Hesitating I enter my house, the light outside is dimming
and the shadows make everything appear unfamiliar. I know that my husband has not returned from
work yet, simply because his car is not in the garage. I am alone. I carefully
check all the rooms, almost expecting something to happen suddenly. I hold my
bag in my hand as if it were a weapon. After the whole house has been declared
“clear,” I start to breathe normally again and a smile appears on my face as I
realize, once again, how a simple movie seen at the cinema a week earlier can
modify my actions. Sometimes I wonder if I should watch TV, with all its shows
that make me wonderwhether I
exercise enough, whether I am slim enough, or whether I treat my pets with the
care they deserve: am I really concerned about their mental health??? Not to
mention the hundreds of commercials that try to make me believe I need a water
purifier to remain alive since the water I am currently drinking is heavily
polluted! And countless are the times when I have heard people talking by
quotations learned from movies… We need to watch shows and films to know what
to say, how to be, how to act. We are so addicted to all this that it
almost seems like we cannot think on our own. I cannot help thinking about what
happened to me some days ago, an example that clearly shows what kind of power
TV has over people. My husband and I were in a restaurant when I heard my young
neighbor pronouncing violent words in a low angry voice. Surprised, I turned to
better understand the situation and I saw that he was holding a fake
military device and was acting as if he were filming a war movie. I am
sure that if I had been a little be more updated about this type of movie,
I would have recognized what he was saying as a quotation. Now, I wonder if he
uses such a language also with his friends and with his parents, if he is
aggressive, and if so, whether his attitude has really nothing to do with what
he watches on TV. That same evening on the way home I saw two cars stopped one next
to the other at a traffic light and as soon as the light turned green they
started racing, in the middle of town. In this case not even a major knowledge
of movies and TV programs would have helped me: there are just too many of them
on the market showing the exact same thing: people racing with cars .I am sure
that everybody, if asked, could easily list many other examples of how TV and
movies can modify our behavior and therefore our life but, I wonder, if we will
always be able to draw the line between a TV show and real life, between what
they make us think we want and what instead we really need and are and believe.
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