One of these ideas was new, and the other was "as old as the cave paintings of Altamira" (64). The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. What he most wishes to illustrate is that the audience of that day was both accustomed to and entertained by "language as a means of complex argument" (47). Because a text is generally spoken to nobody in particular (but rather to an unnamed audience), it is therefore directed towards everyone. By analyzing excerpts of their speeches, Postman indicates how the audience must have had a strong understanding of the day's issues, and how they were willing to hear those issues explored at length, as opposed to being summed up in soundbites, as is the case in the television age. It is through arguments like these that Postman most seems like a curmudgeonly reactionary, and often might appear to students that way. Two technological developments in the mid-19th century changed public discourse and paved the way for the Age of Entertainment. Amusing Ourselves to Death study guide contains a biography of Neil Postman, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Cedars, S.R.. McKeever, Christine ed. As Postman notes: In the Victorian Era (mid-late 1800s), novelist Charles Dickens had as much fame as The Beatles in 1960, Michael Jackson in 1980, or Brad Pitt in 2014. Nevertheless, the prevalence of the printing press increased unopposed, allowing ideas to cross regional boundaries, evidence of which Postman provides as the Federalist Papers. Instant downloads of all 1392 LitChart PDFs The Charles Dickenses of the world have been replaced by the Michael Jacksons—and Postman, of course, assumes that we will judge Jackson as inferior. Summary Essay Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to Death. Central to the contrasting ideas of these chapters, then, is the public. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Chapter Summary for Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, part 1 chapter 4 summary. The implicit suggestion here is that our love of football and advertising has replaced our love of reason, language, and learning. The reader should note that Postman is being strategically selective about his history, deliberately neglecting to discuss the significant percentage of the American population (like slaves and disenfranchised Native Americans) who were not predominantly literate. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman. As noted before, Postman tends to ignore any discussion of power structures that might enforce these strictures for their own gain. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman.The book's origins lay in a talk Postman gave to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1984. Naturally, this conversation led to a different content than what had come before. Telegraphy and photography stripped information from its context. Amusing ourselves to death. Postman notes that the audience was not respectful and somber, but instead enlivened and prone to outbursts of support or denigration towards either Lincoln or Douglas. The power of information to truly influence us had been diminished. Bibliography: p. Includes index. The way people thought and spoke would be influenced by this new media-metaphor. -Graham S. Postman furthers his argument: The reason the content of culture was so sophisticated at that time is that printed information had a kind of monopoly. As early as 1985, it claimed that the rise of TV would be our fall. Amusing Ourselves to Death Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis . He notes how religious discourse was framed in early America as a series of rational dialogues, so that more emotionally-detached faiths like Deism were "given their say in an open court" (53). Chapter 8 Summary 2  Chapter 8 Summary In Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, he attempts to persuade Americans that television is changing every aspect of our culture and world. “When Charles Dickens visited America in 1842, his reception equaled the adulation we offer today to television stars, quarter- backs, and Michael Jackson.”. Postman cites an incident detailed in the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, in which a sect of religious figures known as the Dunkers refused to publish the tenets of their faith, for fear that by recording their belief system, they would later be limited by the unalterable nature of those utterances. Speeches were expected to bear signs of deliberation and the emotional distance of the written word. Chapter Three, Amusing Ourselves to Death In the 19th century, Americans primarily read newspapers and pamphlets that focused on politics. Postman notes that advertising remained an "essentially serious and rational enterprise" until as late as 1890, after which it began to shift into entertainment and spectacle rather than rational claim (59). He loves the idea of Typographic America because that media-metaphor allowed and encouraged everyone to be engaged. As evidence of this prevalence, Postman cites Thomas Paine's Common Sense, a revolutionary pamphlet whose relative success Postman compares to the public success of the Super Bowl. The first symptom of this new conversation was the transferral of "context-free information" - information that was not tied to any practical function in the listener's life. Postman contrasts this era with the more contemporary televangelists like Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell, who must be careful not to associate themselves too closely with intellectualism lest it alienate their audience. He provides examples of how advertising expected its audience to be literate and rational. Instant downloads of all 1391 LitChart PDFs (including Amusing Ourselves to Death). By delivering the most historically concentrated synthesis of image and information, and by bringing this synthesis into everyone's home, television forced all modes of discourse into a realm of entertainment. The crossword puzzle provided a context for all of this meaningless information, whereas in the Age of Exposition, people did not need to find contexts for news that was delivered, precisely because it fit within an already existing context. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Asked by Kristin D #601493 He does mean to suggest that religious fervor lacked a passionate component, but only that religious messages were delivered rationally. Intellectual, popular, working-class, aristocratic—all spheres of culture revolved around print media in their own way. Even uneducated people could react to long, intelligent discussions about slavery because they could weigh the propositions being put forward. Postman suggests that two ideas intersected in the middle of the 19th century to lay the foundation for the Age of Show Business. What intrigues Postman most is not the nature of their debate, but that the debates were so popular. He further suggests that reading had a "sacred" element in those days because most people had much less leisure time than we do, and so the choice to read was more pronounced (62). resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. By considering the proposition made in writing and comparing that to one's own life and ethics, one is now part of a cultural conversation. Postman contrasts this with current Presidents, whom he assumes we see first as an image, and secondarily as the speaker of certain words. Everything Postman describes about the Peek-a-Boo world is doubly true about the Internet, where the public is not only privy to, but in control of, the incessant flow of information. The book highlights two important mediums—writing and television—but the ideas are applicable to any communication medium be it telegraphy, photography, radio, the internet, or social media. To mention nature is to invoke many images and contextualized associations in our minds. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman (1985) is a book about the way a communication medium shapes public discourse. Postman considers that this perspective of reading as a "moral duty" resulted from the way that published texts freed Europeans from the confines of their local communities (33). While Postman is intrigued by this consideration of the written word's permanence, he also sees in it an exception to the rule of colonial America, which found great comfort and faith in the written word. On the other hand, the public in a Peek-a-Boo world are no longer able to even realize the way in which they are not being engaged. Information became a commodity valuable for being a novelty rather than for being important towards informing the public. Instead, they gladly turn to crossword puzzles to waste their brainpower on irrelevant knowledge, totally unaware of the ramifications of this decontextualized information. Amusing Ourselves to Death Summary Amusing Ourselves to Death is a work that aims to both explore complicated ideas and market itself to the general public. The passage from Chapter 3 of the novel, Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman, demonstrates Postman’s argument that nineteenth century America was primarily focused on political writings rather than books. He next wishes to explain how the Age of Exposition was slowly replaced by the Age of Show Business. After further in-depth consideration of how reading led to a historical shift towards reason over other faculties, Postman provides examples of how discourse was influenced towards reason in Typographic America. No longer was the context controlled, but rather, a photo was placed next to a claim with nothing directly connecting them, and so the audience was now subject to psychological and aesthetic forces. Finally, Postman names this age as the "Age of Exposition," exposition meaning a mode of thought wherein one made a proposition and had a "tolerance for delayed response" to that proposition (63). 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