Sociology

Amusing Ourselves to Death is an essential perspective and critical approach towards the historical context by Neil Postman. The author had critiqued the modern mass media and its effects on the background of the different civilizations. This book elaborates the context of mass media from the typographic era to a TV epistemology. The book has also been regarded as the controversial reference to the aspect of mass media and Christianity. The literary tone that had been appointed by Neil Postman in the book is more incisive. The critical assessment of mass media had been published in the year 1985 but it clearly describes the insight about the modern era and media.

The book covers the critique by Neil Postman in two major parts which have been divided and categorized in terms of historical context and the transitions to the contemporary era of mass media. The first chapter of the book namely media is a metaphor successfully describes that the message being delivered by the media had changed the way of thinking of viewers. Different approaches towards the elevation in life had been discovered. Neil Postman mentions examples of the different cities of America and their effects in the process of socialization. The author stated clocks, languages, writing and stylistics as a metaphor. Author also adds the media in the category of metaphor that illustrates his idea of inability of members of society to search for the truth. Neil claims that whatever we are exposed to experience and witness is what we measure as a truth (Postman, 1985).

The following chapter further elaborates Neils insight regarding mass media. The second chapter deals with the phenomenon of media as an epistemology. Neil postman claims that we are greatly affected by whatever is being read and shown. In the earlier years of transitions of the medium, the printing press played an important role in the governance of the context and the public discourse due to the content published. In the second chapter of the book, Neil Postman states the concept of impact of resonance as explained by Northrop Frye. He explains that any character of a play, any map of a country or object may have the resonance that could only be justified by metaphor (Postman, 1985). Neil explains his inability of elaborating the metaphor as it is a vague phenomenon that is greatly dependent upon the nature of knowledge and requirement of its study.  Neil Postman illustrates his phenomenon of media as a metaphor with the example of Hamlets character in the play of Shakespeare. He concludes the character of Hamlet as the metaphor of indecisiveness. Another example by Neil that demonstrates his perspective is the region of Athens that symbolizes the metaphor of intellectual thinking (Gomery, 1998).

In the third chapter of the part one namely Typographical America, Neil postman demonstrates that by the eighteenth century the printing press growth was rapid throughout America though some of the cities lagged behind in the beginning. Neil elaborates the transition more ironically that the emergence of the newspaper publishing press required higher studies of media. Schools, colleges and universities were setup by some of the think tanks and the chiefs of the printing press in order to educate the majority so that newspaper could have been the source of income through a large amount of people working together to produce pieces of intellect. The printing of novels was another transition that led millions of people read the copies and gives the tag of best sellers to most of the books. In this way another public discourse was introduced in the society and that was the privacy and copyrights laws. There were no copyright laws enforced in the beginning that was regarded as the biggest controversial aspects of media of the century (Greco, 2005).
By nineteenth century, America was completely an oratory based society that was developing rapidly. Neil Postman proposed that the speeches and sermons were written in advanced therefore it was a type of typography. Most of the critics claim that speeches and sermons were to be counted in the oratory and not typography. Speeches and dialogues that were written in advance by the think tanks and intellectuals of the society had the effects of resonance of typography. Neil postman also describes in the book regarding the nature of the adverts. Neil postman claims that the adverts that were published in the magazine in the eighteenth and nineteenth century were liner in nature that only included a paragraph that informed the readers about the qualities of the product that did not arouse the feelings of passion. In the late nineteenth century, slogans and images were used in the adverts rather than larger paragraphs of information of the product (Gannaway, 1994).

In the following chapters of the book namely Typographic Mind and Peel-a-boo World illustrates how different institutions of the world used media in the form of a platform for spreading words. Neil Postman also discusses the fact that the church people have turned into celebrity evangelists. With the passage of time people have used the media for the purpose of gaining more interest about the religion in the minds of people.

Neil Postman believes that church experience is more turning into a consumer commercial television experience. According to the author, people do not get to learn and know more about the religion. The viewers are exposed to the advertisement as entertainment rather than religious experience.

The second part of the chapters that are completely based upon the media in terms of radio and television appears to be a subject of scandals for Neil Postman. Neils account regarding the media would appear to be a one-sided account of the subject. It seems that the author have enlisted all his points with the lack of knowledge regarding the positive attribute of the media.  His account of religious practices and media involvement within the premise is an irrelevant concept. According to Neils perspective there could be no use of media for the church services. There were a number of theologians and scholars who have been in the spotlights when Neil Postman critiqued mass media in his book. The names of the two famous theologians that have been mentioned in the book are Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker. Neil Postman does not consider Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker as the leaders of intellectuals (Larsen, 1999).

Neil Postman further mentions that the leaders of the churches used different activities to make the church service interesting rather than boring but simultaneously such a message through different mediums encouraged capitalism, individualism and above all, consumerism. Such traits are considered to be the message against Gospel (Gomery, 1998).

By reading the book Amusing Ourselves to Death, one would understand the exaggerated fear of the author. The fear that becomes visible to the readers is the fear of media consciousness. Neil Postman accounts that if people will be exposed to media swiftly with every passing decade then it would be highly impossible to halt its negative impacts over the society. Furthermore, he elaborates that in the contemporary time there is no control of the content of media that would result in the ruling power of media that would be a nuisance for the mankind (Postman, 1985).

Neil Postman also states the ideas that could be implemented in order to revitalize the minds of viewers. One of his ideas is to broadcast programs which show how television programs could change our views regarding religious thoughts or political status quo. But critics believe that such idea will not work as it is expected to be because broadcasting such a program would only give hype to the people who would create such a program with all the prospectus of research the societal concepts that are being affected greatly by media. In return its impact would be the same that would give rise to celebrity hype who would be signed for other programs or advertisement.

Neil Postmans account in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death is regarded as perfect account by leaders of the churches (Hipps, 2006).

The account of Neil Postman does not completely implies on the on the contemporary media. In fact it is a time limited edition that was published in the historical era of mass medias development. The conservative critical account by the author displays the perspectives of the church leaders but what theologians and scholars proposed could be a balanced way to be neutral instead of being radical.