Amusing Ourselves to Death

Two writers at the beginning of the twentieth century prophesied the death of Western culture. One writer imagined culture being crushed to death in the grasp of a totalitarian government bent on obtaining absolute control. The other envisioned laughter, distraction, and frivolity as the weapons which would drive off culture. Both authors were correct. George Orwell foresaw the reign of the communist states which nearly smothered Russian culture. And Aldous Huxley anticipated the surrender of American culture to soma. However, it appears that the drug has not taken the form of a pill, but it is “Television [that] is the soma of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World” (Postman 111).

American culture is dying and television is what is killing it. Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death seeks to spell out how television is killing our culture. It is not an evil plot by nefarious individuals that has orchestrated the death of our culture, instead it is the way television has reshaped the way we carry out discussions about ourselves and the world around us. Simply put:

Our conversations about nature and about ourselves are conducted in whatever “languages” we find it possible and convenient to employ. We do not see nature or intelligence or human motivation or ideology as “it” is but only as our languages are. And our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture. (Postman 15)

The media that has been increasingly used to carry out our public discourse (that is, our informational, educational, political, religious, and commercial forms of conversation) is the television. In the past, the written word was the main vehicle for such dialogues, but today television is the primary mode of cultural communication. And “as typography moves to the periphery of our culture and television takes its place at the center, the seriousness, clarity and, above all, value of public discourse declines” (Postman 29).

The seriousness of public discourse has suffered because television works best when it is not being serious. There is no conspiracy, just the fact that “good” television is entertaining. If it isn’t, then no one will choose to watch. But entertainment is not what is causing damage to our culture, on the contrary, “the problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining” (Postman 87). Even this fact would not make television powerful enough to destroy our culture. As long as we could separate what makes “good” television from what makes good public discourse we would be safe. But we have not been able to do that. Now, what makes “good” television is the same as what makes a good debate or sermon or class.

For example, in the political sphere, we no longer choose candidates, mainly, on their policies or their grasp of the issues, but on the character they “play” on television and how well they are able to appear in “debates” (which have little resemblance to the actual debates of the past). In the commercial arena, TV commercials no longer provide us with information about the product or service; instead they try to make us laugh or to identify somehow with the slogan or logo. At church, sermons and the “worship time” are not intended to provide parishioners with an atmosphere in which they can commune with and worship their God. No, “good” churches are the ones that have rock musicians playing lyrically and theologically simple songs and a pastor that tells funny jokes and looks good on camera. At school, the “good” teachers are not the ones that force their students to sit still and study, but are instead the ones who sing songs or play games with the students. Our public discourse in education, commerce, religion and politics is all about being good entertainment.

Television promotes the idea that everything should be entertaining. This idea is not only harmful to the seriousness of our public discourse, but destroys the clarity and value any viable thought may have had. There is practically no way of effectively forming complex ideas, constructing arguments to support those ideas, and providing documentation to strengthen those arguments using television (you could conceivably do this with TV, but chances are very good that practically no one would watch such a dull program) . An undertaking like the one I have mentioned would be much better suited for the written word. Television provides people with a wide variety of entertaining images that change every few seconds and require little or no previous knowledge to enjoy. Every episode is a self contained package. Even shows that require a minimal understanding of the events that preceded the current episode open with the phrase “Previously on …” and a dizzying montage of images and one-liners can catch you up completely in less than thirty seconds. However, complex ideas are not self contained packages. You can’t watch a thirty second montage to catch you up on Trigonometry or the history of the United States or Aristotle’s metaphysics. Serious, valuable ideas and concepts cannot be conveyed adequately via television. It simply isn’t the media for that kind of discourse.

Television has done a great deal of damage to our culture already. The effects it has wreaked in politics, education, commerce, and religion are more obvious now in 2008 than when Postman penned his book in 1985, but our culture has yet to completely die. And it may have hope yet. Television and other new technologies will continue to affect our culture. Any attempts to stop the effects of new and existing technologies are already futile. Instead, the best we may be able to hope for is a recognition of how television affects the way we communicate with each other about important matters so that we don’t become the world Huxley imagined: “for in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking” (Postman 163).


Reference:
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking Penguin. 1985.