Hendricks 1

Austin Hendricks

Lisa Weaver

406 LNG

15 March 2011

TV Addiction

QoM-

1. Winn depicts addictions as having negative or detrimental side effects on the

person, while she portrays the “harmless pursuits of pleasure” as innocent,

commonplace activities that are either beneficial to or have no effect on the

person engaged in the activity.

2. The answer to the question, at least according to Winn, is that TV is in fact an

addiction. However, Winn does not explicitly state her answer until later in the

essay when she says “Finally, it is the adverse effect of television viewing on the

lives of so many people that defines it as a serious addiction.”

3. Winn explains that TV addiction’s negative effects are that: it results in the

viewer refusing to do any other activity, it distorts the viewer’s sense of time,

ruins their relationships, and causes other experiences to simply be distant

memories that are almost unreachable.

4. Winn does not explicitly point out any particular benefits that can come from

watching television, apart from a passing comment about how television permits

the viewer an escape from “the worries and anxieties of reality.”

 Hendricks 2

QoWS-

1. Winn attempts to explicitly define addiction in order to draw comparisons

between major addictions to substances like drugs and alcohol and the addiction

to television that countless numbers of people experience.

2. Winn does not immediately answer her question in order to allow the reader to

first reach their own conclusions about the truth to “television addiction” based on

the evidence that she presents. This causes her essay to become less that she is

simply stating a thesis, but instead allows the reader to come to the same

conclusion.

3. This allows her to draw further parallels between addiction to television and
addictions to substances such as drugs and alcohol. Words like “trip,” “hooked,”
and “high” are common terms that are associated with those more serious
addictions.

QoL-

1. Like using the terms associated with drugs and alcohol, Winn uses these terms to
draw parallels to other common addictions. The person that is suffering from the
addiction craves the object of their addiction until they are able to satisfy that
craving.
2. By using this phrase, Winn implies that the television holds the viewer enthralled
in place, unable to move or respond to the world around him. He is held in place,
trapped by the images that appear on the screen. He is unable to escape the
addiction, and has become consumed by it.

SfW-

2.