Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)
I had seen this book by Neil Postman quoted in so many different places over several years that it had been on my list to read for a while. My wife and I have read it together this year, just as a supplement to our considerations of how to use various media in our own lives and with our children.
The book’s main theme concerns the particularly costly effects of television – a medium that forces everything into entertainment and values entertainment inordinately above all else. But the remedies were only along those lines of understanding and using television for what it is, not any attempts to alter what television is. The book is overall much longer on diagnosis (and prognosis) and much shorter on prescription.
We need to understand something of the ways our technology and media effect our assumptions, thought patterns and cultures – to some extent, the general ways that any media imports ideology, but more importantly, the particular ways that whatever medium we’re using (he was considering television) effects us.
The real dangers, he said, are when historical inventions like the alphabet, the printing press, television (now so many more digital developments) become so predominant in a culture that people forget that these things are not inherent to truth and reality; there was a time when thoughts and information were mediated in other ways, and the particular ways they’re now mediated naturally carry consequences and implications – to the point of effecting both content itself and the way the users construct their own world-views.
A few excerpts: “You will not find two high school seniors in a hundred who could tell you – within a five hundred year margin of error – when the alphabet was invented. I suspect most do not even know that the alphabet was invented. … they appear puzzled, as if one asked, When were trees invented, or clouds? It is the very principle of myth…that it transforms history into nature” (pages 162). His suggested objective for educators was that students “learn how to distance themselves from their forms of information” (p 163).
And so demythologizing our media was the essence of Postman’s suggestions. Teaching people to engage television (or any medium) with understanding. Promoting awareness, simply recognizing that media effects not only the content but also the epistemological assumptions we form. In order to use television in helpful ways, we have to understand it for what it is – not a basic part of the natural order of truth and information, but one particular medium that carries particular characteristics. Promoting and teaching that awareness is Postman’s basic suggestion.
Postman’s only really practical suggestion was to teach people to question their media and to think about it. He didn’t mention the family much as a context for learning how to watch tv; instead he talked about what could be done in classrooms.
As for our family, I think that some standards for how much tv we watch each week is probably a fine baseline measure (although Amber and I aren’t great about counting that; we just strive to maintain a disposition that defaults away from, not toward, tv. Then, we sometimes say, “ok, let’s watch ______” instead of “what should we watch?” or “let’s see what’s on.”)
I don’t think that’s too high of a bar. But part of the built-in norms working for us is that we only get the basic 15 channels or so that come free. I think the best thing we do currently is deliberately trying to cultivate understanding. For instance, I will try to ask our four-year-old to identify what each commercial is trying to sell; some are easy (Ford trucks), others are remarkably subtle (Nike). (Our two-year-old doesn’t even sit still to watch much, and I don’t want to call his attention to it). We talk during the programs and ask content questions, or if we’re watching a ball game we talk about how the game itself works.
The focus on television feels dated now. I assume our generation and our children will have to wrestle with other mediums more than TV (although the historical shifts Postman described have not reverted and certainly condition us; i.e., we carry some high expectations for all things to be entertaining). The principles for how media work, how they carry their own epistemologies and how crucial awareness is to healthy and helpful usage all seem very valuable, still.
After posting the review, then watching Seinfeld reruns two nights in a row, it makes a lot of sense why a show about nothing would be one of the best uses of television ever. Excellent employment of the medium for what it is.