ALIEN FACE
We dress for the eye. We smile for the eye. We build beautiful walls around invisible wounds and call them a life. We living for the eye, and desperate for the applauses...
The Altar worshipped: Television's Hold on American Culture
Television may be one of the most powerful cultural forces in the world — a kind of modern altar that commands attention the way religion once did. It diverts our focus outward, toward consumption and spectacle, often at the expense of deeper reflection. America, in particular, has built an identity around entertainment and the performance of freedom — a phenomenon some might describe as a culture of collective narcissism.
The Origins of Television
Television as a technology traces back to 1927, when inventor Philo Farnsworth successfully transmitted the first electronic television image, building on earlier innovations in radio broadcasting. In the following decades, networks like NBC and CBS expanded rapidly, eventually reaching tens of millions of American households. Television quickly became a dominant source of entertainment, music, and shared cultural experience, broadcast from major hubs like New York City.
Cable television expanded access further in the mid-1970s, coinciding with a period of significant social and political unrest — including civil rights demonstrations and public protests against police violence, as Americans increasingly used collective action to demand change.
The Cultural Explosion of the 1980s and 1990s
The 1980s ushered in a new era of televised culture — fashion, music videos, and the rise of hip-hop as a genre and cultural movement. Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks" is widely credited as one of the genre's early breakout hits, helping pave the way for artists like Queen Latifah, whose 1989 anthem "Ladies First" became an influential statement of empowerment, particularly within Black communities nationwide. Alongside hip-hop, rock and its more theatrical subgenres brought their own distinct visual culture — dramatic performances, elaborate personas, and rebellious imagery — which, combined with television's reach, helped fuel massive commercial growth across the entertainment industry.
By the 1990s, television and music had become deeply intertwined, launching the careers of artists like TLC, Will Smith, Salt-N-Pepa, Kris Kross, MC Hammer, and Janet Jackson, following in the footsteps of her brother Michael. As the industry grew, some corners of media also began showcasing more explicit content — violence, hypersexualized imagery, and aggressive posturing — often marketed toward younger audiences. For some young viewers, particularly those facing difficult home lives, these images became aspirational, offering an escape from harder personal realities, even as the content itself sometimes reinforced harmful behavior.
America, Seen From the Outside
Internationally, America is often viewed through the lens of what's broadcast to the world — vacation destinations like New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami become symbols of glamor and opportunity for visitors, even as everyday struggles within the country often go unseen. As advertising, media, and technology have continued to expand, entertainment has become one of America's most significant cultural and economic exports — spanning film, music, and now social media.
A Closing Reflection
Television, in many ways, remains one of the most influential forces shaping modern identity — arguably functioning as a kind of cultural altar in its own right. There's a real cost to letting entertainment and external validation define who we are: it can pull us away from self-awareness and a grounded sense of identity, especially when we measure our worth by what we consume or perform for others rather than who we are underneath it.
There's also a harder truth beneath this: many of us have become so dependent on the systems around us that true self-sufficiency feels almost impossible. If everything were stripped away — no electricity, no running water, no supply chains — how many of us would actually know how to build shelter, grow food, or purify water to survive? Disconnecting from the system isn't as simple as walking away from it; for most people, survival itself depends on staying plugged in. That dependency is worth sitting with. Recognizing it — and reclaiming even small pieces of self-sufficiency and self-awareness — is an important step toward a stronger, more grounded sense of self.