I Don’t Know Nothin’ But What I Saw on Television

Americans drastically overestimate the number of homosexuals among their fellow citizens:

PRINCETON, N.J. — The American public estimates on average that 23% of Americans are gay or lesbian, little changed from Americans’ 25% estimate in 2011, and only slightly higher than separate 2002 estimates of the gay and lesbian population. These estimates are many times higher than the 3.8% of the adult population who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Gallup Daily tracking in the first four months of this year.

It isn’t just the percentage of homosexuals that Americans overestimate. They overestimate the percentages of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, and Moslems, too.

I think they can be excused for their misconceptions. They’re seeing the world as it’s portrayed on television. In that world nearly everybody is under 40 (and attractive) and there are many more blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, and Muslims than there actually are in the country. In that world sexuality is infinitely malleable as well, which presents an odd paradox. Which are we to believe, that sexuality and sexual orientation is something with which you are born and is not merely behavioral or that it is something that changes at will?

I think that most of these television-engendered mistakes are benign but it concerns me that people are also deriving their notions of right conduct from television.

Deconstructing the nature, structure, and values of the world according to television would be an interesting exercise, one I hope that my small cadre of readers will assist me with. Please leave your ideas on what that world is like in the comments.

6 comments… add one
  • Andy Link

    Seems likely, but it’s not something I relate to since I watch very little TV.

  • PD Shaw Link

    I think the real tension is not in the diversity, but the frequent superficiality of it. The school cafeteria in a Disney sit-com might show an upper-middle class body in which black, brown, yellow, white, boys and girls are sitting randomly together. Whether or not that diversity exists in SoCal, people are socially more clumpy, particularly gender-wise. I’ve read recent complaints about how “white” the Breakfast Club movie was — that’s because it was based upon a real location, Northbrook, Illinois. The cafeteria background scenes in a Disney show reflect human diversity as simply colour; none of these people have real stories that matter.

    The new Fantastic Four movie will race-swap one of the siblings. The Human Torch will be black and the Invisible Woman white, and apparently she will be adopted. Either race is as superficial as a costume or the characters are being entirely rewritten, at which point you wonder why do they have to be related in the first place?

  • Anybody who thinks black kids and white kids are culturally identical has never been in a majority black school. I’ll give one example. Black kids tend not to look you in the eye. They’ve been taught it’s impolite.

  • PD Shaw Link

    Oh, and in TV world, one often finds a palm tree in the background of an all-American midwest city.

  • We laugh at that all of the time. “There’s an example of the Virginia Eucalyptus!” Or the Denver palm tree. The biggest yuck lately was the mountains in a distance shot that was supposed to be Chicago.

    I’ve noticed that Victoria, BC is standing in for Portland, OR a lot these days.

  • ... Link

    I’ve. Got all that beat. After Nathan Fillion was on Firefly, and before he was on Castle, he did this show about an illegal cross-country car race called Drive.

    At on point there’s a scene billed a Just south of Gainesville. Gainesville is a couple hours north of Orlando, and home of the University of Florida. I’ve driven that route dozens of times. Just south of Gainesville is something called Paynes Praire. You can’t approach G’Ville from the south without crossing it. It looks like the Everglades. What it does not feature is a desert. With mountains in the background. But that’s what Drive billed as south of Gainesville.

    What they were showing was actually the high desert of Antelope Valley in CA, home of Edwards AFB and the town where my wife lived in her teen years. So we, and especially her, know both areas.

    What happened was that the network got cold feet on the show & slashed their production budget a couple episodes in, so they were stuck having to use the stuff they had for late in the season early in the season. Which was just as well, as there was no late in the season.

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