ABSTRACT
Television, like the cinema, was originally regarded as no more than a convenient way to transmit existing stage plays to larger and larger masses of spectators. Recurring characters often are more real than most people the viewers know, simply because they know these characters better than they do most of their real acquaintances. Science fiction and space adventures are more recent additions to the mythical universe of television. The myths and archetypes of a civilization are not only an outcrop of the collective unconscious of its members; they also, in a characteristic feedback process, mold and affect their longings, patterns of behavior. The commercials are more than a mere marginal ingredient in American television. Commercials are the true didactic drama of our age, a drama that powerfully affects the way of life of the millions of spectators indoctrinated through it. In this sense television—and all the fictional world that informs it—is a dominant ingredient shaping our consciousness of reality.
