Prophesying Infotainment

Title: Amusing Ourselves To Death
Author: Neil Postman
Published: 1985
Pages: 163

Reading Time: January 25-January 28, 2010.

Plot Teaser:
From the author of Teaching as a Subversive Activity comes a sustained, withering and thought-provoking attack on television and what it is doing to us. Postman's theme is the decline of the printed word and the ascendancy of the "tube" with its tendency to present everythingmurder, mayhem, politics, weatheras entertainment. The ultimate effect, as Postman sees it, is the shrivelling of public discourse as TV degrades our conception of what constitutes news, political debate, art, even religious thought. Early chapters trace America's one-time love affair with the printed word, from colonial pamphlets to the publication of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. There's a biting analysis of TV commercials as a form of "instant therapy" based on the assumption that human problems are easily solvable. Postman goes further than other critics in demonstrating that television represents a hostile attack on literate culture.

How I Got It:
This was a brand new purchase. While I can't remember the exact store I bought it at, it was likely at a Chapters somewhere in Ontario. Being interested in cultural and media studies in general, I had heard about the praise for this book from many sources, and wanted to check it out. I probably bought this around 2007 or 2008.

The Review:
Neil Postman begins Amusing Ourselves to Death by comparing the worlds of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and George Orwell's 1984. While the former warned us about a world where we would choose to be dumb and pleasure-seeking, the latter warned us against totalitarian governments and thought control. In Postman's eyes, we are currently living in Huxley's cautionary tale. Although he was largely writing against the evils of television in 1985, his words still feel relevant today, as we are surrounded with a plethora of digital distractions and contradictory messages. We are so caught up with entertaining ourselves that we do not care about the deterioration of our minds.

In a world that is saturated with pictures and moving images, what are the consequences? What Postman is mostly concerned with here is the movement away from a print-based culture, and a movement towards an image-based one. While he is not against all television programming, as he mentions the harmless nature of sitcoms, he is worried about news production and how people get their information about the world. His attack on the speed of news reports and the focus on sensationalism over content are both applicable to today. Essentially, there is not enough time to process information, and news is simply another form of entertainment. Even if he does sometimes come off as a technophobe, he is always cogent and provides strong appeals for his point of view.

As mentioned, Postman's points are suited to the early 21st century as much as they were to the late 20th. However, it is interesting to consider what Postman would think about today's digitized world. Would he be vehemently against things like social networking, text messaging, and shared encyclopedias, or would he acknowledge that there are some very positive things about our computerized culture? Was he so tied to literary culture, that he did not want to entertain the possible benefits of the modern world? To my mind, the answers to these questions, though fun to think about, do not cheapen the writer's important message. Even if a person thinks that Postman is a man from a bygone era, he or she would be remiss to completely discount his criticisms of our obsession with "the image." Amusing Ourselves to Death is all the more interesting when read from our current vantage point, as we can look back and see that Postman was right about a great many things. We should be all the more on guard and all the more critical of entertainment media for that very reason.

The Verdict:
While it may have been written in 1985, Postman's arguments and his vision of the future are all the more haunting 25 years later. If you are at all interested in cultural studies, or reading about how media works and is designed, this is an excellent primer. It should be required reading not only for first year university students, but for every person who has ever touched a television remote.

4/5

Up Next:
Dragonwings by Laurence Yep.