“I’m Bored…Entertain Me!”

“I’m Bored...Entertain Me!”

Detached and Disaffected in a Media-Saturated World

Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” is a thought-provoking treatise that puts television under tremendous scrutiny.  Part I traced the history of media from the time of the founding fathers - how the U.S. went from a literary culture to an image culture, and how it has a strong history of readership, and an established relationship with the printed word due to and resulting in high literacy rates.  Part II focused on television’s relationship with and impact on religion, politics, education, commerce, and news - how television has repackaged these different spheres as “entertainment”.  Since he wrote a book on how television is and must be entertaining, he seemed to have taken the same stance with his writing.  He wrote informally with dashes of humor, his writing style serving as proof of what the book’s title is all about.

Overall, Postman’s ideas resonate until today.  After reading his ideas, why television is also called “idiot box” made sense.  Television is the idiot box that creates and attracts idiots, who want to be entertained.  Then again, if TV’s main purpose is nothing more than to entertain, whatever television presents to the audience should not be used against it.  Why criticize TV for what it was meant to be in the first place?

Postman was correct in his observation that, “The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether.” (Postman, 2006, p. 87)  People are used to TV that they no longer expect to be merely informed, but to be informed and entertained in the shortest amount of time possible.  Even serious matters are expected to have high entertainment value.

His chapter “Now...This” discusses the fragmentation of reality and experiences.  Television as a medium did not precipitate this, but TV propelled this fragmentation into how things are today.

"...what we watch is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical and noncontextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment." (Postman, 2006, p. 141) 

What TV presents as relevant, meaningful and connected, ends up the other way - irrelevant, meaningless and disconnected.  By constantly decontextualizing and recontextualizing people, places and events, our culture ends up fragmented with a poor sense of history.

Fast forward to 2011, Postman’s analysis of TV in “The Peek-a-Boo World” (Postman, 2006, p. 79) seems applicable to the Internet, which has been completely integrated into our lives.  No one talks about its content, as everything we see online is now deemed natural.  In addition, the Internet embraces, in fact, subsume all other media under its big umbrella.  Before, we had discrete media - television for programs; radio for music; and newspaper for the news.  Today, the Internet blurs the lines that define each medium by being free-for-all; where people can create their own place online via blogs, YouTube channels, Twitter posts, Facebook profiles, among others.

What lies in store for our literary culture?  Borders’ bankruptcy coupled with Barnes and Noble’s current financial struggles seem indicative of the literary culture’s demise.  Is book readership going down?  Is it possible that people are still reading, but are now using e-readers instead of actual books? Is it also possible that people are choosing to buy online, instead of from brick and mortar stores?

With today’s image-based culture gaining monopoly in our society, its negative effects can be felt in various ways.  First, critical thinking skills are diminishing.  Information is packaged in such a way that there is no room or need for critical thinking.  Second, people have shorter attention span.  Television allows you to change channels at the flick of the remote control, especially when the show does not capture or fails to sustain your attention.  We have a generation who gets bored easily, seeking constant activity and media stimulation.  Young people surf the Internet with the TV playing in the background, while texting their friends.  Third, it creates an apathetic, desensitized, dissociated and poorly socialized generation.  A case in point is when two Rutgers University students broadcasted their gay classmate’s sexual encounter, who subsequently committed suicide.  In addition, even if television attempts to present issues of great importance happening worldwide such as natural disasters and political upheavals, people react (but do not act) today and forget tomorrow.  Lastly, we have the progressive dumbing down of America.  With an over-saturation of modern media via 24-hour cable, the Internet, and worldwide cell phone access, are people nowadays better informed citizens or simply media-inundated individuals?

Postman’s idea that we are amusing ourselves to death accurately describes what goes on in our society, where entertainment value is paramount.  We might laugh all we want, but in the end, we should consider how possible it is that the joke is on all of us.

Work Cited

Postman, N. (2006). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York, NY, USA: Penguin Group.

[Submitted as Sacred Heart University's CM501 class requirement]