By Barry Duncan

Since the inception of television some 50 years ago, America has had an ongoing love-hate relationship with the medium. But rarely have we come to grips with it seriously: attempting to understand it in its totality, and seeing its potential artfulness and pervasive value messages and the constraints imposed on it by the industry. All of which adds up to a somewhat imperfect definition of the subject of this column - media literacy.

Almost everyone knows that traditional literacy is associated with the skills needed to decode the printed word. Thus, media literacy is about decoding the mass media, especially television. Since most of us already know a fair amount about the subject, what becomes essential is a willingness to learn more and to see things from a fresh perspective.

Imagine you're a recent immigrant from a Third World country, with little familiarity with television; and you're plunked down in front of a set for a typical evening of prime-time fare. The screen flashes close-ups of mostly good-looking people fondling each other, punching each other out or laughing their heads off. Cut to car chases in underground parking lots, set to the sound of tires squealing and fenders bashing. Cut to newscasts with short snatches of segments on disasters, murders and wars - mixed with chatter from politicians who reassure us that all will be well. Cut to high-jolts-per-minute commercials featuring persuasive pitches for instant beauty, and relief from constipation, and warnings not to leave home without a certain plastic card that offers limitless pleasures. This supermarket of the soul can be truly mind-boggling.

Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian media guru (and my professor in graduate school), was fond of reminding us that environment is always invisible. Media literacy is all about making the world of television highly visible, so that we learn to "read" it with a critical response. Critical does not necessarily mean negative; in fact, there is much about television that should be celebrated. Furthermore, understanding and enjoyment should not be mutually exclusive.

A cross section of some of the most popular TV shows of the past decade or so would include ER, The Cosby Show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, 60 Minutes and Law and Order - perfect texts for exploring our collective values, cultural trends, desires, fears and aspirations.

Most programs can be read both positively and negatively. For instance, the Emmy-award winning The Cosby Show (which ran from 1984-1992 and lives on today in re-runs) could be viewed as a vehicle for a funny performer who manages to get himself or his family out of numerous predicaments. But an alternative reading would reveal the program's obsession with consumerism and draw attention to what is conspicuously absent from its stories: the thorny problems of racism in America.

Or take programs such as 60 Minutes or W5, with dramatic exposés of fraud, injustice and evil in their many disguises. What is so deceptive about those engaging personalized investigations of phony cures for cancer, or insurance scams, is that they lull us into believing that the system has been changed, while ignoring the bigger problem: the necessity of reforming government and curbing corporate power.

Media literacy as an area for study in the U.S. and Canada got off to a hesitant start in the late 1960s. Then it went underground, resurfaced briefly until the early '80s, then groped around in the dark for a while before eventually dying an ignominious death. Fortunately, other countries (notably England and Australia) have been treating the subject seriously for more than 20 years now. Ironically, it's the U.S. - the greatest disseminator of popular culture in the history of the world - that pays the least attention to its pervasive influences. In fact, it comes out at the bottom of the list of international media-literacy levels.

Fortunately, in the last five years American educators have become more open to the advantages of media literate students. It is now seen as a civic entitlement. While the American version of media literacy tends to be over protectionist in nature (moral panic driven exhortations on deconstructing insidious images associated with cigarettes, alcohol and sexual stereotyping), other more life-enhancing voices are being heard. The founding of AMLA Alliance for a Media Literate America in July 2001 at the conference in Austin Texas holds great promise for the future. The next conference will take place in 2003 in Baltimore.

On a more positive note, winds of change are blowing. The environmental and consumer movements of the '80s and '90s have prompted us to look more critically not only at our stewardship of the planet's physical resources, but also at our use of leisure time - which includes our relationship to television's representations of the world. Today we acknowledge that culture embraces social attitudes, values, images and codes. Communication technology - television in particular - has transformed our cultural landscape, leaving many of us a trifle bewildered. I'm reminded of the comic strip character, Shoe, who exclaims, "Another Monday...I hate Mondays...I think I'll go directly to Tuesday... and tape Monday just in case I want to see it later."