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In this eloquent and persuasive book, Neil Postman examines the deep and broad effects of television culture on the manner in which we conduct our public affairs, and how "entertainment values" have corrupted the very way we think. As politics, news, religion, education, and commerce are given less and less expression in the form of the printed word, they are rapidly being reshaped to suit the requirements of television. And because television is a visual medium, whose images are most pleasurably apprehended when they are fast-moving and dynamic, discourse on television has little tolerance for argument, hypothesis, or explanation. Postman argues that public discourse-the advancing of arguments in logical order for the public good, once a hallmark of American culture-is being converted from exposition and explanation to entertainment.… (more)
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We are more fortunate in the
Equally, there are other voices in America who are aware of this problem and work against it. But they are a minority.
Interestingly, I'm re-watching 'Battlestar Galactica' (the re-boot) at the moment. It is a well-crafted show, with good plots (at least, until it got to the point where the show-runners ran out of ideas and began making stuff - especially mystical stuff - up as they went along), an interesting premise and a range of issues. But I notice two things about it: 1) episodes are shorter than their equivalents for 'Star Trek' or 'Babylon 5', reflecting longer advert breaks; and (perhaps more importantly), 2) by the story being set in a non-Earth society, the cultural references that the other shows inserted in the scripts - because Roddenberry and Straczinski are/were themselves educated people who wanted to share that
education - are not present. The earlier shows 'sneaked' references into their stories that would take the inquisitive viewer into a wider world of cultural exposure; but by the opening of the 21st century, a science fiction show like 'Galactica' that was complex and demanding in terms of its narrative no longer felt a need to expand its viewers' consciousnesses as well. Postman's hypothesis wins out in the end, it seems.
We see the eight-minute attention span reflected in documentaries in the UK as well - sometimes even in BBC documentaries that are intended to be sold abroad, as they have to conform to a commercial tv pattern (watching
popular BBC documentary shows, I can often pick out where the adverts will go when the show is re-broadcast on a commercial channel). On completely commercially-originated documentaries, this is reflected in the recapitulation of "the story so far" when the show comes back after the commercial break.
I found the chapter on US tele-evangelism very interesting. It suggests one reason why Islam is mis-represented so much in mainstream media, because (on my reading), the messages of Islam do not suggest ways of making yourself feel good, but in doing the right thing. And that can't be reduced to an eight-minute sound-bite that reinforces other, less spiritual messages that the medium wants to promote at the same time.
I'd like to think that UK audiences are sufficiently sophisticated to spot these sort of issues. (Perhaps one reason why there are segments of the UK political world who decry college and university 'media studies' courses, because those courses enable those who have done them to analyse and deconstruct what they are seeing.) (Hopefully.) In a way, the book has told me nothing I didn't already know, but it put it in a context of the development of US television media. The lessons it gives us are equally important for the digital media age. I see just the same forces working in social media to
say "Look over here at THIS" so as to direct attention away from THAT. My one concern is that the book preaches somewhat to the converted, though by spreading the word, the message can sometimes get to new ears.
Otherwise, we shall end up in the world of 'Fahrenheit 451'; and occasionally, I see the underlying ideology of that world - "books are dangerous because they make you feel your own reactions to what you see, rather than what you are required to feel and think' - trying very hard to break through into our reality.
Author Neil Postman begins by comparing George Orwell's 1984 and Alex Huxley's Brave New World. Both books made bold
This is a book that changed the way I watch TV, listen to the media, view politics/politicians, understand education in America, think about my own intelligence, and think about the state/fate of the world. It is really thought provoking and very relevant.
Our instinct is to turn to more intelligent programs rather than watching the fluff on television. But Postman's concern is not the content of what we are watching, but the form. It is not that the History Channel has very many interesting and educational programs. It is that even the History Channel's way of presenting them is doing more harm than good.
Contrary to what we've been taught, the medium used itself carries something with it. Television in particular has come at a high cost by the very fact that it because our source for all information for some time. Postman might write about the smart phone today, if he were alive. The situation was become more dire, since it is no longer a very heavy box in our living room that is controlling the flow of information, but a very light box in our pockets. No longer is work or the restaurant a break from media, but we are very willing to read a text at the table.
The solution here is awareness. It is rather difficult to survive in business anymore without at least a computer, if not a smart phone. These are not things we can do without anymore. But being aware of what is happening to us may change the way we approach things. Our business typically want us to be multi-taskers, jumping from project to project. This book, as well as those other articles I've been reading, have convinced me that maybe it would be very good for my brain to sit down with a book in the evening and read for a while.
Originally published in 1985, the author gives a deep dive into how TV has changed and shaped modern education, political campaigns, news and religion. He gives a very understandable argument that the overall effect of TV as a medium has been
And this was long before 24-7 cable news, social media and twitter. Not to mention how we are now all glued to our smart phones. I looked to see if he had written a more recent book with these 21st century inventions, but sadly he passed away in 2003. I would love to see if someone has picked up and continued his work. I think he would have a field day with smart phones!
But, as someone who is not a fan of televised news, I nodded a bit in the politics chapter.
Neil Postman
This was a book about how subtle and overtly the way we communicate and correspond have been altered. That we are quickly dumb down ourselves. That when there were debates during the times of the civil war people
It's amazing how well this book has stood the test of time. We are still amusing ourselves to death, though now we have a new medium, the Internet. Our world is even more fragmented, more information overload, but the Internet restores typography to an extent, in bite size chunks. I wonder what