Performance Enhancing Drugs

In case you've been sleeping for the last 42 years, this Sunday the sports/media event known as the Super Bowl takes place. This penultimate football event, which might well be called "normal football on steroids," reminds us of all the media attention paid to the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports. Recent news reports of performance enhancing drug use have included sports ranging from track and field to cycling to major league baseball. These reports have focused on the transgressions of individual athletes rather than the significance of sports programming in our television culture and its influence on our attitudes concerning drug use.

From a Media Ecology perspective, it is possible to examine television content as a function of the television medium itself. As a "one to many" medium, American television acts to dictate and reinforce acceptable social norms and behavior. The content of television seems to have fallen by accident into three distinct categories : entertainment, news and advertising. In fact, these broad categories of programming each stake out a different level of social behavior to manage and control.

Advertising: TV ads deal with social versus antisocial behavior on a personal level. Television advertisements are full endorsements of performance enhancing drugs, from Pepto Bismol to Claritin to Viagra. Participation in social events and personal relationships is made possible for the individual by the use of the proper product. Sometimes the performance enhancing claim is subtle, as in ads for "smart" cereals, cold medications or vitamin supplements. Sometimes it is overt, as in ads for male and female fragrances, erectile dysfunction medications or body building shampoos.

Entertainment: Television entertainment shows are chiefly concerned with social versus anti-social behavior on an interpersonal level. The archetypal television program sets up one or more characters who exist at the borderline of social acceptance, whether they are juveniles learning the ropes, clown characters who are unaware or otherwise ignore social norms, or villains who attempt to subvert the existing social equilibrium and replace it with one of their own.

In all instances the depiction of rule breaking and resolution acts to reinforce those rules. In terms of drug usage as a breaking of social rules, Showtime's Weeds stands out in particular, though it tends to deal with the supposed social dynamics of the drug trade rather than the psychodynamics of the drug itself. Otherwise, most TV entertainment discussions of drug use and its consequences are relegated to occasional afternoon specials and to all episodes of House.

Article Author: Robert K. Blechman

An experienced information technology executive, I am currently Associate Director in the Office of Information Technology at a major medical school. As an adjunct professor at Fordham University, I have taught courses in communication theory, mass media and society and media industries. …

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