John's 21F830 Project Page
The Discovery Channel: Tunnel Vision
The Discovery Channel seeks to make money by attracting viewers to
watch its station. There is nothing evil about this, in and of itself.
However, the channel is selling education and truth.
Because it is selling itself as an educational tool, one
must be critical of its claims.
The Channel relies on fantasy stories to attract viewers to keep watching the
channel, and on a ethnographic style of filming to convince the viewer
that what they are watching is undoctored truth. In the end the
viewer walks away having lived out a fantasy perhaps, but also with an
extremely skewed view of the subject. The audience should learn to
spot the tricks these channels use and not fool themselves into
thinking that they are learning. Its especially important if one
hopes to use this kind of medium to teach children. Children
shouldn't be shown trash science just because adults believe it to
be.
The Discovery Channel has two main techniques, both of which
allow the station to make money at the expense of the viewers.
The first is a tendency to make the story, no matter what it is about,
into a fantasy. This distorts the
subject matter into a fairy tail. I have two examples of this. One
is that of the miners in Columbia, on a show called "Treasure Hunters" . The other is called
"Tribal Journeys" .
The other tendency of the shows is to use a documentary style of
filming and narrating in the construction of the videos shown on the
television. This style, familiar to many who have seen these films in
high school adds credence to the video-article on the Channel, while
at the same time limiting the film makers from discussing the
complexity of many of the issues they are trying to get across. This
exemplifies how the film maker can not communicate to her audience
with the simple techniques of documentary film making.
These two methods allow the articles on the Discovery Channel to be
entertaining, while at the same time seem filled with undeniable
truths. But this form of educational material is void of substantial
knowledge. Until the audience both demands material of deeper
thought, and is ready for it, the Discovery Channel will continue to
show entertaining fantasies void of educational worth.
I havn't had enough time to see if, the online
version is any better that the TV version. Take a look for yourself.
