Our current culture is one “in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment.Today the representative city is Las Vegas. Different cities in the USA have represented the zeitgeist at different points in our history.Would be fascinating to read the authors thoughts on these developments. Pros: Powerful message that forces you to reconsider your relationship with analog and digital media (and to question the very nature of the medium itself).Ĭons: Book predates the rise of the internet, mobile computing and social networks. Substitute the internet or social media for Postman’s argument and you can observe a similar dynamic shaping our lives today. Television’s cultural influence may have waned, but Postman’s media critique is applicable to any electronic medium. Despite the three decades since publication, Postman’s book resonates as strongly as ever. One path to media consciousness is to ask questions: What is the nature of a medium? What are its assumptions? How is the medium shaping the message it communicates?Īmusing Ourselves to Death was published in the 1980s when the television was arguably at its zenith in the American zeitgeist. Individuals willing to question the status quo can make this happen (but it does require a curious and critical mind).
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Postman’s antidote is “media consciousness.” To be media conscious is to become aware of the medium itself. And why is the evening news preceded by exhilarating theme music? Postman’s explanation is simple: television’s media metaphor shapes its content the audience is not being informed, it is being entertained.
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Consider that the news anchors are invariably well coiffed and comely. Consider that news reports regularly interrupt serious topics with banal commercials for McDonalds or Coca-Cola. Consider that many news programs regularly promote sensational and salacious stories.
The postman book tv#
As a consequence, each subject has, over time, been inexorably turned into entertainment.Ĭonsider “serious” TV news: how serious is it really? Consider that serious news is often delivered in short segments that leave insufficient time for context, nuance and careful consideration. Every topic under the sun has found expression via television: news, music, sports, politics, religion, education, commerce. The author argues that a bigger problem arises when television (or any medium for that matter) expands its role and becomes the arbiter for all kinds of knowledge. This phenomenon is of little concern when television delivers entertainment for its own sake in the form of sitcoms and dramas (think “Friends” or “Game of Thrones”).
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One way to understand the biases of a medium are through the metaphors elicited by the medium these metaphors “enforce their special definitions of reality…our media-metaphors classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, color it, argue a case for what the world is like.” For example, one media metaphor central to television is the idea that “all the world is a stage.” The ideas communicated by television are shaped by this metaphor television content has a tendency towards spectacle, showmanship, and style (to the detriment of characteristics like depth, exposition, and nuance). The book highlights two important mediums-writing and television-but the ideas are applicable to any communication medium be it telegraphy, photography, radio, the internet, or social media.
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Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman (1985) is a book about the way a communication medium shapes public discourse.