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A review by malikp
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
5.0
Neil Postman's principal claim in -Amusing Ourselves to Death- is that television and American television culture, has dramatically changed the ways in which we consume and discuss knowledge in a negative way. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a digestible form of of medium/media criticism that offers a critique on television culture from the point of promoting anti-intellectualism.
On page 28 Postman says, "I am arguing that a television-based epistemology pollutes public communication and its surrounding landscape..." A shift from the print based information culture of the American enlightenment days, Postman throughout the book makes the point that upon the introduction of the telegraph, it "made a three-pronged attack on typography's definition of discourse, introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence." (65) This, along with the photograph being used in order to substantialize non-news, gave way to the television culture we find ourselves in today.
"Television gave the epistemological biases of the telegraph and photograph their most potent expression, raising the interplay of image and instancy to an exquisite and dangerous perfection." (78)
Postman says, "The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining..." He continues, "No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that [all discourse] is there for our amusement and pleasure." (87)
This becomes an issue when television's entertainment focused ideology reaches into parts in our lives that are not necessarily supposed to be entertaining for entertainment's sake, such as education and politics. "If on television, credibility replaces reality as the decisive test of truth-telling, political leaders need not trouble themselves.. with reality provided that their performances consistently generate a sense of verisimilitude." (102) In other words, if something looks too good to be true, so what?
Ending on this quote, "Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world." (106)
I recommend this book.
On page 28 Postman says, "I am arguing that a television-based epistemology pollutes public communication and its surrounding landscape..." A shift from the print based information culture of the American enlightenment days, Postman throughout the book makes the point that upon the introduction of the telegraph, it "made a three-pronged attack on typography's definition of discourse, introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence." (65) This, along with the photograph being used in order to substantialize non-news, gave way to the television culture we find ourselves in today.
"Television gave the epistemological biases of the telegraph and photograph their most potent expression, raising the interplay of image and instancy to an exquisite and dangerous perfection." (78)
Postman says, "The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining..." He continues, "No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that [all discourse] is there for our amusement and pleasure." (87)
This becomes an issue when television's entertainment focused ideology reaches into parts in our lives that are not necessarily supposed to be entertaining for entertainment's sake, such as education and politics. "If on television, credibility replaces reality as the decisive test of truth-telling, political leaders need not trouble themselves.. with reality provided that their performances consistently generate a sense of verisimilitude." (102) In other words, if something looks too good to be true, so what?
Ending on this quote, "Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world." (106)
I recommend this book.