Vikram S Desai
ENG 50
Marc Schuster
Paper # 4
I have been reading Neil Postman’s book, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’ for a while now. At first, the book felt like an amazing eye-opener to the characteristics and effects of television. I was impressed with the kinds of questions and thoughts that Postman put up and really made me feel that television, is actually influencing everything that exists in the world today. The kind of examples that he put up to show television’s devastating effects, seemed appropriate. But as I went on reading this book, I soon realized that he had this strong tone in his language, a total anti-TV tone. His words did make me believe that TV’s ever changing ways did affect things in ways which were not always positive but I still believe that television has been successful in many ways and when used in the correct way, has always, reached out to people to inform and educate them. But Postman words only suggest that his thoughts for the new television age are that it is completely ruining everything that it is involved with. He has dedicated chapters to different aspects, like education, politics, culture etc., and in almost each line of these chapters, has used words that have only maligned television. In his entire book, he hasn’t even once assertively spoken of TV’s advantages, and hasn’t even suggested ways in which one could take better advantage of television’s infinite capabilities to provide information.
Jeffrey Scheuer on the other hand in his book, ‘The Sound Bite Society’ seems to have a more logical approach in giving out his ideas on television. His idea is clear from these lines in the introduction of the book: “This book is not a catalogue of complaints about modernity, or a critique of television as a vehicle of intellectual, moral, or spiritual decay. There are enough good studies of the nature, content and social impact of television, The Sound Bite Society aims to understand television, not to bash it” [1]. It feels good to see these lines, especially after reading the TV bashing ideas of Neil Postman. Overall, it seems that both the writers believe that television has drastically changed our lives and influenced human behaviors to a great extent. But while Postman talks only about the negative influences, Scheuer also brings out the positive influences of television and hints that one can control the amount of information provided to him and choose as to exactly how much one wants to be influenced by it. But in order to stress on this idea of his and in order to repeatedly mention about him not being totally against television, he ends up contradicting himself on a number of occasions. In this essay I am concentrating on ideas from both the authors on the effects of television on politics and political ideologies.
Television has changed the concept of politics in many ways. I actually believe that out of the whole wide range of issues that both the writers bring out , politics is the one that’s most affected by television. It is probably the reason why both the writers display a common level of thinking about this. Both writers , in their introduction to their argument on ‘television and politics’ refer to the concept that political discourse in the new age is just about how one can present his or her ideas on television. Neil Postman, in fact goes ahead and says that in the ‘Age of Show Business’ , a person can hope to be a successful candidate only if he is able to present himself well on television, in other words only a smart man who looks good on TV can stand a chance of getting elected. This according to Postman is more important these days, no matter what his or her political ideologies are. According to him television commercials are the chief instruments to determine one’s political value. This is very evident these days. One can see loads of commercials being flashed each day between shows which are either speaking good or bad about a political candidate. And since they are aired every now and then, and sometimes repeatedly between the same show, they get too irritating at times. Off late I guess I have been watching more of political commercials on TV instead of the actual show that I intend to watch. I don’t mean to exaggerate here but after a show my mind is full of images of the two candidates who are contesting. The worst part is that some commercials are also of candidates who are not contesting in the area where I live. I have to watch commercials of candidates in
While Neil Postman goes about his ideas in this matter by using critical wit and strong words, Jeffrey Scheuer, agreeing to this states that the language of political discourse is now a visual vocabulary of images and slogans. According to him it is now television, that favors or disfavors political ideas.(s 9). Unlike Postman, Scheuer has agreed to the fact that television can in fact play a very important role in educating and informing people. It can go a long way in putting forth complex ideas in a simple way, but according to him , it is this simplifying nature of TV that helps in building a society based on the ideology of conservatism. Scheuer has divided the society into the two groups, ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’. He repeatedly affirms that television makes the political thinking of people to shift from liberalism to conservatism. He does not clearly mention as to which kind of thinking is actually very advantageous to the society. According to him such an ideology encourages a rudimentary form of personal freedom and less equality (11). He says that the pre-requisites of mature democracy are respectful discourse and democratic debates and that television does not promote them. Citing examples of Clinton and Kennedy he brings about the idea of how easily this medium is being exploited and how easily can this trend continue.
Although Jeffrey Scheuer contradicts his own statements on a number of occasions, he does put up his thoughts in a sensible manner. He manages to make his point that its not just television that can affect politics but also the underlying ideas and thoughts of the people that relate to these ideas in the vast political spectrum. The way in which he has organized his ideas show he realizes both, TV’s importance and the fallout of its exploitation. Neil Postman’s ideas on the other hand make the impression that he thinks that television has caused an ‘end of the road’ situation for politics. “Television can be a great boon to democratic life, and a great detriment” (9). These lines sum up Scheuers thoughts on television and politics and I more or less agree with him.
