Dying In An Entertainment-Saturated Culture

Often an author's main contentions, premises or lines of argument are laid down in the introductory pages which include any prefaces, forewords or introductions. Neil Postman ably displays this feature in his famous work:

Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)


In the Foreword of his prophetic analysis of present-day Western society, Postman contrasts the famous novel 1984 by George Orwell (1949) with Brave New World (BNW: 1932) by Alduous Huxley.

Both these novels are about controlling the masses: in 1984 it is done by pain, but in BNW by pleasure.

Postman believed that BNW had got it right. According to Postman, people won't need Orwell's totalitarian 'Big Brother' to keep them in line; rather they 'will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think' (p. vii) as in Huxley's BNW.

In Orwell's nightmarish 1984 the truth is hidden by adapting it to fit 'the party line' (p. vii); in Huxley 'the truth [is] . . . drowned in a sea of irrelevance' (p. vii).

The first sketches a scared population; the second, a stoned one.

Postman's important book sets out to demonstrate that Huxley's prophesies are right and that Orwell was wrong.¹ That we are part of an anaethetised culture (rather than a terrified one).

He aims to establish that entertainment in its various forms (particularly, television) has become the 'opiate' of the masses. So where once political leaders were known by their words and were virtually unknown to the populace by sight, now leaders are known for their television image² and not so much for famous speeches.

Formal human interaction today such as marriage, parenting, schooling, church worship, sport, even psychotherapy tend to be entertainment or fun-focussed; today's people are more influenced by the form of communication than by content. A good-looking showman will tend to be better received than a person with average looks and little 'charisma' even if his/her content is sound and edifying.

Worship and Television (ch. 8)

Postman watched 42 hours of television's version of 'religion' (mainly Christianity but he mentions Judaism) in preparation for this chapter. He realised at the end of this stint he needed only to have watched five hours to develop two major conclusions about it.

• TV preaching becomes entertainment 

Postman fixes unerringly on matters that many Christians don't discern. The very nature of the act of the Christian worship is radically altered by the medium through which it is enacted.

Everything that makes religion an historic, profound and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no spiritual transcendence. On these shows, the preacher is tops. God comes out as second banana (p. 119).

One could also add that the television age is so powerful in its effects that today's preaching in consecrated spaces has been shaped by the presence of television outside churches and syngogues.

The only way out of this impasse is to instruct congregations about the nature of preaching as a preaching of the word of God (e.g., Acts 4.31; 8.4, 14;11.1; 2 Tim 4.1-4). 

• Preaching does not transfer well to television

The major assumption behind the use of television with church-like events is that the latter are televisible; that is, it is naively assumed that they are capable of being televised without losing their particular character.

And yet, as Postman points out, we don't assume that poetry in one language can be transferred without significant lose to any other language. We also know that a sympathy card is quite different from actually visiting someone who is bereaved. Simply put, 'not all forms of discourse can be converted from one medium to another' (p. 119).

Amusing-Ourselves-To-Death as a Title

Postman's title is cleverly devised with about three allusions in it for readers to note. Firstly, the expression of 'doing something to death' may mean overdoing something as in the expression 'it's been done to death'; secondly, the phrase may be used in a more sinister way with the meaning that 'You are doing this [amusing yourself] and this has become your life's work until the day you finally physically die. Thirdly, the phrase may mean that lives built on amusements and diversions run the risk of spiritual death/deadening.

It's not necessary to choose among these three because all three (and others) may be meant but I would incline to the idea that Postman is emphasising the real danger of spiritual death³.
 
1. However, each writer's outlook is more applicable perhaps to specific countries of the 20th and 21st century history in different areas of the world.
2. In the US, for example, a man who had originally been an actor in some 53 movies became governor of California for eight years (1967-1975) before being a successful Republican president of the US (1981-1989)!
3. Postman was a non-observant Jew and in this book reflects on the wisdom of the Second Commandment in proscribing the making of images of God (p. 9). Unlike others of his generation, Postman respected organised 'religion' without it seems being a participant.