When I was younger, my dad used to tell me that if I watched
too much television I would turn into one. For some reason I believed him, and I would
make it a priority to stop watching television after a short period of time until
I realized it was impossible for me to literally turn into a television. In Amusing Our Selves to Death: Public
Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Postman speaks of television as
dangerous because it attacks the literate culture. He says the problem is not that television
content is entertaining, but that the television content is presented as
entertaining. What that means is that we
should not take television seriously. In
today’s society a huge majority of people watch television because it
entertains us, but this entertaining content is all show business that frames
our culture. Even news shows are made to
entertain rather than inform us about world events. Television has transformed the way we
communicate and has changed our views on how to live in the real world.
Television is dangerous in many ways, for example it
abandons the Age of Exposition’s logical thinking and reason. If television already affects us in these
ways, what is the difference between turning into a television and becoming, as
Aldous Huxley claimed, narcoticized by technological diversions? Aren’t they both as equally dangerous? If we keep letting television affect us in this way, will we
turn into a Huxleyan world?
I believe that Postman is just being a Drama Queen. He may make some valid points in the transgression of the literate culture but being entertained isn't going to collapse our society. I believe that-like everything else-we are going to build from the experience of media entertainment. It will not be the end of us because we, as a culture, will transcend just as we have transcended from the beginning of humanities existence.
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