Amusing Ourselves to Death
Also known as Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Neil Postman's 1985 argument that television turns public discourse into entertainment.
At a glance
Key ideas
Form excludes the content, News as entertainment, "Now this" …
See all 6Influence
Amused to Death
Connections
Neil Postman, Marshall McLuhan and Brave New World
See all 3
Also on this page: Key facts · Links · Sources · Related pages
- Postman argues that the present is better described by Huxley's Brave New World, where people are kept docile by amusement, than by Orwell's 1984.
- Television can only carry certain kinds of ideas, so politics, religion and news become entertainment.
- Print sustained rational public argument; television replaces it with images and disconnected fragments.
- He reworks McLuhan's "the medium is the message" as "the medium is the metaphor".
Why it matters
- Written about television, it is read today as a warning about every screen-based medium; it is the classic case that form shapes what a culture can think.
Key facts
- Author
- Neil Postman1
- Published
- 19851
- Origin
- A talk on a panel about Orwell's 1984 at the 1984 Frankfurt Book Fair1
- 20th-anniversary edition
- 2005, reissued by his son Andrew1
- Reach
- Translated into 16 languages; about 200,000 copies sold1
Key ideas
-
Form excludes the content1
A medium can only sustain a certain level of ideas; television works against rational argument.
-
News as entertainment1
Theme music, commercial breaks and "talking hairdos" mean television news cannot be taken seriously.
-
"Now this"1
Television's phrase that signals no connection at all between one topic and the next.
-
The information-action ratio1
Most televised information is something a viewer can do nothing about.
-
Ads as drama1
Commercials are not testable claims but mythologies of happy people, where truth is not an issue.
-
The age of print1
Early US presidents were known by their written words; modern ones by their images.
Influence
-
Amused to Death1
Roger Waters named his 1992 album after the book.
Connections
Links
Sources
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