Analysis Of Amusing Ourselves To Death By Neil Postman

Amusing Ourselves to Death is an explorative novel by Neil Postman that analyzes the World’s, particularly America’s, growing obsession with being entertained. Postman writes that in the past, people would converse and exchange ideas, whereas it is now an exchanging of “images,” that nowadays we no longer argue with statements of fact and opinion but instead with “good looks, celebrities and commercials.” (pg 93) Gone are the days of discussion as Americans are now only interested in being entertained. Throughout his novel, Postman uses a somewhat unique style, one that certainly cements his points in your mind. I find it very intriguing that Postman’s style depends so much on a repetition of his ideas when his work is partially based upon

Postman write long, eloquent paragraphs and sentences, using words we rarely hear in everyday life making reading his book, to be quite frank, like wading through a bog. While I’m unsure if this is truly a tactic or just the way an incredibly pretentious author writes, it proves a point. Society has dumbed down its language, the very words we use everyday have been simplified, in the name of entertainment. It is certainly no fun to feel unintelligent so the media doesn’t often use “big words” like ‘abstraction’ and ‘vaudeville’ or phrases like “perpetual round of entertainments” in an effort to make anyone feel like they can understand what they’re hearing. This dumbing-down of conversations extents so far that characters that do speak using “big words” are often mocked and branded as a “nerd” and loser, only further causing viewers to think of simplified conversations as the way things should be. Postman takes the tactics of television and completely turns them on their head, using as many hard to understand words as possible. I am convinced this man sat down with as many dictionaries as possible to make sure that he had used the most difficult version of a word possible. While this can, and does, make the book quite a bit more difficult comprehend, it also subtly makes us question why these aren’t words we already use and understand. Neil Postman wrote a book

It shows that he is exceedingly passionate and well educated regarding this topic. Postman isn’t just some crotchety old man who thinks that this newfangled television is ruining the world because “back in my day we had to talk through smoke signals and wrote things down on paper!” No, Postman is an intelligent Columbia University-educated man who firmly believes that television is taking away from human interaction, discussion, and debate. It should worry us all that there is so many different ways to say this that it can fill 163