On TV

In Latin America ,then, the television represents U.S. cultural imperialism. Within the United States, though, the television is known historically for assimilating and acculturating immigrant communities. Domestically, the television functions instrumentally, instilling American values, homogenizing audiences, organizing viewers as markets for the culture of consumption. What television programming and advertising do most efficiently is to inculcate immigrant communities with the ethic and logic of consumerism as a route to becoming "American." For many lower-income workers, earning enough wages to purchase a television registers their successful incorporation into U.S. culture as consumers. Because success or "making it" in this country is measured by consumption, access to television discourse symbolically marks the effective incorporation of immigrants in the naturalized and commodified world of consumerism offered by television.

- Fregoso, Rosa Linda. The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture. University of Minnesota Press. 1993. Pg. 103.