The Effect TV Has On Its Viewers

In Dana Stevens’ article, “Thinking Outside the Idiot Box,” she summarizes Steven Johnson’s argument that “Watching TV Makes You Smarter.” Johnson argues that understanding the complexity of today’s TV shows makes viewers smarter. Stevens disagrees with Johnson’s statement saying, “watching TV teaches you to watch more TV”(296). Both authors discuss the issue of television and its impact on viewers’ intelligence; they share a common topic but utilize very different literary elements. Stevens and Johnson both employ different tones, themes, and dialogue to prove their arguments on the effect that TV has on its viewers.

While both authors discuss a similar topic, they utilize different themes. These themes are made clear through the examples that both authors incorporate. In Johnson’s article he uses examples from popular TV shows such as 24, The West Wing, and E.R. He uses 24 as an example of how we use our brain in order to navigate through the intricate information and grasp the important concepts in order to make sense of an episode. Another example that Johnson shows us is the dialogue between characters on shows like E.R and The West Wing that do not talk down to its audience. “ The characters talk faster in these shows”(287) and use much more scientifically language which most viewers do not understand. This complex language requires the viewer to pay closer attention to the context in order to make sense of the words being spoken.

Stevens portrays her theme through the examples in Johnsons article. She makes use of the fact that “Johnson fails to account for the impact of the 16 minutes’ worth of commercials that interrupt any given episode of, say, 24 (a show he singles out as particularly “nutritional”), but he breezily dismisses recent controversies about the program’s representation of Muslim terrorist or its