Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business |  | Author: Neil Postman
Creator: Jeff Riggenbach
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Category: Book
List Price: $32.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  124 reviews
Sales Rank: 1451819
Format: Unabridged
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.4
ISBN: 0786104600
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.234
EAN: 9780786104604
ASIN: 0786104600
Publication Date: April 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New! UNABRIDGED audiobook on CASSETTE direct from the manufacturer. Sturdy vinyl case.
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Book Description
Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman's groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining controlof our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 119 more reviews...
 Disinformation Means Misleading Information--Misplaced, Irrelevant, Fragmented or Superficial June 14, 2008
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
"In watching American television, one is reminded of George Bernard Shaw's remark on his first seeing the glittering neon signs of Broadway and 42nd Street at night. It must be beautiful, he said, if you cannot read." John Ackermann
Neil Postman in his book,'Amusing Ourselves To Death', looks at the impact of television culture on the way we live our lives, understand our present and future and how we gather our information. We need to understand the effects of living in a television society. As he says "We are in danger of creating a trivial culture that will spawn a race of people who adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." Once we are a television society, we have lost control. We can attempt to control television's influence when we understand the dangers. Neil Postman suggests that Americans ask 'what we are laughing about and why we have stopped thinking.' We have all heard the phrase, The Dumbing of America.
Roger Waters, of 'Pink Floyd' read Postman's book, and he was so taken with the message that one of the best CD's of this era was written. The song 'Amused To Death" tells us the story.
The little ones sit by their TV screens
No thoughts to think
No tears to cry
All sucked dry
Down to the very last breath
Bartender what is wrong with me
Why I am so out of breath
The captain said excuse me ma'am
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
Amused itself to death"
Ackerman tells us that "Television has altered the meaning of "being informed' by giving us disinformation. Disinformation means misleading information;misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information. Information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads us away from knowing. The television industry did not deliberately set out to misinform us, but when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the result."
Over the past fifty years since the advent of television, we have allowed conversation and communication to become trivial, and to lead into entertainment. TV is a medium of entertainment. TV is a series of programmed images and pictures. Unlike a book we do not have to concentrate to obtain the meaning of a picture. This is the mechanism by which TV can make any subject meaningless and trivial. It is possible to "amuse one's self to death", considering that the first thing to go will be our vision of reality and to comment intelligently. And this is why Roger Waters CD "Amused to Death" had the power to unleash our subconscious. We are living the album. We are all slowly amusing ourselves to death. We are entertaining ourselves into a stupor. The best things on television is junk, and no one is threatened by it. We do not measure a culture by its output of junk, but by what we claim as significant.
I would think that several minutes of murder and violence would be enough for many sleepless nights. We watch the news because we know that the 'news' is not to be taken seriously, that it is all in fun, so to speak. Everything about a news show tells us this; the good looking newscasters, their pleasant banter, the music that opens and closes the show, the film footage, the humorous commercials. These suggest that what we have just seen is no cause for crying. A news show, is a format for entertainment, not for education or reflection. No one goes to a movie to find out about government policy or the latest scientific advances. No one buys a record to find out the baseball scores or the weather or the latest murder. But everyone goes to television for all these things, which is why television plays so powerfully throughout our land. Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Neil Postman says, "For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage, but that the stage is located in Las Vegas, Nevada."
We know that no matter how grave news may appear, we soon shall see commercials that will devalue the importance of the news. This is a key element of news and that allows us to believe that television news is not designed as a serious form of public communication. Our teenagers in particular are taught to believe that television is entertainment, so that the nightly newscast should not be taken as a serious responsibility.
This past political season is a prime example of the myriad of issues that have not been examined, but the entertainment value of the candidates has been examined ad nauseam. One reason why the political contest starts as soon as the President is sworn into office. What have we become, why are we laughing, the Dumbing of America is here.
Highly, Highly Recommended. prisrob 06-14-08
 The media is the message again June 7, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Essentially a redux of Marshall McLuhan's The Media is the Message, it's an argument that the dominant communications media powerfully affect reasoning (Postman's preferred term is epistemology, which is probably more accurate and to the point), and that we were a lot better off as individuals and as a body politic when that effect came primarily from print rather than TV and other visual media. He makes a pretty strong case. Although he's not happy about things, he's not a ranting old crank like some Yale literary critics. He maintains a sense of humor, he's a good writer, and he's down to earth, straightforward and concise (while McLuhan can be otherwise). Well worth the read.
Judge a book by its cover April 28, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Just today I logged on to one of the biggest news channels' website (CNN) and on the front page under "Popular News" was the following headline: "Is that Miley Cyrus flashing her bra on the Web?" I had just finished my second reading of this book and it seemed like a stark reminder of what Neil Postman was talking about over 20 years ago, how television has drastically changed our culture and redefined everything in our society from news to politics, education and even religion. I don't know of any book written during my lifetime that is more socially relevant and whose message is more important to be read and understood by the general public.
In Chapter 6, "The Age of Show Business", Postman writes, "To say television is entertaining is merely banal. Such a fact is hardly threatening to a culture, not even worth writing a book about. It may even be a reason for rejoicing. Life, as we like to say, is not a highway strewn with flowers. The sight of a few blossoms here and there may make our journey more endurable." He goes on to point out that the problem is not that there are entertaining shows on television, but that in order to accommodate itself to the demands of television, *everything* must be presented as entertainment. In order to generate ratings, advertisers and ultimately revenue, no subject is too serious to be presented in any way other than the one that attracts the most viewers. When the local news reports about a murder, it has no relevant meaning to our lives and it's not told so much to inform us of the tragedy of a murder but because it is the most exciting and what people want to see. News producers have a motto for this, "If it bleeds it leads."
Probably the most alarming example Postman cites is how television has changed politics and political discourse. This is where the transformation from a word-based media to an image-based media is felt the most strongly. Politicians have realized that the content of what they say is now largely irrelevant compared to how they appear, how they present themselves. Postman uses the example that when Ted Kennedy made a run for the presidency, Richard Nixon offered him the following advice: "Lose twenty pounds." Nixon had been in politics most of his adult life and knew the name of the game well, that one's ideas, beliefs, actions and words are now almost completely irrelevant in a world where nearly everyone has started getting their information from television only. Before Mike Huckabee entered this political race, he lost over a hundred pounds. If you look at photographs of presidents throughout our history, you notice that most of them certainly never got anywhere in life because of their looks and some of them are downright ugly men. Political races are now completely decided in the arena of television and their coverage of it has become absurd and embarassing. This is the change that Postman has tried to point out, that a literate culture that depends on the printed word for information and communication creates a vastly different culture from one that depends on images, ten second soundbites and information that has no context or relevance to anyone's life, like what Miley Cyrus or Paris Hilton is up to.
It has been over twenty years since Neil Postman wrote this but his ideas are even more relevant today. This book should be read and understood by everyone but it mostly falls on deaf ears. I think it was Mark Twain who said that the man who doesn't read has no advantage over the man who can't read. Television is now an integral part of life not only in America but in Europe, China and pretty much any other developed nation. This would not be a problem but, as Postman points out, one of the nasty side effects of television is that it has degraded literacy rates, so that every year we hear that people are reading less and less. People and specifically children spend an alarming amount of their free time watching television and to get them to read you practically have to force it upon them. Once in a while a book like Harry Potter will become a hit but for many children and even adults that was the only book they purchased or even attempted to read in an entire year. We hear that children in this country are performing worse every year in school but the finger is never pointed at the obvious culprit because we hear about this on TV.
Intrinsic Value of the Medium March 31, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Neil Postman posits that the medium of communication has value inherent and intrinsic in itself. Postman argues that the medium conveys shades of meaning that are not spelled out in any intentional communication. Sometimes the medium can convey meaning wholly independent of the message itself. The concept that the medium has value and meaning that is both dependant and independent of the communication conveyed is supremely logical.
After exploring the power of a metaphor Postman explains why the medium is like a metaphor. (Postman, 1985 p.13)"...the introduction into a culture of a technique such as writing or a clock is not merely an extension of man's power to bind time but a transformation of his way of thinking - and, of course, of the content of his culture". The technique, or the medium, transforms the very mindset or pattern of thinking by itself without any other variables like message added.
There have been other communications theorists who have put forward the concept that the medium had a value independent of the message. Most notable in my mind of these theorists is Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan took the value of the medium to heights that Postman does not attempt. McLuhan proposed and argued that the medium was in itself the message. McLuhan argued that inherent meaning of the medium was so great and overbearing that the message that was conveyed was by nature the result of the medium rather then any intent on the part of the communicator.
Postman position is in great contrast to McLuhan regardless of its similarities. Similar between the two theorists is recognition that the medium has value and meaning independent of the message itself. Also similar is the concept that medium changes the culture and the individual mindset. (McLuhan 1964, p.151)"The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message." Postman argues a very similar thought when says (Postman, 1985 p.11)"In Munford's great book Technics and Civilization, he show how, beginning in the fourteenth century, the clock made us into time-keepers, and then times-savers, and now times-servers." Both philosophers argue the medium conveys a message. The difference is that McLuhan argues that the medium is the primary message Postman argues that understanding the meaning and message inherent in the medium allows us to control the message.
The example of the message just being a byproduct of the medium with the metaphor of the robber and the meat, we know that McLuhan saw the stated message secondary to the medium itself. Postman on the other hand argued that the medium was important and gave meaning to the message it was more in the sense of a metaphor and could actually aid in the understanding of the message rather then hinder the message.
Postman argued further that although it was not natural with work the medium and the message can be partners rather then a either or equation. (Postman, 1985 p.14)"And yet, such digging becomes easier if we start from the assumption that in every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of the thing itself."
The view of the medium that Postman offers us is by far and away the most hopeful that I have found thus far. If we can by understanding the medium clearly communicate our message then we have a clear roadmap in determining our own life and decisions. A message of personal control through knowledge and work is far more personally fulfilling then trying to realize that we have little or no impact on a situation.
The Magic of Imagery March 10, 2008
Ah! What a succinct and clear explanation of how the world of imagery has overtaken the world of writing and how this change has affected the human psyche. Postman elaborates, with hundreds of examples, how TV has changed the way we think and act in today's world. He compares it, with no small authenticity, with the words of the likes of Lincoln and Douglas and how people in those times were ready to spend an evening listening intently to speeches delivered by these great men. Not now, not today: we are slaves of the Show Business syndrome now.
Read this book and you will be 'shocked' and 'awed' by the reality it presents.
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