Amusing Ourselves to Death Book by Neil Postman Report Length: 1250 words (5 typed double-spaced pages) As part of the writing flag for the course, this a

Amusing Ourselves to Death Book by Neil Postman Report Length: 1250 words (5 typed double-spaced pages)

As part of the writing flag for the course, this assignment is to read and critically review the first required book, Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (revised edition). You are required to read and review the entire book. You should spend no more than the first two pages of your review summarizing the contents of the book. In this section, you could discuss what the author writes about, and what he does not discuss. As an example, what elements in the book are treated with priority and privilege? What is required in this section is more than just a simple synopsis of the book. Instead, you should give an accurate and balanced description of the book’s relevant content.

The next two pages of the review should consist of your critical reflections on the book. What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? Again, as an example, you might discuss the language that the author uses, and what this has to say about inclusivity, or his understanding of the role(s) of women, children and men. Remember that this review should be a contribution to scholarly discussion and, therefore, be free of purely personal polemic. In this section, you may also wish to examine the theoretical framework used by author, and how that framework leads to the work that he has written.

Finally, you should have a one-page conclusion in which you discuss the impact of the book for the academic study of Islam in particular and religion in general. This conclusion could take any number of directions. For example, you might wish to discuss what the author presumes about the nature and function of religion in America. Or you might want to talk about the relevance of a book written 35 years ago to our contemporary situation.

A percentage of the grade for the review will be based on style and presentation, taking into account such factors as language, usage, grammar, spelling, etc. Please consult the grading standards outline before you begin your book review. Table of Contents
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Foreword
Part I.
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
–
The Medium Is the Metaphor
Media as Epistemology
Typographic America
The Typographic Mind
The Peek-a-Boo World
Part II.
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
11.
The Age of Show Business
“Now … This”
Shuffle Off to Bethlehem
Reach Out and Elect Someone
– Teaching as an Amusing Activity
– The Huxleyan Warning
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acclaim for Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death
“As a fervent evangelist of the age of Hollywood, I publicly opposed Neil Postman’s dark
picture of our media-saturated future. But time has proved Postman right. He accurately
foresaw that the young would inherit a frantically all-consuming media culture of glitz, gossip,
and greed.”
—Camille Paglia
“A brillant, powerful and important book. This is an indictment that Postman has laid down
and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one.”
—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World
“He starts where Marshall McLuhan left off, constructing his arguments with the resources of
a scholar and the wit of a raconteur.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“This comes along at exactly the right moment…. We must confront the challenge of his
prophetic vision.”
—Jonathan Kozol
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
For the last third of the twentieth century, Neil Postman was one of America’s foremost social
critics and education and communications theorists, and his ideas and accessibility won him
an international following. An influential and revered teacher, he was professor for more than
forty years at New York University, where he founded the renowned Media Ecology program.
Blessed with an unusually far-reaching mind, he authored more than twenty books, producing
major works on education (Teaching as a Subversive Activity, The End of Education),
childhood (The Disappearance of Childhood), language (Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk), news (How
to Watch TV News, with Steve Powers) and technology’s impact on culture (Technopoly).
Amusing Ourselves to Death remains his most reverberating and widely read book, translated
into more than a dozen languages. He was educated at the State University of New York at
Fredonia and Columbia University. He died in October 2003, at the age of seventy-two.
Andrew Postman, Neil’s son, is the author of five books, including the novel Now I Know
Everything. For several years he was a monthly columnist for Glamour and his work has
appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and New York Magazine, among
numerous publications.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
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(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
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Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
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Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin Inc. 1985
Published in Penguin Books 1986
This edition with an introduction by Andrew Postman published 2006
Copyright © Neil Postman, 1985
Introduction copyright © Andrew Postman, 2005
All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment is made to The New York Times Company for permission to reprint from “Combining TV, Books,
Computers” by Edward Fiske, which appeared in the August 7, 1984 issue of The New York Times. Copyright © 1984 by The
New York Times Company.
A section of this book was supported by a commission from the Annenberg Scholars Program, Annenberg School of
Communications, University of Southern California. Specifically, portions of chapters six and seven formed part of a paper
delivered at the Scholars Conference, “Creating Meaning: Literacies of our Time,” February 1984.
eISBN : 978-1-101-04262-5
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Introduction to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Now this?
A book of social commentary published twenty years ago? You’re not busy enough writing emails, returning calls, downloading tunes, playing games (online, PlayStation, Game Boy),
checking out Web sites, sending text messages, IM’ing, Tivoing, watching what you’ve Tivoed,
browsing through magazines and newspapers, reading new books—now you’ve got to stop and
read a book that first appeared in the last century, not to mention the last millennium? Come
on. Like your outlook on today could seriously be rocked by this plain-spoken provocation
about The World of 1985, a world yet to be infiltrated by the Internet, cell phones, PDAs, cable
channels by the hundreds, DVDs, call-waiting, caller ID, blogs, flat-screens, HDTV, and iPods?
Is it really plausible that this slim volume, with its once-urgent premonitions about the
nuanced and deep-seated perils of television, could feel timely today, the Age of Computers ?
Is it really plausible that this book about how TV is turning all public life (education, religion,
politics, journalism) into entertainment; how the image is undermining other forms of
communication, particularly the written word; and how our bottomless appetite for TV will
make content so abundantly available, context be damned, that we’ll be overwhelmed by
“information glut” until what is truly meaningful is lost and we no longer care what we’ve lost
as long as we’re being amused…. Can such a book possibly have relevance to you and The
World of 2006 and beyond?
I think you’ve answered your own question.
I, too, think the answer is yes, but as Neil Postman’s son, I’m biased. Where are we to find
objective corroboration that reading Amusing Ourselves to Death in 2006, in a society that
worships TV and technology as ours does, is nearly an act of defiance, one of those I-didn’trealize-it-was-dark-until-someone-flipped-the-switch encounters with an illuminating intellect?
Let’s not take the word of those who studied under my father at New York University, many of
whom have gone on to teach in their own college (and occasionally high school) courses what
he argues in these pages. These fine minds are, as my father’s was, of a bygone era, a
different media environment, and their biases may make them, as they made him, hostage of
another time, perhaps incapable of seeing the present world as it is rather than as they’d like
it to be. (One man’s R rating is another’s PG-13.) And just to make a clean slate of it, let’s not
rely, either, on the opinions of the numerous readers of the original edition of Amusing
Ourselves to Death (translated into a dozen languages, including German, Indonesian,
Turkish, Danish and, most recently, Chinese), so many of whom wrote to my father, or
buttonholed him at public speaking events, to tell him how dead-on his argument was. Their
support, while genuine, was expressed over the last two decades, so some of it might be
outdated. We’ll disregard the views of these teachers and students, businesspeople and
artists, conservatives and liberals, atheists and churchgoers, and all those parents. (We’ll also
disregard Roger Waters, cofounder of the legendary band Pink Floyd, whose solo album,
Amused to Death, was inspired by the book. Go, Dad.)
So whose opinion matters?
In rereading this book to figure out what might be said about it twenty years later, I tried to
think the way my father would, since he could no longer. He died in October 2003, at age
seventy-two. Channeling him, I realized immediately who offers the best test of whether
Amusing Ourselves to Death is still relevant.
College kids.
Today’s eighteen-to-twenty-two-year-olds live in a vastly different media environment from
the one that existed in 1985. Their relationship to TV differs. Back then, MTV was in its late
infancy. Today, news scrolls and corner-of-the-screen promos and “reality” shows and
infomercials and nine hundred channels are the norm. And TV no longer dominates the media
landscape. “Screen time” also means hours spent in front of the computer, video monitor, cell
phone, and handheld. Multitasking is standard. Communities have been replaced by
demographics. Silence has been replaced by background noise. It’s a different world.
(It’s different for all of us, of course—children, young teens, parents, seniors—but college
kids form an especially rich grouping, poised between innocence and sophistication, respect
and irreverence.)
When today’s students are assigned Amusing Ourselves to Death, almost none of them have
heard of Neil Postman or been exposed to his ideas (he wrote more than twenty books, on
such subjects as education, language, childhood, and technology), suggesting that their views,
besides being pertinent, are relatively uncorrupted. I called several of my father’s former
students who are now teachers, and who teach Amusing Ourselves to Death in courses that
examine some cross-section of ideas about TV, culture, computing, technology, mass media,
communications, politics, journalism, education, religion, and language. I asked the teachers
what their students thought of the book, particularly its timeliness. The teachers were kind
enough to share many of their students’ thoughts, from papers and class discussion.
“In the book [Postman] makes the point that there is no reflection time in the world
anymore,” said a student named Jonathan. “When I go to a restaurant, everyone’s on their cell
phone, talking or playing games. I have no ability to sit by myself and just think.” Said Liz:
“It’s more relevant now. In class we asked if, now that there’s cable, which there really wasn’t
when the book was written, are there channels that are not just about entertainment? We tried
to find one to disprove his theory. One kid said the Weather Channel but another mentioned
how they have all those shows on tornadoes and try to make weather fun. The only good
example we came up with was C-SPAN, which no one watches.” Cara: “Teachers are not
considered good if they don’t entertain their classes.” Remarked Ben (whose professor called
him the “class skeptic,” and who, when the book was assigned, groaned, “Why do we have to
read this?”): “Postman says TV makes everything about the present—and there we were,
criticizing the book because it wasn’t published yesterday.” Reginald: “This book is not just
about TV.” Sandra: “The book was absolutely on target about the 2004 presidential election
campaign and debates.” One student pointed out that Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his
candidacy for the California governorship on The Tonight Show. Maria noted that the
oversimplification and thinking “fragmentation” promoted by TV-watching may have
contributed to our Red State/ Blue State polarization. Another noted the emergence of a new
series of “Bible magazines,” whose cover format is modeled on teen magazines, with cover
lines like “Top 10 Tips to Getting Closer to God”—“it’s religion mimicking an MTV kind of
world,” said the student. Others wondered if the recent surge in children diagnosed with
attention deficit disorder was an indication of a need to be constantly stimulated.
Kaitlin switched her major to print journalism after reading the book. Andrea would
recommend it to anyone concerned with media ethics. Mike said even those who won’t agree
with the book’s arguments—as he did not—should still read it, to be provoked. Many students
(“left wingers and right wingers both,” said the professor) were especially taken with my
father’s “Now … this” idea: the phenomenon whereby the reporting of a horrific event—a rape
or a five-alarm fire or global warming—is followed immediately by the anchor’s cheerfully
exclaiming “Now … this,” which segues into a story about Janet Jackson’s exposed nipple or a
commercial for lite beer, creating a sequencing of information so random, so disparate in scale
and value, as to be incoherent, even psychotic.
Another teacher remarked that students love how the book is told—by a writer who’s at
heart a storyteller. “They love that he refers to books and people they’ve heard of,” she said.
Alison: “He doesn’t dumb it down—he makes allusions to great art and poetry.” Matt said that,
ironically, “Postman proves you can be entertaining—and without a single picture.” Of her
students’ impressions, one teacher said, “He speaks to them without jargon, in a way in which
they feel respected. They feel he’s just having a conversation with them, but inspiring them to
think at the same time.” Another professor noted that “kids come to the conclusion that TV is
almost exclusively interested in presenting show business and sensationalism and in making
money. Amazing as it seems, they had never realized that before.”
It no doubt appears to you that, after all my grand talk of objectivity, I’ve stacked the deck in
favor of the book’s virtue. But that’s honestly the overwhelming reaction—at least among a
slice of Generation Y, a population segment that one can imagine has as many reasons not to
like the book as to like it. One professor said that in a typical class of twenty-five students who
read the book, twenty-three will write papers that either praise, or are animated by, its ideas;
two will say the book was a stupid waste of time. A 92 percent rating? There’s no one who
expresses an idea—certainly no politician—who wouldn’t take that number.
Of course, students had criticisms of the book, too. Many didn’t appreciate the assault on
television—a companion to them, a source of pleasure and comfort—and felt as if they had to
defend their culture. Some considered TV their parents’ culture, not theirs—they are of the
Internet—so the book’s theses were less relevant. Some thought my father was anti-change,
that he so exalted the virtues fostered by the written word and its culture, he was not open to
acknowledging many of the positive social improvements TV had brought about, and what a
democratic and leveling force it could be. Some disagreed with his assessment that TV is in
complete charge: remote control, an abundance of channels, and VCRs and DVRs all enable
you to “customize” your programming, even to skip commercials. A common critique was that
he should have offered solutions; you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, after all, so
what now?
And there was this: Yeah, what he said in 1985 had come startlingly true, we had amused
ourselves to death … so why read it?
One professor uses the book in conjunction with an experiment she calls an “e-media fast.”
For twenty-four hours, each student must refrain from electronic media. When she announces
the assignment, she told me, 90 percent of the students shrug, thinking it’s no big deal. But
when they realize all the things they must give up for a whole day—cell phone, computer,
Internet, TV, car radio, etc.—“they start to moan and groan.” She tells them they can still read
books. She acknowledges it will be a tough day, though for roughly eight of the twenty-four
hours they’ll be asleep. She says if they break the fast—if they answer the phone, say, or
simply have to check e-mail—they must begin from scratch.
“The papers I get back are amazing,” says the professor. “They have titles like ‘The Worst
Day of My Life’ or ‘The Best Experience I Ever Had,’ always extreme. ‘I thought I was going to
die,’ they’ll write. ‘I went to turn on the TV but if I did I realized, my God, I’d have to start all
over again.’ Each student has his or her own weakness—for some it’s TV, some the cell phone,
some the Internet or their PDA. But no matter how much they hate abstaining, or how hard it
is to hear the phone ring and not answer it, they take time to do things they haven’t done in
years. They actually walk down the street to visit their friend. They have extended
conversations. One wrote, ‘I thought to do things I hadn’t thought to do ever.’ The experience
changes them. Some are so affected that they determine to fast on their own, one day a
month. In that course I take them through the classics—from Plato and Aristotle through today
—and years later, when former students write or call to say hello, the thing they remember is
the media fast.”
Like the media fast, Amusing Ourselves to Death is a call to action. It is, in my father’s
words, “an inquiry … and a lamentation,” yes, but it aspires to greater things. It is an
exhortation to do something. It’s a counterpunch to what my father thought daily TV news
was: “inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to
any meaningful action.” Dad was a lover of history, a champion for collective memory and
what we now quaintly refer to as “civilizing influences,” but he did not live in the past. His
book urges us to claim a way to be more alert and engaged. His ideas are still here, he isn’t,
and it’s time for the reins to be grabbed by those of a new generation, natives of this brave
new world who understand it better.
Twenty years isn’t what it used to be. Where once it stood for a single generation, now it
seems to stand for three. Everything moves faster. “Change changed,” my father wrote in
another book.
A lot has changed since this book appeared. News consumption among the young is way
down. Network news and entertainment divisions are far more entwined, despite protests
(some genuine, some perhaps not) by the news divisions. When Jon Stewart, host of Comedy
Central’s The Daily Show, went on CNN’s Crossfire to make this very point—that serious news
and show business ought to be distinguishable, for the sake of public discourse and the
republic—the hosts seemed incapable of even understanding the words coming out of his
mouth. The sound bite is now more like a sound nibble, and it’s rare, even petulant, to hear
someone challenge its absurd insubstantiality; “the question of how television affects us has
receded into the background” (Dad’s words, not mine, from 1985). Fox News has established
itself, and thrived. Corporate conglomeration is up, particularly among media companies. Our
own media companies don’t provide truly gruesome war images as part of the daily news, but
then they didn’t do so twenty years ago either (though forty years ago they did). The quality of
graphics (i.e., the reality quotient) of computer and video games is way up. Communities exist
that didn’t, thanks to the Internet, particularly peer-to-peer computing. A new kind of
collaborative creativity abounds, thanks to the “open source” movement, which gave us the
Linux operating system. However, other communities are collapsing: Far fewer people join
clubs that meet regularly, fewer families eat dinner together, and people don’t have friends
over or know their neighbors the way they used to. More …
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