For
all the following topics, make sure your essay is unified by a clearly stated
thesis and a narrowed focus.
The essay must be well-developed with supporting examples, specifics,
or details collected from observation, experience, or reading. If you do any
reading on your topic, give credit to your source within your essay.
[Choose
one of the following topics for your Final Exam Essay:]
1.
Christmas is a time of great anxiety for many Americans.
Explain the various reasons
that people experience stress during this time of so-called celebration.
Conclude by suggesting how such stress can be managed.
2.
In the U.S., people do such activities as eat, make business calls, and
even live in their automobiles. Explore
how the automobile has shaped American culture.
Your essay can focus on what you consider positive or negative
consequences, but explain how cars are central to an American way of life.
3.
With so many media at our fingertips, we have multiple opportunities to
communicate with one another. However,
consider which of our technical tools for interpersonal exchange lead to
effective communication, as distinguished from merely exchanging information. Then, analyze what you consider to be the most effective
methods of communication, whether you explain specific electronic devices
and/or more natural means to achieve dialogue.
4.
Which quality makes the most effective leader:
the ability to inspire love or the ability to inspire fear?
Give specific examples that support your choice.
Topics 5 through 7 refer to the article The
19-inch Neighborhood, by Joshua Meyrowitz (reproduced below):
5.
Referring to Meyrowitz's article, discuss the paradox that "TV is
both a hijacker and a liberator" and explain how it applies to your
experience of TV.
6.
Meyrowitz claims that "the more we rely on our video window . . .
, the less there's a relationship between where we are and who we are."
Consider whether he is correct in assuming that television reduces the
importance of local environment on personal identity.
Then, explain how this impact of television can or cannot help to
determine your identity
7.
Meyrowitz contends that 98 percent of American families have allowed TV
to "redefine our place and our social reality."
Write an essay that explains in what ways this redefinition applies to
your life and/or the lives of others?
I
live in a small New Hampshire town, but in the last few weeks I met the
Lebanese leader of Amal and I was shouted at by militant Shiite hijackers.
I sat beside the families of hostages as they anxiously watched their
loved ones at a news conference in Beirut and as they later rejoiced when the
hostages were released.
I
weighed the somber questions and comments of anchorman Dan Rather as he
"negotiated" with Lebanese minister Nabih Berri.
I evaluated firsthand the demeanor of the hostages, the behavior of the
news reporters, the facial expressions of the hijackers and the public
comments of President Reagan and his spokesmen.
And
I participated in this drama of international scope without ever leaving New
Hampshire; indeed, I shared it fully when sitting isolated in my living room
in front of my television, watching the 525-line screen of flickering specks
of light and color that my brain translates into pictures of people, objects
and motions. The visual
liveliness--like a conglomeration of thousands of flashing neon lights--and
the intensity of the drama itself kept me riveted to the screen.
In
contrast, the images through my window of trees, dogs, and neighbors' houses
are crisp and clear--tangible, real. Yet
when I think of "keeping in touch" with things each day, I, along
with a hundred million others, turn to the blurry television set.
Recently a house in my town was destroyed by fire, and I vaguely recall
reading the story in my local paper. Was
anyone hurt? Is the family that lived there homeless now? Have they, too,
suddenly been taken hostage by a swirl of events not of their making? I don't
know. I could find out, I
suppose, but I probably won't.
Reality:
For I, and most of my neighbors, no longer simply live in this town; we don't
live "with" each other in quite the same way our grandparents did.
We, like the 98 percent of American families who own a TV, have granted
it the power to redefine our place and our social reality. We pay more attention to, and talk more about, fires in
California, starvation in Africa and sensational trials in Rhode Island than
the troubles of nearly anyone except perhaps a handful of close family,
friends, and colleagues.
Our
widespread adoption of television and other electronic media has subtly but
significantly reshaped our world. For
the first time in human civilization we no longer live in physical places.
And the more we rely on our video window, the less relation there is
between where we are and who we are.
Such
changes affect our sense of identification with our community--and role
relationships with our family. Isolated at home or school, young children were once
sheltered from political debates, murder trials, famines and hostage crises.
Now, via TV, they are taken across the globe before we give them
permission to cross the street.
Similarly,
our society was once based on the assumption that there were two worlds: the
public male sphere of "rational accomplishments" and brutal
competitions, and the private female sphere of child rearing, of emotion and
intuition. But just as public
events have become dramas played out in the privacy of our living rooms and
kitchens, TV close-ups reveal the emotional side of public figures.
Television has exposed women to parts of the culture that were once
considered exclusively male and forced men to face the emotional dimensions
and consequences of public actions.
For
both better and worse, TV has smashed through the old barriers between the
worlds of men and women, children and adults, people of different classes,
regions, and levels of education. It has given us a broader but also a shallower sense of
community. With its wide reach,
it has made it difficult to isolate oneself from the informational arena it
creates.
To
watch TV now is to enter the new American neighborhood.
The average household keeps a TV set on for 50 hours a week.
One may watch popular programs not merely to see the program, but to
see what others are watching. Once
can watch not necessarily to stare into the eyes of America, but to look over
the shoulders of its citizens and see what they see.
Television
has become our largest shared arena where the most important things happen.
When a friend sings exquisitely, we not longer say, "You should
sing in our church," but rather, "You should be on television."
Our funniest friends are wished an appearance on "The Tonight
Show," not a performance at the town hall.
The early presidents of this country were seen by few of the voters of
their day; now it is impossible to imagine a candidate who has not visited us
all, on television.
Weather:
Television has replaced the local street corner and market as an important
place to monitor--but, as with a marketplace, we do not always identify
personally with what goes on inside. We
may avidly watch what is on the news and on the entertainment and talk shows
even as we exclaim, "I can't believe people watch this!" or,
"What is the world coming to?"
Regardless
of its specific content, then, television has a social function similar to the
local weather. No one takes responsibility for it, often it is bad, but
nearly everyone pays attention to it and sees it as a basis of common
experience and as a source of conversation.
Indeed, television has given insularity of place a bad name; it now
seems bizarre to be completely unaware or cut off.
The TV set is a fixture in the recreation rooms of convents; it is even
something that is sometimes watched in the formerly silent halls of Trappist
monks.
Paradoxically,
TV is both a hijacker and a liberator, hostage and hostage taker.
It frees us from the constraints of our isolated physical location, but
flies us to a place that is no place at all.
And our attention is most easily held hostage when television itself
becomes a hostage of terrorists, demonstrators, politicians and other
self-conscious social actors who vie for the chance to become--at least for a
while--our closest video neighbor.
Source:
Meyrowitz, Joshua. "My Turn: The 19-Inch Neighborhood." Newsweek
July 22, 1988.
Note on the Author:
Meyrowitz is the author of "No Sense of Place:
The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior."
