Developing intercultural communicative skills

Handout 3





Lesson 14
Handout 1. Read the text, title it and guess the meaning of words in italics. Present the main facts of this text.
Like most inventions, television was the combination of earlier technological developments and not the creation of a single “creative genius.” Its history can be traced in the developments of radio, motion pictures, photography and the electronic camera. Although much of this technology had existed for some time, the first experimental broadcasts did not take place until the mid- 1920s. These broadcasts took place more or less simultaneously in Hungary, the Soviet Union, the USA and Germany. Regular television transmissions began in 1936 in Britain and in 1939 in the USA. Television was forced to close down completely in Britain throughout the Second World War and it was not until after the war that television was able to grow as a medium, in part thanks to military technology and expertise. It was during the 1950s that television overtook cinema as the most popular medium of entertainment for the majority of the population in Europe and North America. This phenomenon of television becoming the most powerful medium of communication around the world has occurred alongside industrialization and the resulting changes in living standards throughout the world. Today Television is eve considered by most people around the world to be a necessity and not a luxury item in the home. Television’s worldwide power and influence can be seen in the priority television stations give to reporting and showing war pictures on camera. The picture of war and its aftermath can now be brought into the home through the television. Likewise, television’s power is evident in the billions of dollars advertisers pay to a watching world.
__________________________________________________________________
The two positions most commonly occupied in arguments about television and the mass media can be summarized as being ‘pessimist” and “optimistic”. The pessimists who are often associated with so-called “mass culture theory” tend to stress the uniformity of media production and the role it plays in pacifying and exploiting audiences. According to this view television is a kind of opiate of the masses, the phrase Karl Marx used to describe religion. Culture pessimist are concerned about the dominance and corrosive influence of US and transnational entertainment industries; about stereotypical representations of a variety of social groups; the negative effects of television on audiences, particularly in relation to violent and sexual content; the commercialization of television; and the ideological role of television in ‘controlling” the way we view the world.
The ‘optimists’, on the other hand, celebrate the diversity, complexity and equality which they see as a product of television. Television is considered to be as rich and subtle in its potential as Elizabethan theater was for England in the 16^th century. Like Elizabethan theater, television is thought as a familiar and popular experience for all sections of society. The optimists often accuse the pessimists of ‘elitism’ of denigrating popular culture.