Amusing Ourselves to Death: Effects of TV on our lives

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Amusing Ourselves to Death


"Neil Postman distinguishes the Orwellian vision of the future, in which
totalitarian governments seize individual rights, from the vision offered by
Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where people medicate themselves into
bliss and voluntarily sacrifice their rights. Postman sees television's
entertainment value as a "soma" for the contemporary world, and he sees
contemporary mankind surrendering its rights in exchange for entertainment.
(Note that there is no contradiction between an intentional "Orwellian"
conspiracy using "Huxleyan" means, which is an argument advanced in the
later book The Unreality Industry: the deliberate manufacturing of falsehood
and what it is doing to our lives by Ian Mitroff and Warren Bennis (New
York: Carol Pub. Group, 1989). Postman evidently did not disagree, since he
provided a blurb for this book.)

The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his
argument(s), is that "form excludes the content," that is, a particular
medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Rational argument, an
integral component of print typography, cannot be conveyed through the
medium of television because "its form excludes the content." Because of
this shortcoming, politics and religion get diluted, and "news of the day"
is turned into a commodity. The presentation most often de-emphasizes
quality; all data becomes burdened to the far-reaching need for
entertainment.

Postman objects to the presentation of television news as it is conveyed in
the form of entertainment programming. He cites the inclusion of theme
music, the interruption of commercials, and "talking hairdos" as the basis
for his argument that televised news is presented so that it cannot readily
be taken seriously. Postman further examines the differences between written
speech, which he argues reached its prime in the early to mid-nineteenth
century, and the forms of televisual communication, which rely mostly on
visual images to "sell" lifestyles. He argues that politics has ceased to be
about whatever ideas or solutions a particular candidate may possess, but
instead whether or not they come across in a favorable way on television.
Television, he notes, has introduced the phrase "now this", which indicates
a complete absence of any connection between one topic and the next. Larry
Gonick used this phrase to conclude his Cartoon Guide to (Non)Communication,
instead of the traditional "the end".

Postman also examines the relationship between learning and television. He
acknowledges that school curricula are integrating television and computers
into their classrooms with increasing frequency. He argues that these uses
of media do not equip the student with the ability to question the nature of
media; they merely provide the student with study guides that are amusing
and entertaining--something that Postman argues is fundamentally against the
process of learning. Postman draws from the ideas of the media scholar
Marshall McLuhan- slightly altering McLuhan's aphorism "the medium is the
message" into "the medium is the metaphor"-to describe how oral, literate,
and televisual cultures radically differ in how information is processed and
prioritized. He also argues that different media are appropriate for
different kinds of knowledge. The faculties necessary to sustain rational
inquiry simply are not normally encouraged by televised viewing. Reading, a
prime example cited by Postman, is a subject of intense intellectual
involvement, at once interactive and dialectical, unlike television which
limits involvement to passivity. Moreover, as television is programmed for
maximum ratings, its content is determined by commercial feasibility, not
critical acumen. Television in its present state, he says, cannot sustain
any of the conditions needed for honest intellectual involvement and
rational argument.

Given this analysis, Postman regards television as a useful entertainment
medium, but questions the efficacy of its use in such intellectually
demanding areas as political argument, education and the news. He also
repeatedly states that the eighteenth century was the pinnacle for rational
argument, truly being the Age of Reason. Only in the printed word, he
states, could complicated truths be rationally conveyed. A striking example
Postman gives: that the first fifteen U.S. presidents could probably have
walked down the street without being recognized by the average citizen, yet
all these men would have been quickly known by their written words. However,
the reverse is true today. The names of presidents or even famous preachers,
lawyers, and scientists call up visual images, typically television images,
but few, if any, words come to mind. The few that do almost exclusively
consist of carefully-chosen soundbites."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death