Amusing Ourselves - Neil Postman

Chapter 6: The Age of Show Business

1. Define Television
a. Technology vs. Medium
i. Technology
- Physical apparatus
- Merely a machine
- It is biased or selective in its use
ii. Medium
- Use to which physical apparatus is used
- Technology is a medium as it employs a particular
symbolic code in a particular social setting and as it
insinuates itself into economic and political contexts
- social and intellectual environment a machine creates

b. A medium like print, radio, and online.

i. Printing Press: used to reproduce photographs on text
ii. Television as medium:
- Television serves as different mediums in different
contexts
Ex. America vs. Places where majority of the
people don’t have television sets or places where only
one station is available and is used for govt. Ideology and
policy.
- For this reason, television will not have the same power
as it does in America
- This is not the case for America
- Television has found in liberal democracy and a
relatively free market economy nurturing a climate
in which its full potentialities as a technology of
images could be exploited.
- As a result, American television programs are in
demand all over the world. U.S television exports
is app. 100,000 to 200,000 hours equally divided
among latin America, Asia and Europe.

- People love not America, but American television… why?

​

- Television is a beautiful spectacle and is a visual

delight
 - The eye never rests, there is always something
new to see
- You see different images every 3.5 seconds
- Interesting background music
- You do not need to think that much while
watching but captures your eyes by being
entertained or experiencing emotional
gratification
- Best photography can be seen by the viewers
whenever commercials are presented

With this...

- MAIN USE AS A MEDIUM: Medium of entertainment ,

Television keeps us in constant communion with the
world but is devoted entirely to supplying its
audience with entertainment. The problem isn’t that
television provides us with entertaining content. The
problem is that it has made entertainment itself the
natural format for the representation of all experience
- Entertainment is the supra-ideology of all
discourse on television. All subject matter is
presented as entertaining
- no matter what is depicted or from what POV, the
assumption is that it is for amusement and
pleasure
i.e. News shows provide us with fragments of tragedy and
barbarism and we are urged by the newscasters to “join
them tomorrow”. We would be expected to be bothered
by murder and mayhem but we accept the invitation
anyway because we know that “news” is not to be taken
seriously. A news show not for education, reflection or
catharsis but is a format for entertainment.

2. Kinds of conversations in Television (cite examples from text)

a. News
i. Newscasters and news shows tell its viewers to “join them
tomorrow”
- Viewers know that ​news​ is not to be taken seriously
ii. Format for entertainment and nothing more.
- News on television is not meant to be heard or read, but
to be ​seen.
 - Television is not for verbal communication, but visual
communication.
iii. Examples
- The Day After: possibility of a nuclear holocaust
- Television taking its entertainment role into public
instruction
- Comprised of influential bodies in the film
- No utilization of music, since music helps its
viewers gauge emotions in the film
- No interruptions/commercials, which was only for
TV broadcasts of funerals of past presidents
- The Day After ​Discussion:​
- Give viewers who want seriousness in television
through a Discussion.
- Speakers, among 6, Scowcroft, Wiesel, Regan,
and Koppel were given 6 minutes to ​discuss.​ But 6
minutes was too short of a time to air in
arguments, counter arguments, elaborations or
concrete explanations.
- Thinking does not play well on television.
- Despite the credentials of the speakers, a
discussion on television is not the right use of the
medium.
- Instead of showing ideas, speakers fashioned a
performance.
b. Live Broadcasts
i. Dr. Dietrich’s triple by-pass surgery on Bernard Schuler
- Broadcasted in TV stations in the us
- Broadcasted by British Broadcasting Corporation
- Narrated by two panel men so viewers were informed of
what was happening
- Hard to give a medical reason, Why would once
broadcast a surgery on LIVE TV? But for television’s
purpose, it’s easy to see why: for the viewers
c. Televised Trials
i. New Bedford: Massachusetts
- Televised rape trial
- Trial or Soap opera?
- Trials are of varying degrees of seriousness
- Motive behind it is for “public education”
d. Movies
i. Witness
 - Starring Harrison Ford, played as a detective who falls in
love with an Amish woman
- Amish Women
- According to the Amish church, women are not allowed to
interfere with filmmakers
- Forbidden to see movies or be photographed
- But no rule against, seeing a movie with Amish
women in it
ii. The Genesis Project
- Aims to convert the bible into a series of movies
- End product: “The New Media Bible”
- 225 hrs of film for a quarter of a billion dollars
- Producer: John Heyman , “I got hooked on the bible”
- Actors : Topol (Fiddler on the Roof) as Abraham, God:
probably John Travolta
iii. Award Shows
- Yale University 1983 honorary degrees awarded to
Mother Teresa, Bob Hope, and Meryl Streep
- Commencement address given by Dick Cavett, a
talk-show host,
- Crowd went crazy, “a sonic boom of affection” over Meryl
Streep, a oscar-winning Hollywood actress
- Yet, Dr. Hope’s applause was nothing like Meryl Streep’s
e. Politics
i. 1984 presidential elections
- Candidates debate, each given 5 minutes to address the
question “what is (or would be) your policy in central
America”
- The candidates were more concerned about the
impressions they made to the public over the substance
of their arguments.
- Conceived as a boxing match
- Votes were good based on ​style​ (their look, the gaze, the
one-liners) not substance of the answers.

3. Intellectual takeaways from television (Are there any?)

a. Television is a hub for emotional gratification
i. Requires minimal skills to comprehend
ii. The viewers resort to television to cope up with the stress
and duties of everyday and as a means of escape
b. Television has made ​Entertainment​ itself the natural format for the
representation of all experience.
 i. Supra-ideology of all discourse on television:​ in spite of what’s
presented on television, it will always be taken with
amusement and pleasure.
ii. Supra-ideology: supra (beyond the limits and outside of)
ideology (patterns of ideas, belief systems, interpretive schemes
found in society or among social groups) = entertainment does
beyond its natural format, which is to amuse and pleasure, but
even images that do not intend to amuse or pleasure, it is taken
as amusement and pleasure
c. National Context
i. Can be connected to the issue of Julia, Marjorie, Gretchen,
and Claudine Baretto, where despite the serious conflict
among the siblings, through the medium of media, viewers
used this platform to follow their story as they found it
amusing and entertaining.
d. It i​s not an exchange of ideas, but an exchange of images
i. As typography once dictated the style of conducting politics,
religion, business, education, law and other important social
matters, television now takes command. In courtrooms,
classrooms, operating rooms, board rooms, churches and even
airplanes, Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain
each other.
ii. Arguing is not done with propositions, but done with good looks,
celebrities, and commercials
e. Television is a means of modern technology
i. Modernized from the idea of photography that use still
pictures and also a modernized idea of a telegraph
f. Good television is not all about the content
i. Good television does not depend on the verbal
communication exchanged within the show but what
matters most is how interesting and eye-catching images
are presented to get the attention of the viewers
ii. Keep them constantly tuned in
iii. They do not aim for reflection in the end but applause
g. Television also allows occasional programs that provide public
information
i. especially in emergencies and calamity situations
ii. It is scheduled so that it is not aired alongside regularly
watched entertainment shows and programs
iii. It manages to show value and its serious intentions

4. Culture Produced in television

 a. “Rear-view mirror thinking” - Marshall McLuhan
i. “the assumption that a new medium is merely an extension or
amplification of an older one; that an automobile, for example, is
only a fast horse, or an electric light a powerful candle.”
ii. “Does not extend or amplify culture, it attacks it”
b. Television is our culture’s principal mode of knowing about itself
i. The way television stages the world, it becomes a model for how
the world is properly to be staged
c. American television crosses borders being a worldwide television
platform
i. It has influenced countries like England, Japan, Israel and
many more
ii. American programs are in demand not because the country
is loved but because the programs are loved
iii. May put people or other cultures in danger because people
may be addicted to its entertainment value, and miss out on
its educational learnings

5. What does all of this mean?

a. This means that culture has moved toward a new way of conducting its
business, especially important business
b. Nature of its discourse is changing as the demarcation line between
what is show business and what is not becomes harder to determine
c. People considered credible or respected like priests, presidents or
surgeons, lawyers, educators and newscasters worry less about the
demands of their discipline than the demands of good showmanship

- Television has indeed evolved over the years maximizing its full video
and audio capacities. From photographs and telegraphs, it has now
become one of the most essential appliances or forms of technology in
most households. The medium has become a reflection of reality itself
because it has become a part of one's life that it already feels surreal
and very relatable to its viewers. It has the tremendous power to affect
people’s culture, influence their perspectives and even connect
countries together. To capture the attention of their audience the use of
effective visuals and showmanship are key elements. This is just the
start of the modernization of television and would surely capture a
bigger audience as it would continuously evolve in the years to come.