Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter

Roderick Hart surprises no one when he relates the rise in 1990's television viewership to reduced participation in our communities. His analysis of television's success in capturing our hearts and minds does deliver new insights that remain relevant more than ten years after this book's release. Television has fundamentally changed politics and political campaigns, argues Hart. Its primary influence is not the increased flow of information or even of images. Television appeals directly to our "political feelings." Hart identifies five feelings that television targets. The video clips and sound bites create a false sense of intimacy with candidates, convincing viewers that they "know" politicians because their face and voice have become familiar. Viewers lose sight of how managed these impressions are. Television also makes us feel informed through its constant flow of facts and foci. But "being informed and feeling informed are not the same thing." We are distracted from in-depth analysis and adopt more narrow criteria to evaluate the messages that do get through. Feelings of intimacy and of being informed make us feel clever, even smug. When we laugh at the political jokes on late-night television, we take a cynical stance toward political issues and believe that glib answers suffice for complex problems. When forced to face an issue's complexity, our feelings of cleverness can quickly turn to defensiveness, which discourages critical re-examination. Television viewing of political events makes us feel busy, as though our passive observation is really a form of participation. This sense of involvement may actually decrease some viewers' inclination to vote. Finally, television politics makes viewers feel important. Viewers are "right there" with politicians, well-known media personalities and other celebrities. These feelings of intimacy, being informed, cleverness, business, and importance are appealing because they counter corresponding negative feelings of detachment, ignorance, obsolescence, inertness, and impotence. But we should not let television become a substitute for genuine political involvement. Hart urges use to become involved, to think and act more and feel less. This book is recommended for those who would better understand the influence of television on the political messages they receive--and both the comfortable and uncomfortable feelings these messages produce. Readers may also be interested in related books by Roderick Hart, such as The Sound of Leadership: Presidential Communication in the Modern Age and Campaign Talk: Why Elections Are Good for Us.