Television: The Enchanted Mirror

A film by
Julene Bair and George Csicsery

Television: The Enchanted Mirror is a half-hour color film featuring interviews with TV directors, writers, an ABC executive in charge of standards and practices, a brain behavior scientist, an advertiser, and members of the viewing public. It explores the role of TV in the formation of perceptions of reality and of moral values, as well as showing how the medium functions for the most isolated members of society. Various critical approaches to television are measured against the experiences of children, their parents, and other TV viewers. Some of the forces and pressures which mold the structure of commercial TV are explained by TV drama directors and writers. The film examines the impact of TV on the family, on individuals, and on social institutions. One section looks forward from 1980 to survey and question the changing technologies of television, and ponder how these will affect Americans in the future.

Television: The Enchanted Mirror was premiered at the International Public Television (INPUT) screening conference in Venice, Italy in March 1981. It was enthusiastically received as a concise summary of the controversies surrounding the world’s most powerful communications medium.” It is a description of the role of TV in everyday life in the United States in 1979-1980, a valuable snapshot of how humans and TV interacted just before the computer revolution changed everything.