Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Review of "Amusing Ourselves to Death"

Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is a “story” of how television and entertainment has changed and is still changing the culture we live in. With the introduction of the Internet and other advances in electronic media, his argument is even more relevant to the culture we live in now than when it was written in 1985. His argument is made all the more real by the rhetorical strategies that he employs to make his position more believable. These techniques have a wide variety that keeps the reader interested in the topic yet all lead to the same goal of promoting his position on the issue of the effects of entertainment in a modern society.

One such technique that Postman makes use of in his work is diction. His choice of words throughout the book makes the reader believe that the book is credible even though the author makes no mention of his qualifications until page 124, on which he states that he belongs to the Commission on Theology, Education and the Electronic Media of the National Council of the Churches of Christ. Yet, even though Postman fails to mention the things about him that would make the reader believe that he was a qualified author on the topic, his word choice about the subject shows the reader that Postman is an intellectual man.

An additional strategy that Neil Postman uses is comparing and contrasting the oratorical era, the print era, and finally the radio/television era. He does this throughout most of chapter four by explaining that during the Lincoln-Douglas debate people were able to sit through seven hours of speech that today would seem like torture, yet people are able to watch seven hours of mindless T.V. today without any objection.

One final technique that is used in Amusing Ourselves to Death is the use of a reoccurring theme. The theme that runs throughout the story is that as technology evolved, so did the definition of entertainment. People gradually fell away from the idea that speech was entertaining and more towards sound and pictures.

The strategies that Neil Postman employs focus more on the logic and reason, a strategy known as logos, of his argument rather than how he could affect the emotions of his audience to win them over. All of this comes together to make Postman’s argument believable and also, by living in the time that he speaks about in the book, his argument is fairly valid as well. Postman’s argument convinced me once I started to look at the world around me and realize that most of what he had said either was or has come true. Sometimes I even found myself realizing that I had followed the trend that Postman had described. After reading this book I realized that I am guilty of occasionally expecting to be entertained. In conclusion, Amusing Ourselves to Death takes a logical approach to exploring the influence of entertainment on the way we live our daily lives.

1 comment:

oo said...

I agree with you that we use media quite a bit and are entertained easier than before. All of the media and entertainment is in fact evolving.