|
Newsletter of the District
of Asia
March
1998
Former
TV Broadcaster
Opens a Can of Worms
The following
interview (published in the Angelus, March-April 1991) was conducted
by Fr. Bourmaud, SSPX, professor at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary
(RR 1, Box97A-1, Winona, Minn 55987 U.S.A.) who providentially
came across a young couple recently, converts from a very wordly
lifestyle to traditional Catholicism. Their experience makes their
testimony authoritative in the area of T V still very disputed even
in traditional circles. The story of their conversion was later
published by the Angelus (July-August 1991).
Part
One: The Can and the Canners
Q. Mr
P, before getting into the heart of the matter, would you please
tell us what your credentials are in relation to the broadcasting
world?
A. I
had worked in the TV business from 1972 to 1988. During college,
I worked in radio for one year and then went into TV, making films,
TV shows, a lot of news-production shows, and information packaging,
as well as doing live TV editing. I think I have a broad enough
knowledge of the business to affirm that all I have to say applies
to all networks worldwide. I climbed the ladder from props to executive
producer working for five different TV stations in North America.
I have worked with major networks in Europe, in the U.S.A., and
in Canada. Most of my experience is as a technical producer and
director of news: I know how TV operates, how it works, and who
the people are behind the screen.
Q. Could
you please give us some information precisely on that point: the nature
of TV?
A. How
many people own a TV set and understand how it works? Once upon
a time, people thought there were real men in the box, and that
they would get personally involved with the show. They do not understand
that it is all false, that it is unreality.
Q. Yet,
any show will be taken from real life, won't it?
A. But,
it is all structured, cut off and sifted, time and again: "The
way I see it, is the writer. The way I interpret it, is the producer,
The way I shoot it, is the director." To produce, write, direct
and edit makes it entirely your own production; but, the fact that
you created it doesn't mean that you are not going to be influenced
by it.
Q. What
makes TV different from other teaching tools, like books or the radio?
A. TV
puts all the emphasis on the visual and disregards the intellectual
part of instruction. Many times they will come up with news stories
which are just non-stories. But they make stories out of them because
what they like are the pictures of girls taking their clothes off,
etc. If the pictures are good they will appeal to the public even
if the script is not interesting. See, TV appeals to the senses
more than to the mind.
The Big Lie
Q.
Do you think it could be used for educational purposes?
A. I
doubt it seriously. Even if the content is morally acceptable, TV
presentation is essentially a manipulation of time and space. It
is unrealistic, regardless of the purpose. That is how the technology
works. Take a book or a speech that you want to put on video; for
that, you have to process it. I don't know if "interpret"
is the right word, but at least you have to produce some of it:
now, that is my work, my interpretation.
Q. But
wouldn't you say that a book of history or a speech gives also one's
own interpretation of the reality?
A. It
does, however, technically, it doesn't attack you in the same way.
You can study the book, but TV manipulates the time element and
makes you see in 30 seconds the wildlife which highlighted a whole
day's hike in the mountains. It is not the same thing to breath
nature's fresh air in the mountains for a whole day and to stare
at a 30-second show lying on a sofa. TV desensitizes people to reality.
Its pace is unnatural. Twenty-six images per second in films (30
in videos) is too much. You absorb it more quickly than you realize.
Q. You
have certainly heard of the backmasking messages on rock albums.
I read that President Mitterand in France was put on trial for having
used similar techniques on TV at the time of his elections in '87.
Are you familiar with such a thing?
A. I
know this type of subliminal frames. They go into the machine just
one at a time and no one watching the screen notices it. I have
seen a lot of strange things at times. It is legally forbidden,
and it is supposed to be screened, but who can catch it?
Q. But,
besides these subliminal pictures, how can you say that TV is artificial?
A. It
distorts the reality it was meant to show. Everything is bigger
on TV than in real life. That is a fact that has to be true, because
it fills up the screen. I don't know how many people have told my
wife, who is a former broadcaster herself, "Oh, you are very
tiny, I thought you were a lot bigger." That is because she
fills up the screen on the evening news and looks as big as her
male counterpart.
Q. Are
you trying to say that TV is not reflecting reality, and that it is
deluding people?
A. Indeed,
and more than that, it is now influencing reality. Soon after its
appearance, TV stopped reflecting what was happening in the world,
and the world started reflecting what was on the screen. The kids
in situation comedies don't dress like the kids in schools, but
the kids in schools now start to dress like the kids in situation
comedies! It is time to question who is the mirror image and who
is the true being. Everybody who has seen the "Ten Commandments"
with Charleton Heston thinks Moses looks like Charleton Heston.
"He must look like him: I saw it on TV."
Are people so
naive as to believe anything appearing on the screen? "If I see
it on TV, then that is what I believe!" You may say, "People
have weak minds." Well, there are a lot of weak minds out there!
And, it is so because it goes right in like a dart with no time to
check it. People don't understand it is all a lie, right from the
word, "Go!"; it is a lie, a comedy.
"Scientific
studies have repeatedly shown that people of all ages are losing
their ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. They also frequently
find the televised image to be a more satisfactory experience.
The Canners
Q.
Did you get to know well the "comedians-in-chief"? Who
ultimately runs the show?
A. The
news business. The news that we all watch is controlled by big business.
All editorial policies are dictated by a board of directors. They
are not present every day, but a framework is set up of what will
or won't be carried.
Q. Is
there a "Ten Commandments"of the perfect broadcaster?
Are there topics which are taboo on TV?
A. The
people who run the station have to abide by certain governmental
laws. But they all are faulted to the system and will give more
time to one political party and favor it while showing all. You
can't run something on TV contesting people like the Jews. It is
a fact that a lot of media is controlled by the Jews.1
Q. Can
the Jewish Question or the Holocaust even be raised?
A. It
has been done, but in such a way as to make the opponents look radical,
and to make a show out of them so as to please the Jewish community
as has happened in town here.
Q. How
about the "comedians"? Do they buy it all?
A.
The people who are out there are so...
Q. Artificial?...
A. No!
They are real, and also genuinely sincere. They are persuaded that
they are rendering mankind a service. In doing a show when a notorious
rapist was in town, I thought I was helping women from being raped.
You are used by people above you who offer you more money and more
status if you do the "right thing." Promote "The
Lie" and you will be promoted. If you don't toe the party line,
so to speak, then it is very clear where you'll end up: outside
the door.
Q.
Do you have concrete instances of insiders promoting "The
Lie"?
A. Yes.
For example, one speaker was given an enormous wage just for reading
what was in front of him. People watched him, believed him, and
applauded his name. He couldn't know that much! He was just a puppet,
but that, and other things, made the "Big Lie" still credible.
When they would receive complaints, then they would use reverse
psychology. "If most other people didn't like the show, we
would not have made it. The complainers can always turn off the
channel." Big lie! You can't, and you don't. And the liars
know that.
Q. What
about the morals of the people you used to work with?
A. They
were the typical business people living according to the law of
the jungle. "If I can't get him, he will get me." People
filled with hatred, and crooked, lying as naturally as they breathe,
hypocrites, setting themselves up while setting you lip; playing
all those vicious games. Just before leaving the business, the hardest
thing for me was to hear the blasphemies just about every other
word... in a place where words are not considered, really. Words
in vain or pornographic language were bad enough, but I could not
stand those curse words. Also, there is the use of drugs.
Q. You
mean that you were producing programmes under the effect of drugs?
A. Are
you kidding? Everybody does it! Half the time, it is best if you
are not with your senses because the pressure you are under is inhumane,
unbelievable. The consumption of drugs is incredible in that business,
and alcohol too, especially in the creative end of it, because they
are creative forces.
Q. Alcohol
and drugs, creative forces?
A. That
is the gasoline! There is one glaring statistic which graphically
illustrates the degree of moral corruption running rampant in the
television industry. "How many traditional Catholics work in
the broadcast industry's mainstream?" After fifteen years of
working in every aspect of the industry from studio assistant to
executive producer, at eight different stations over two continents,
I've never had the pleasure of meeting one.
Q. You
told me that the movie industry is manipulating time and space.
Is there any other area which it is also deforming?
A. Yes:
ideas, mentality. It can change your moral and intellectual standards.
It is all-powerful. Why is it that, whereas for any other business
you only need money, in broadcasting you also need a license from
the government? Why does it have to be approved, that is, to be
supervised by the government? Because it is so powerful. The news
is the most heavily politicised - and the most watched - business.
Q. I
understand that the manipulators will give their message (the world's
message) and make it...credible. But why is it that so many people
will listen to it rather than think or read for themselves?
A. It
is the easy way. You have just ro flip a switch and push a button,
and you have millions and millions of dollars worth of work, technology
and research on a golden plate, right here, in the corner of your
room. People c;on't realize the massive machine behind the screen
before the product gets to them. And, there is all the psychological
research. If you saw what they go through with the consultants to
get the right programmes to the right audience... now, wouldn't
that be dangerous?
Q. Would
the danger be diminished by the fact that more channels are
available with TV cable?
A. Besides
providing a greater selection of well-deformed junk, the cable industry
is most pernicious. There is a new cable system that I'm aware of,
where a company will advertise a product in New York City and then
rate the number of people watching it. They have two ways of finding
out who watches what on is cable TV. Afterwards, they will graph
the sales of that product to know how much the ad affected it.
Q. What
a great marketing tool!
A. "Great
tool," you said it! So great, that now they have the means
of finding out who you are by what, when, and how much you watch.
They know exactly who is the extremist on the right, or on the left:
the violent, the immoral, the patriot or anti-patriot... think about
how much information is in the hands of the powers-that-be. Now,
when has there been that kind of control over man in a single instant?
Never has the world been a "global city" as it is now.
1957 was Satan's biggest step: the launching of the first satellite,
which gave instant communication. The accelerating process of degradation
can be tracked down to the satellites. TV is just the appliance
tool. We have no privacy. Soon, we all will be synchronized, programmed.
TV is obviously main-streaming the people. Never before were you
able with the movies or the radio to have a huge audience together
at the same time and absorbing the same thing. It is overpowering.2
Q. Would
they ever be able to manipulate people's minds on a large
scale?
A. Nothing
seems easier. I remember the rape special we ran to get people aware
of the dangers in the city. I got a raise after that show. It was
great, terrifying! Women were afraid of going to their cars after
they watched the show. They got escorted! But all was fake: the
lighting, the dramatization, the music taken from the movie Alien
with "Boom... Boom" and the shadows. I was the rapist
myself! But people believed it. Now, that was a silly little thing
on a local show. But put that on a network scale if you want to
misinform people. Take, for instance, the news in East Germany.
Where are you getting your information for that?
Q. Probably
from Western reporters on the spot.
A. You're
right. Let's take the fall of the Berlin Wall. You get it through
your TV newscasts. But whose words are you going to hear? Who is
the professor giving the lecture? It is a reporter controlled by
an editor, himself controlled by a news director, and ultimately
by a board of directors with a certain number of editorial policies.
He's standing before a thousand people, but on TV they look like
a million. The Berlin Wall was knocked down in certain places. But
the reporters come up with "The whole of Germany is truly happy
today. People are jumping and climbing over the wall. Freedom is
come to their country. Tyranny descended today." From the sight
and sounds, you could never believe that Germany was not dancing
that day. It will take quite a while for people to get the truth.
Q. Dangerous,
indeed.
A. So,
it is not difficult to imagine the typical scenario. Tomorrow, while
people are being entertained watching their favourite game,3
at the appropriate time, Comrade Gorby comes on the screen and with
many smiles and honeyed-words, tells them any lullaby and he has
got it made. All are going to believe him. "He was so nice,
so sincere. No man can talk like him." People are sheep, and
more so in front of the smiling screen." To have a revolution,
you need a crowd and a message. TV offers both at any given opportunity.
The mind manipulators know exactly the best times and the best days
to send such a message.4
Q.
I should think that TV by its very nature will promote a very
selective type of program.
A. Yes
and no. Anything that will get public attention is a program. It
doesn't matter whether it is a good story, but it has to be catchy-news
. . . news even about non-stories. The more sensational, the more
cruel, the better. It is no wonder the message of a traditional
Catholic priest won't be broadcast on TV. Two people who worked
for me wanted to do a story on our traditional church. It never
came out. Why? Because it goes against the grain, against the nature
of TV, which is to offer the newest, the most original, the most
sensational.
Q. What
are the typical criteria of the ideal show?
A. The
more bloody, the more obscene, the more glamorous and shocking,
the better the show. What sickens me the most is when they give
a message introducing a story: "We warn you that these pictures
are very upsetting. If you have any children, take them out of the
room." Why are they running it if it is that bad? They know
exactly that by announcing it that way, they will rivet people to
the screen. It is the way it works.
Q. Is there
any relation between the TV age and the increase of immorality?
A. Certainly.
You hear children of five years of age saying things that adults
alone used to say. Obviously they didn't learn them from their parents,
but from TV. And, then they are relating it and talking about things
they have no business to talk about: that is unnatural! The shows
always have a radical views, and it cannot but get worse. Look at
the shows of the '50's up to the '90's, and see what you can run
on a TV. Go to the censorship board and see.
A. They
couldn't show Presley below the waist when he was on Ed Sullivan.
Now look at what they do! Semi-nude love scenes in the afternoon,
and all that in less than 30 years.
Q. Is the
destruction of Christian morals a constant among producers?
A. Christian
morals and Christianity altogether are under attack. A Jewish observer,
columnist Don- Feder, recognized that "no other group is so
consistently maligned on prime-time television.". Another Jewish
film critic Michael Medved, mentioning some of the recent antireligious
movies like "The Last Temptation of Christ," "King
David," "The Mission," etc., comments, "Hollywood
filmmakers vehemently deny any anti-religious bias. Instead, they
are only providing the public what it wants. But there is no one
gigantic flaw in that line of reasoning: all of the movies I've
mentioned above - every single one of them - flopped resoundingly
at the box office. Taken together, these pictures lost hundreds
of millions of dollars for the people who made them. Hunger for
money can explain almost everything in Hollywood, but it can't explain
why ambitious producers keep launching expensive projects that slam
religion."
Q. What-about
"trash TV"?
A. On
"trash TV," just when I was leaving, they had a live show
at the Coliseum with "gladiators," supposedly superior
specimens of mankind, who would fight people in the audience. People
would want to fight to overthrow the gladiators' position, so as
to win the prize. In another one, the losers were thrown into a
pool swarming with alligators.
Q. You mean,
real people volunteered to fight them in real life?
A. Exactly,
that was all the sensation of it: real people, real alligators,
and filmed live. I imagine the next to come will be a live execution,
somebody at the stake. I am sure that would be the hottest-rated
thing ever seen on TV. I have seen it in the studio but not live.
Imagine the thing live! "Phone in. Call the following number.
How should he go? Should he be burned, shot or hung? Think about
it! We'll be right back after this message." This is awful,
but it is not that far away. TV desensitises people, so that if
the picture of the first plane crash shows one body, in the next,
people want to see two or more bodies. It must get worse and worse
every day. TV is an incentive to sin. TV is a sin.
TV is a popular
tool and at times a dangerous one. How can something so harmful
have at the same time gained free entrance in the poorest and remotest
homes right from its origins? I don't think that the souls at stake
are aware of its poison. Had they known it, they might have never
used it. But they think of it only as a means of entertainment.
They know they can turn it off if it becomes offensive. That is
how they rationalize it. They want to have fun and will gladly spend
three and four hours watching the afternoon game. Meanwhile, they
are certainly giving up their faith, but that is secondary compared
to giving up their TV set.
Q. Why
can't people do that nowadays: get rid of their TV's? Would
they be afraid of being bored?
A. That
is probably the point where many of them stop short of getting rid
of it. What will they do to kill the time? Yet up to less than forty
years ago, TV was not around. What did the farmers in the Mid-west
do throughout the long winter months? If you ask them now, they
say "Well, I don't know how I survived without TV."
Q. And
now TV is the universal saviour because it gives you many thing
to watch and think about?
A. So
they say. In reality TV is appealing essentially to people's senses,
and today is an age of dissipation: "Whatever distracts me,
entertains me, keeps my mind occupied, even if it be something I
have no point knowing, I will like and will pay for." Little
things please little minds. Modern man has a little mind and doesn't
want to think. With TV, modern man doesn't have to think any more,
because it has taken away the precious moments where man finds himself
a man: the times when he can think of himself. "I don't want
to philosophize"; it is how the modern age works.
Q. Do you
have any objection to the use of TV as a leisure?
A. Leisure
refreshes, rejuvenates you, TV doesn't. See how many couch potatoes
fall asleep in front of the screen. Figure it out! They sleep while
they are being entertained! I've never fallen asleep hiking, fishing
or playing football.
Q. But,
besides being entertaining, TV is used as a tool of information
so people can be in touch with the world, right?
A. You
said it; in touch with the world! That is the whole question. TV
sells you the world like the devil did when he tempted Christ. TV
is intrinsically worldly, materialistic, and humanistic. It can
only say, "The world is the world is the world. That's all
that is and that's good enough!" It trains us not to see God's
hand. Yet. I grant that man should be informed about the society
in which he lives: I'll give you that one. What you see on TV, however,
is not the truth. It is altered, manipulated, and that's not how
you inform yourself.
Q. Isn't
TV a good educational tool despite its potential to be misused?
A. If
it is, I haven't seen it yet. That is one of the greatest lies.
If I left my child in front of the TV for two years and another
one in front of flash-cards and the alphabet, the first child will
be years ahead of the the second, but where is he going? We aren't
meant to live that fast. It isn't right. But the TV puts you in
the competition, and you become addicted to the refinements. Then
the mother of the first child comes and gloats over how much smarter
he is than yours and, of course, no mother wants to admit that her
children are left behind. Meanwhile this whole TV circus leads us
to the abyss: because never does the TV say, "Make sure you
say your prayers before you sit down for the show; now, it's time
to make an act of mortification, and then Big Bird will lead us
in the Rosary!"
Q. G.K.
Chesterton once said that there is always an inverted proportion
between the importance of the message and the means
used to spread it. Wouldn't you say that TV is giving
out a futile message?
A. I
must say I disagree with that. I think the message is quite powerful.
They have something to say. Do you want to know what it is? "On
sale! Buy, go in debt! Become somebody! Look like J.R. Ewing! Be
what you see on TV and be real! You must have a new car, imitate
the hairdo of your favorite TV star, her clothes..."
Q. What is the
profile of screen heroes?
A. They
must be people who are young, efficient, affluent and urban. If
added to that, they are immoral and boastful, that will help, but
never humble or obedient, the loudest, the most original, the most
extreme in the claim of his own rights, the most violent. Look,
teenagers today are literally worshipping a Ninja turtle! From one
extreme to the next! Where will TV end?
Q. Can
the presence of TV in the homes have some unifying value,
since everyone is busy watching television together?
A. In
former times, people at home used to talk. They had serious talks.
If people get together today, they don't talk. They just get the
government's message, the world's message. At home with the TV,
you don't have to go out and visit, or pick up a book and read it.
Today, the most elementary laws of hospitality are broken without
scruple thanks to the dear screen. If Mr. and Mrs. Johnson try to
visit you in the middle of an interesting programme, you hardly
have a look at them, let alone a word.
Q. America's
pediatricians have found that "children watch far too much
TV* That is what makes them aggressive and promiscuous."
A. You
don't have to be a doctor to discover that. Yet, besides the obvious
immoral influence of TV, it erodes the family bond and very subtly
sometimes.
Q. See,
the typical hero offered to our children is Sargeant Muscle, rewarded
especially for his immoral success. Dad is just Mr. Loser Carpenter"5,
a regular worker, a "Joe" who just looks like an idiot:
a third class citizen.
A. Your
son won't be long in asking you, "Dad, why can't you come home
from work and look like a Zorro? Why can't you be like him? The
hero image is implanted there, which has all the values that the
world wants you to have; but Dad is not the hero.
Q. TV
makes children whimsical and fat couch-potatoes doesn't it?
A. Yes,
because by constantly watching commercials, they find themselves
wanting things which they don't need. The child watching TV will
come to his parents with demands. The parents, to satisfy him, will
meet these demands, whose parameters are pre-set by TV. That is
scary, because there is no bond between the children and their parents.
If the State at one stage ever wants to place a wedge between them,
TV is it.
Q. TV:
a narcotic? Can you control TV?
A. We
tried it in our home. We resolved to be very selective. "We
will look at the TV guide, we will see only certain TV shows, and
then we will turn it off." We allowed only one TV. But as soon
as you walked in the house, a voice said, "Turn it on; you
don't know what you are missing." To me it is diabolical. Not
because of the voice but because it has such a powerful attraction.
Q. Why
does it have that? Is it habit-forming, or addictive?
A. I
believe it is addictive, not like alcohol, because you drink at
your own pace, as much as you want. This addiction is more like
an intravenous drug, where someone else controls the drug dosage.
TV has all the effects of a drug, and it may well have the same
cause. There have been articles written on it. How is it addictive?
In that people can't avoid turning it on. They have to admit this.
Why is that? And, especially, why do they still do it? Certain drugs
like heroin end up killing their users.
Q. TV,
an opiate?
A. In
effect, it is a dope, a spiritual dope for deadening the pain of
modern living. It is the marijuana of the masses and the opiate
of the people, the god of modern man. Television like narcotics,
works on the brain, inducing a stupor. "My father is turning
into a vegetable," it was said in the `50's, "He just
sits watching that screen every night." No wonder the first
TV generation became the first to commit widespread drug abuse.
Mere coincidence? Researcher Marie Winn in `Plug-in Drug' notes:
"The television viewing state of consciousness is not far removed
from that state described by drug users as `pure awareness' in which
` ....the person is completely and vividly aware of his experience,
but there are no processes of thinking, manipulation [of data],
or interpreting going on.' (Charles Tart, in Altered States of Consciousness).
Q. How
can you speak of stupor when the senses of sight and
sound are obviously involved?
A. TV
has an hypnotic power of centering the attention of a person on
the screen because the pictures are racing too fast.
"An evening
of TV viewing is a typical example of perceptual overload which
initiates some level of hypnotic trance. Being bombarded with so
much information over such a short time, people sit like somnambultists,
staring blankly at the screen." "The horror of television
. . . is that the information goes in, but we don't react to it.
You are training yourself not to react and so later on, you're doing
things without knowing why you're doing them or where they came
from."6
Q. Do you
think that TV is baptizable?
A. Well,
if it were, it has had plenty of opportunity to prove itself as
such. It came in at a time when the Church was still on its feet,
before Vatican II, when there was strict censorship. TV had its
chance. It started out like an infant, more or less innocent. Look
where it is now; and there is a good argument against it in that
it helped the world to become what it is today. If TV did have some
kind of redeeming value, I think it would have somehow come through.
It hasn't!7
Q. What
you say seems strange. TV is a material tool, a work of technology;
there is nothing evil about it.
A. Yes,
like an atomic bomb. People said that the atomic bomb was the same
as the other ones; but it is not controllable, only destructive.
It is too powerful for a man to fight. It is too powerful a tool
to have any positive effect.8
What do you gain by using it? Has anybody ever answered that question?
Q. Couldn't
Catholics have their own station and their own program and "sell
God"?
A. A
Catholic Broadcast Corporation, A CBC? That is forgetting that we
live in a pagan world. My first question is "Why would you
have to use a TV?" Is it because the devil uses it? Does that
make it a good tool? It is like talking to the serpent: "I'm
going to use you to do good because I am more cunning than you think."
Stay away from it! It has never worked. TV is so much in the hands
of the devil that you are never going to use it as a tool to convert
people! It is like casting pearls before swine. Suppose you had
a traditional Catholic show on one channel: people will watch it
between the 6:00 pm news and the ball game. "Oh! Bishop Sheen
is on at 7:00. We must watch him!" If you invite your parishoners
to watch TV, you are going to end up closing your own parish. "Why
should I come to church and bring all my kids, crying in the back?
Why go through so much hassle to hear just my parish priest, if
the bishop is coming on TV at 7:00 pm?" That is increasing
the temptation to be lazy.
Q. VHS
is an off-shoot of TV and is widespread in homes. How about watching
videos? Would you object to them as you do to regular TV shows?
A. "Look,
Ricardo Montalban starring with the children of Fatima!" Do
you think you can use movies to edify? You can't. The children of
Fatima and Ricardo Montalban - that shady character in the movies
- are not the same thing. And the children themselves have to have
curly hair and rosy cheeks. People want to see and believe that.
Look at "The Greatest Story Ever Told." It is pure Hollywood!
Q. Movie
videos are one thing; lectures or catechism on video are another
thing, aren't they? `Keep the Faith' has come up with a large selection
of highly educational videotapes, available to a public who otherwise
would never be exposed to them. That sounds like a very positive
apostolate.
A. I
don't know, Father, but unless I am missing something, I cannot
ever imagine traditional catechism being taught on TV. "Chapter
II. Baptism. There will be questions following, but you've got to
come closer to the screen, because I can't hear you well."
You see, there would be no interaction. To have any impact on one's
life, catechism must be live, personal and authoritative. Nothing
can replace the exchange between professor and students.
Q. What
would you think of making home-made movies?
A. Here
I see another type of problem. It is my own production; there is
always the pride involved. And of course, you will be taking only
selective shots, the most original, the most interesting; but again,
you are missing 95% of the picture.
Q. I
must say that, given even my little experience with VHS, when I
produce anything, I have to think "catchy," "sensational,"
"punchy." The dull shots will necessarily be eliminated.
A. But
again, that is not so realistic. There are boring speakers, and
I suppose that they serve a purpose. Who knows whether St. Alphonsus
de Liguori was a great orator? Maybe no one would have listened
to him on TV, but look at the great books he wrote!
Q. I always
think that Archbishop Lefebvre comes across great on TV!
A. I
think that if you can't be present at the Bishop's Mass, then it
is God's will. But if you want to be there, then you will get priorities
straight and make some room in your activities so as to be able
to go and see him. TV is not a channel of God's grace. It stultifies
the sacred and belittles good, while enhancing evil. You cannot
televise Christ's Mystical Body.
Christ is in
our neighbour, and we can find Him better in real life than on the
screen.
Q. But
don't you think that Bishop Sheen's TV programme in the `50's converted
many people?
A. I
know I am going to shock you, but I personally believe that he would
have converted them with or without the show. Those people who want
to find out will go to church and spend the time THERE. It is not
while lying down lazily on a sofa that one is apt to receive the
grace of conversion. Conversion supposes an urge, an active
search for the truth. People must want to convert. You can't
push conversion on them! Why would you have to squeeze the graces
of conversion from Bishop Sheen between a soap and a beer advertisement?
And why couldn't conversion happen in the same way as it did before
the `50's? It all boiled down to the same false argument: "If
it is there, then I must use it."
Q. What
remedies do you suggest to cure the TV addicts? Some books
suggest that people take the resolution of turning the TV
off for two weeks in order to find ways of filling
the time they were so afraid of facing before. What is your
opinion?
A. Yes,
of course, two weeks will be enough to find the right leisure. Others
speak of forbidding TV for important social times, like meals. I
personally don't think that there can be a gradual withdrawal.
Q. So,
"Get rid of it!" is your only advice for the detoxification
of TV watchers?
A. It
is the same as breaking a cocaine or heroin addiction. Stop altogether,
and then live a life of faith and prayer. As a priest friend of
mine used to say, "The TV? `Raus' (it] out of the house and
be `schnell' about it!" No, you can't compromise by having
even one TV in your house. You can't have the TV in the corner with
the statue of the Blessed Mother on top of it! You've got to make
up your mind. Mary does't have her place on top of the "devil's
box."
Q. Of
course, it is a difficult choice, and I don't think people can give
up their set up without having the true Faith.
A. Well,
many people don't have the true Faith, like the Amish, and they
have no TV. But of course, they have certain values of faith which
are higher than the world's. The TV is the world, serves only the
world, and not God. Itcan be despised only by the souls whose goal
is above that of materialism.
I think itwould
be really unbearable for a non-believer to be deprived of TV while
at the same time knowing that it is available. But a Catholic can
bear the deprivation of TV, because he knows that he is made for
a much more elavated life. The Faith is attractive only as long
as we quietly think about it. Television is attractive only as long
as we think about nothing. The ever-widening void encouraged by
TV is an open invitation to the 1001 devils who are abroad these
days.
1.
Jewish historian Alfred Lilienthal, in his book The Zionist Connection
II, declares that the most effective component of the Jewish connection
is probably that of media control. "In radio and TV, one finds
an almost overwhelming presence of key Jews . . . RCA, NBC, and
ABC are Jewish controlled. Virtually all national and international
news is filtered, edited and broadcast by these three corporations."
The same is to be said of the "distinct majority of TV writers
and producers" (Ben Stein). Three out of five of TV's elite
have a Jewish religious background " (New Dimensions, Sept
1990). No wonder the screen has been nicknamed "the Jewish
Tabernacle."
2.
As someone wrote forty years ago with prophetic
accents, if motion pictures can be transmitted from the studio into
people's living rooms, why shouldn't it work backwards, bringing
the sights and sounds of the living room to a central police bureau?
TV will be the ideal spy for Mr. Tyrant!
3.
"CBS estimated its 1987 Super Bowl audience
at 130 million, all controlled from a single studio in New York
at the same time!" (Jerry Mander, Jewish)
4
Former Senator and Presidential hopeful Gary
Hart declared "It is a frightful thing, if you think about
it enough. A Hitler, a dictator, could rise in a matter of a few
days with the proper use of TV." Jacobson, a subliminal technician
Top
TV sitcom producer Norman Lear said, "People accept information
much more readily when they're being entertained." In other
words, after we have put your conscious mind on hold, we can plant
our anti-Christian values into your subconscious mind. The (sick)
comedy which we create is just our tool to anesthetize your brain.
5.
According to Marie Winn in her book, The Plug-in Drug, the weekly
average for an American is 20 hours (World Almanac Nelson Research
Feb. 89). At 60 years of age, an American will have spent six years
in front of a TV set. " Mr. P. left his job when he converted,
becoming a simple carpenter. Together with another convert to the
traditional movement, he founded the J.M.J. Company, "The Jesus,
Mary & Joseph Carpentry Shop."
6.
"Quoting
professor Wilson Bryan Key in Clam-Plate Orgy," he tells us
that: "Preceptual overload is another subliminal media strategy:
bombarding individual perceptions with sensory stimuli in heavy
quantities or intense volume thus initiating some level of hypnotic
trance and sensory anesthesia . . . This is exactly what TV's are
intended to do."
7.
Parents should recreate with their children,
in the presence of God. It is one of the most essential duties of
education: to live and to do things together during the short span
of time that the children are at home. TV invades that last refuge.
8.
The evil is not that man possesses technology, but that technology
possesses man and makes him a slave. With TV, it is a pleasant one,
the easy-chair slavery." (In tegrity Magazine, Feb. 1951)
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