Television Delivers People (1973)

Television Delivers People is a seminal work in the now wellestablished critique of popular media as an instrument of social control that asserts itself subtly on the populace through entertainments for the benefit of those in powerthe corporations that mantain and profit from the status quo While canned Muzak plays a scrolling text denounces the corporate masquerade of commercial television to reveal the structure of profit that greases the wheels of the media industry Television emerges as little more than a insidious sponsor for the corporate engines of the world By appropriating the medium he is criticizingusing television in effect against itselfSerra employs a characteristic strategy of early countercorporate video collectivesa strategy that remains integral to video artists committed to a critical dismantling of the medias political and ideological stranglehold