26
Popular Culture Review
Given its presence and prominence in the home, it’s not much of a leap to say
that television shapes our lives. Through television, we see how relationships are
negotiated, how people interact, and how we are supposed to behave.
Cultivation theory, as developed by Gerbner and his colleagues, suggests
that the more we watch television, the more we have a “TV view” of the world.
Through a series of Cultural Indicators studies, Gerbner and his colleagues have
shown that heavy viewers of television tend to believe in the world they see on
television, even when the real world may be very different based on other
indicators of reality (Gerbner et al. 51). For instance, heavy viewers see the
world as a meaner place in which to live than light viewers, which can be
attributed to the fact that television programs involve more crime and more
crime victims than the real world (Signorielli 96; see also Gerbner et al. 52). The
researchers found similar effects when they considered heavy television viewing
and its impact on views of gender (Gerbner et al. 45—46): Those who watch
more television are “cultivated” to think that women are happiest when they’re
at home because television moms are happy and that men are more ambitious
than women. Moreover, the attitudes held by heavier viewers were stronger
since the repeated viewing of television made the attitudes more accessible
(Shrum 15).
The concern in cultivation theory is not the specific programming someone
watches, since programming is highly homogenous across outlets. Despite the
increasing number of stations and the presence of recording devices in most
American homes, the programming that people turn to is much the same
(Comstock and Scharrer 104). This is because viewing itself is a function of
available time for most people. Rather than selecting a program and setting aside
time to watch it, most viewing is ritualistic in nature—it occurs because
someone has time to spend and because he or she wants to spend it on an
activity that is not particularly challenging (Comstock and Scharrer 106). But
because it is a relatively easy way to spend time, a lot of time is spent in the
company of television. The volume of content, therefore, matters more for
cultivation than the specifics of what is on at any given point in time. As
Signorielli and Morgan point out, “from the point of view of the cultivation of
relatively stable and common images, what counts is the total pattern of
programming to which entire communities are regularly exposed over long
periods of time” (116). This consistent exposure, then, is what colors our view
and makes us see the world as television presents it, rather than how it really is.
And in an era where people spend large amounts of time with television and less
time with other socializing agents, the images on television play an important
role. As Signorielli and Bacue note:
Television’s role in society is one of common storyteller—it is
the mainstream of our popular culture. Its world shows and
tells us about life—people, places, striving, power and fate. It
lets us know who is good and who is bad, who wins and who