Amusing In Itself

After purchasing the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, from Amazon.com and opening the neat little package placed at my doorstep, I silently wondered to myself how this book with one of the brightest and most visually entertaining covers I’ve seen outside of the realm of children’s literature was supposed to teach me the dangers of flashy advertising and lord knows what else. It seemed to me that I had received yet another assignment full of mangled logic, stretched connections, and rash generalizations, attacking the medium I’ve come to adore – television, of course.

After leaving this nugget of literature called “the most prophetic, thoughtful, necessary, and entertaining book about the media” strewn somewhere in my room to collect dust for a healthy period of time, it seemed prudent to mosey through this “piece of work”. As it turns out, Amusing Ourselves to Death is not riddled with false arguments. On the contrary, Neil Postman’s very distinct method of introducing the subject, laying out the information, making inferences based on said information and then deliberating in an unbiased fashion is what makes this book so readable to me. He relies on solid information and facts to make his conclusions and connections. Postman uses relatively little opinion. He may illustrate an idea by comparing it to the words of a famous historian or physicist, but then he also backs it up with several strong inferences and/or facts. For instance, Postman asserts the idea that photographs are snippets of time or ideas that need no introduction or explanation, because everything needed to explain them is there in the photograph (p. 73). He then goes on to explain his assertion, quoting Susan Sontag, who says, “All borders…seem arbitrary. Anything can be separated, can be made discontinuous, from anything else: All that is necessary is to frame the subject differently.” Postman then explains her quote and, assuming that this idea has been laid as a brick in the wall against entertainment without reason, moves on to build on the foundation of his argument, which is, I suppose, the mortar to seal the next brick to this one.

Some of the literary weapons that Postman has in his considerable rhetorical arsenal are simile and metaphor. The phrases, “On these shows, the preacher is tops. God comes out as second banana” (pg. 117), describing the world from the early 20th century on as a “peek-a-boo world”, and “But this was exposition’s nightingale song, most brilliant and sweet as the singer nears death” (both pg. 77), are fantastic examples of metaphor and simile. However neat these sentences are, it’s really the use that they’re put to that make them so powerful. In the first, Postman explains how televangelism actually against the second commandment before hand and sums it up with this quote. The next describing the 20th century world (namely the USA) as a “peek-a-boo world”, titles chapter five, and resounds with a sharp, "*clang*" in your mind after you read it. The last phrase speaks of how, just before the age of telegraphy and photography, the literary exploded with prose “delighting the ear and eye”, which signified the end of the typographic age. These quotes, especially number one and number two, are of extreme rhetorical importance to Postman’s book. They not only add strength to his rhetorical arguments, but also variety to a book that is based on fact without much expression.

After reading this book completely, I come back to my title and utter a small chuckle; would a casual observer even consider this book in this day in age without such a cover? While this book has been immensely informative and has persuaded me to look at television with a cautious eye, it has also shown me that entertainment shouldn’t be my only priority in life. Had I not read this book, I probably would’ve lived my life according to my own idea of what is entertaining. Postman has shown me that fun and entertainment aren’t the most important things in the world; that other things can make a happy person. It’s a badge of how filled with entertainment my previous years have been that I don’t know exactly what those things are. One thing is for sure though; I will never look to televised news for information again.