account for how the medium makes us feel about politics. Because faces and emotions are television's forte, the medium overwhelmingly favors personal stories--of the successes and failures of political figures, and of how institutions sometimes miserably fail us. TV thus encourages a collective, even pleasurable, disdain for political life, one that relieves us of any obligation to act. By representing the emotional maelstrom of politics while failing to look beyond it, TV erodes our belief in institutions we must strengthen and maintain. Worse, in emphasizing the epiphenomena of political life, television provides us with a false sense of participation; we even come to believe we're well-informed. But those who rely on TV for information vote less often and demonstrate less knowledge of issues than those who read. Hart strives to elucidate the ``structures of feeling'' TV produces. He brings recent political and literary theory to bear on his investigation, calling TV ``postmodern'' in its structure and cynicism. Although he does neglect to examine instances where television has led to wider participation in political life (e.g., coverage of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement), his point is well taken: TV cannot supply us with a political life. Hart calls for a ``New Puritanism'' founded on certain fundamental beliefs: in the unreliability of images; in the dangers of emotional excess; in personal obligation to community; and in hard work toward a vision of some better life. Hart's analysis clearly springs from a belief in our ability to improve our lot. His book will appeal--and offer new ideas--to conservatives and liberals alike. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195086562
• ISBN 13: 9780195086560
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240