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R.I.P. Neil Postman
Farewell to Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death (among other things). The book has been sitting on my shelf for years; I bought it simply because it had such an incredible title and because I'd seen it mentioned in so many other books. Judging from the Forward, now might be a very good time to dig it out. Comparing Aldus Huxley's Brave New World to Orwell's 1984, Postman wrote:
Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
Postman claimed Amusing Ourselves to Death was "about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right." It's definitely a thesis worth re-examining in light of, oh, I don't know, the events of the last 50 years or so.
UPDATE: Another Postman tribute.
Posted October 11, 2003 05:54 AM | life generally
Man, you've got to stop baiting me like this. My paper is already too sentimental, and Postman is in too many citations of the more *scientific* articles I've read. The question I'm attempting to answer is "How has digital media changed our habits?" but what I'm coming up against repeatedly is the idea that "Digital media is only giving us what we have already said we wanted."
This is why I have no hope: Maybe someone else made the pill, but we're swallowing it.
Melodrama and sentimentality! Not good for scholasticism....
Posted by: carolee at October 11, 2003 11:00 PM
Well, no, not really, but I think the argument that the media are just giving us what we want is completely disingenuous and misses Postman's point. If we've come to love our oppression, it's not necessarily because it's inherently good or because we've chosen it over other alternatives. That's like saying men beat women because that's just what men want to do, or poor people drink more alcohol and take more drugs than other people because that's just what poor people want. These arguments deceptively naturalize behavior that is socially constructed. So yeah, maybe we "want" our "news" programs to be more entertaining, sensational, and titillating than our sit-coms, but do we have any choice?
Our media are the way they are because they're driven by profit and because sex, violence, and sensationalism sell. We assume from this that we must be getting what we want because we've forgotten that there are any values other than money. But again, the reduction of all social value to the bottom line ($$) is neither natural nor inevitable, and therefore it's not necessarily an expression of "what we want." Instead, making profit ($$) the measure of all things is the logic of capital, and the system of capital works 24/7/365 to reinforce itself.
For brief coverage of this question about the media giving us what we want, see Cass Sunstein's Republic.com, in which he writes:
"Most preferences and beliefs do not preexist social institutions; they are formed and shaped by existing arrangements. Much of the time, people develop tastes for what they are used to seeing and experiencing. If you are used to seeing stories about the local sports team, your interest in the local sports team is likely to increase. If news programming deals with a certain topic—say, welfare reform or a current threat of war—your taste for that topic is likely to be strengthened. And when people are deprived of opportunities, they are likely to adapt and to develop preferences and tastes for what little they have. We are entitled to say that the deprivation of opportunities is a deprivation of freedom—even if people have adapted to it and do not want anything more" (108).
And as L. succinctly puts it, the whole point of advertising is not only to convince us that we want whatever we get, but furthermore, to convince us that our desire for X preceded the advertising, and came from deep within our autonomous, individual souls. In this sense, good advertising/media makes your own desires irrelevant, or even non-existent.
Ah. I love this stuff. I wish I was writing your paper. But then, no I don't. ;-)
Posted by: ambimb at October 12, 2003 09:02 AM
