Kill Your Television Shorts
Description: The phrase Kill Your Television is a rebellious cultural slogan that emerged from punk and counterculture movements as a critique of passive media consumption. Popularized in the '70s and '80s—appearing on stickers, T-shirts, and album artwork—it encouraged people to reject the influence of mainstream television, which critics believed promoted conformity, consumerism, and shallow entertainment. Rather than literally destroying a TV, the phrase symbolized turning it off and engaging more actively with the world: making art, playing music, reading, or participating in real-life communities. Alternative scenes embraced the slogan as part of a broader DIY ethos that valued independent thought and creativity over corporate media narratives.
Description: In David Cronenberg's 1983 film, Videodrome, there is a Catholic style inner-city shelter in downtown Toronto called the Cathode Ray Mission. Its purpose is to help what looks like homeless people get reintegrated into normal, everyday working life. But you soon learn that the people go to the mission are not really without homes so much as without televisions. What possible reason could there be for that? In order to patch the "derelicts" back into the world of normalization, they must be treated by exposure to television. So they come to Cathode Ray for their TV "fix" because after all, love comes in at the eye.
