Neil Postman

Examines the ways in which television has transformed public discourse--in politics, education, religion, science, and elsewhere--into a form of entertainment that undermines exposition, explanation and knowledge, in a special anniversary edition of the classic critique of the influence of the mass media on a democratic society. Reprint.

Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Bastien Vaucher

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

This perception of a news show as a stylized dramatic performance whose content has been staged largely to entertain is reinforced by several other features, including the fact that the average length of any story is forty-five seconds. While brevity does not always suggest triviality, in this case it clearly does. It is simply not possible to convey a sense of seriousness about any event if its implications are exhausted in less than one minute's time. In fact, it is quite obvious that TV news has no intention of suggesting that any story has any implications, for that would require viewers to continue to think about it when it is done and therefore obstruct their attending to the next story that waits panting in the wings. In any case, viewers are not pro- vided with much opportunity to be distracted from the next story since in all likelihood it will consist of some film footage. Pictures have little difficulty in overwhelming words, and short-circuiting introspection.

(John Quinn was the Editor-in-Chief of USA Today)

In the age of television, the paragraph is becoming the basic unit of news in print media. Moreover, Mr. Quinn need not fret too long about being deprived of awards. As other newspapers join in the transformation, the time cannot be far off when awards will be given for the best investigative sentence.

Terence Moran, I believe, lands on the target in saying that with media whose structure is biased toward furnishing images and fragments, we are deprived of access to an historical perspective. In the absence of continuity and context, he says, "bits of information cannot be integrated into an intelligent and consistent whole." We do not refuse to remember; neither do we find it exactly useless to remember. Rather, we are being rendered unfit to remember. For if remembering is to be something more than nostalgia, it requires a contextual basis- a theory, a vision, a metaphor - something within which facts can be organized and patterns discerned. The politics of image and instantaneous news provides no such context, is, in fact, hampered by attempting to provide any.

B.A. Bacigal

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by 

's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: 

's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, 

 warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in 

's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

 feared were those who would ban books. What 

 feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. 

 feared those who would deprive us of information. 

 feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. 

feared that the truth would be concealed from us. 

 feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. 

feared we would become a captive culture. 

 feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As 

remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "

failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions

 added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, 

 feared that what we desire will ruin us.

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