AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH

Amusing Ourselves to Death

You may say that it's nobody's business but your own if you want to kill time your whole life watching other people live, or simulate living, instead of living more yourself. But many critics have argued that our addiction to the Spectacle can affect our behaviour as members of society in a negative way. In other words - to extend what Clifford argued - that our private consumption of escapist media can impact the lives of other people, not just our own.

Many critics apart from Noam Chomsky have worried about the influence the mainstream media have on democratic citizens. They fear that overconsumption of these mostly showbiz "products" encourages people to become passive, dumber, less hopeful about social change, more "materialistic" (consumerist), and more escapist, and that these are bad things in a democratic society. In his groundbreaking book from the 1980s, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985, but still a relevant read today), Neil Postman argued persuasively for the negative effects the broadcast media have on the depth of knowledge and understanding citizens have of their country, their world, and their government, and perhaps more importantly on their ability to tell reality from entertainment.

Looking at the state of American television and the consumerist Society of the Spectacle as an "outside insider," the great African American writer James Baldwin suggested that America's addiction to escapist media actually stands in the way of making America what it wants to be. The media are an unreal narcotic distraction from political and immoral realities that America needs to change rather than distract itself from:

Neil Postman published Amusing Ourselves to Death in the 1980s, before the Internet. The most common and popular way for people to learn about the world at that time was through television, the manufactured medium of which James Baldwin was so critical. Postman thought that the focus on entertainment was a dangerous political change from the world before television, when most people spent much less time consuming electronic media and had to read to find out about the world – books, magazines, newspapers.

The medium of print, as Postman saw it, conveyed the complexity of reality better than television. Reading forced a person to participate actively in making sense; it forced them to use their imagination and to think and spend time understanding. It forced them to pay attention and presumably take what they were reading more seriously.

Television, on the other hand, shows you "reality" in a way that books and newspapers can’t; but what it shows you is always a highly partial, edited, packaged quick slice of reality, if it is reality at all. The people who make television are largely focused on entertaining you, not informing you, not making you think, or giving you a full argument or multiple points of view. They are also, primarily, focused on making money. And to do that they know they have to keep you entertained. Since we receive the news of real things through the same medium and packaged in much the same way as we receive drama, comedy, far-fetched fiction and mindless entertainment in TV shows, it may encourage us to see the real things in the news as unreal and as further occasions for entertainment as well. Television makes unreal things look real and real things look unreal.

Many people followed Donald Trump's election, for instance, as ironic postmodern spectacle. It is like an episode of The Simpsons (It was one!). Except that the Trump presidency was not an episode of The Simpsons: it was real. Some people don't see that, don't care, or would argue philosophically that it's not real. They've never met Trump, for instance. "Trump" is mediated and packaged image or a semi-fictional personality, not a real person.

Television is focused on slick images, a fast pace, sensationalism and entertainment. Postman thought it often packaged even real and important things as entertainment, and this encouraged the audience to think of these real things as less real, more like the unreal things that made up most of what was on television - and to feel the same about them. Television didn’t make complete and logical arguments; it made "shows" or "ads" out of its images of life, even when it wasn't literally trying to sell you something. The programming, whether a sitcom, a political debate, or a news broadcast, is to some extent seen as "filler" by American corporate broadcasters. What they are focused on broadcasting is actually the ads, and the product they sell is actually the eyes of us viewers, sold to advertisers. (This model is also the one commercial social media platforms have adopted.)

Television as a medium encouraged passive consumption of its media as entertainment, and any real and serious things it tried to tell people started to be experienced as just more slickly presented images, just more entertainment.

Reading about stuff, paradoxically, had conveyed reality more fully than seeing images of that reality portrayed on television does. When reading a book, you had to think, analyse, understand, and see the complexity of reality more fully. You had to participate (through reading) and make meaning. What's more, it was harder to confuse the representation of reality in the book with reality itself. Video looks like a window on reality; a page of a book doesn't - or at least not in the same way.

The Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously said "The medium is the message." What he meant in part was that we get a different communication depending on the medium we receive it through. "The same message" is experienced and understood differently depending on how we receive it (reading, listening, watching video, etc). Adam Holzapfel, a student in my Technology and Social Change course, drew attention to a classic example of this in one of his discussion posts:

In the 1960’s political race between JFK and Nixon there was a televised debate and people who watched it on television believed JFK to have won the debate because he used makeup to prevent sweating, was more attractive than Nixon and overall, better composed when speaking. However people who listened to this debate on the radio believed that Nixon spoke and sounded better and therefore won the debate. This goes to show how much technology had an impact on election because if these candidates were only presented through radio Nixon would have won. (emphasis added; Kennedy won that election; Nixon was elected president later on of course)*

Reading a book, one perceives things differently than listening to it being read to you, or the same material in a podcast, or a YouTube video, or on tv, or in a meme. Each medium alters the message and how it will be received/perceived through the nature of how it communicates information.

Worrying about television, Neil Postman made several hypotheses about the political effect of that medium on its audience; I have summarized some of the more important points below.

It’s true that we now have the Internet, a more interactive and potentially more realistic and creative way of getting at reality through electronic media. But the people of today here in Canada have had their expectations of the media shaped by the model of escapist consumerist entertainment that television made normal; hence our "selfie" culture in which everyone wants to present themselves as a packaged media celebrity, and now real people's lives are treated as escapist entertainment as well.

Please consider carefully some of Postman's concerns from the 1980s about our entertainment-focused media:

1. Mass media replaces complex ideas with simplified images. "A picture is worth a thousand words!" But is that really true? An image gives a powerful, but incredibly partial and emotional, glimpse of what is always a more complex situation. It’s fast and easy to see an image and get a message, but it requires no thought or consideration and focuses on a single emotional or aesthetic aspect of what it represents.

2. Mass media replaces positions with personalities. Positions (points of view that are open to argument, revision, and critique) require people to understand and think about them. It is easier to respond quickly and instinctually to a personality than to understand and reflect on a set of ideas. The mass media cater to this with the focus on celebrities and personalities (who are "relatable" and fun, or seem sexy or handsome or powerful or classy, etc), rather than ideas or policies (which are complicated and difficult and require thought).

Postman argues that most voters will not take the time to study and fully understand the parties and positions that the leaders represent. Instead, they often vote for (or against) the person (their image), based on whether that figure has a "look" or personality that they like, or find impressive, feel they can trust, or seems like them. Appearance can matter a lot in our media marketing reality. But behind this image are important policies, platforms, programs for change or against stasis.

Perhaps almost all politicians have become dishonest showbiz personalities, but I remind people that they usually do still stand for different values. It is dangerous to vote for personalities. This isn't Canada's Got Talent or a high school popularity contest. Rather than thinking about how Justin Trudeau or Pierre Pollievre "strikes" you as a personality, you should have a clear understanding of the policies their parties stand for.

3. Mass media replaces arguments with ads. A slogan like "Make America Great Again!" is an emotional rallying cry, rather than a plan of how the world will be affected. People are often happy to have their messages quick and easy and this leads to the tendency of the media to try to "sell" them things in the simplest and most one-sided way. Instead of a public discussion of goals and a realistic analysis of who will benefit and suffer, appeals are made at the most basic and unthinking level. Most of the public is also happy to have this quick way of deciding about a difficult and complex decision: loved their ad!

4. Mass media replaces active understanding with passive entertainment. Unlike reading a book – even an escapist fantasy novel – movies, ads, and television don’t demand anything from you in consuming them. You don’t have to use your imagination or try to understand what the author is telling you; you can just sit back and take it all in, uncritically and uncreatively. Or ignore it. Some people, like Guy Debord, argue that this leads to a view of oneself as a consumer and a mere watcher of culture. It discourages attention or involvement in political matters and, again, discourages thinking.

5. Mass media is too often escapist, distracting, fake, unrealistic, and exploitative.

So much television content is packaged escapism that Postman thought we had started to treat our news and serious political content that way as well. Like fiction, it is generally about people we don't know and will never meet. In a certain sense, none of it is real in our own lived experience. All of it is packaged and mediated through a screen. It is easy for us to ignore the seriousness of politics and to consider it as discontinuous with our own lives when we experience it mainly through a screen.

Postman was most worried about the political ramifications of treating everything as quick and uncomplicated entertainment. He thought the system of liberal democracy required citizens who were engaged and thoughtful, not citizens who turned everything into meaningless escapist entertainment. Many educated people around the world today are afraid that democracy is in a crisis. Do we in Canada still want freedom to influence our government's policies, do we think we still can, or have we decided it is hopeless and we just want to wallow in the entertainment possibilities of politics as delivered to us through the media? Certainly, the United States has increasingly seemed to find it difficult to make this distinction, and our most recent televised debates here is Canada haven't been any better, just less captivating as entertainment.

Why people don't vote, and some common ways they vote that may be questionable

When you talk to Canadians, many of them will say they are not interested in politics. Though we have higher voter turnout than the United States, 1/3 or more of eligible Canadian voters have not voted in a Federal election during the last 20 years.

The reasons people don't vote will probably be familiar: they find politics “boring” (it can be!); they think all politicians are dishonest (most of them probably are); they don’t think it will make a difference because government does whatever it wants anyway (I don’t think this is true); they don’t think it really matters who is in power (I don’t think this is true either, though it's true that it may not matter that much to you personally).

People may not vote because they are too busy to inform themselves on the issues and policies, because they don't understand the questions involved or how government works, because they don't trust the system to honestly reflect the voters' choices (ballot rigging and conspiracy theories), because they don't believe there is any real difference between parties, because they feel their single small vote is insignificant, or because they don't really feel too personally affected by who is running the government (see below). Each of these attitudes is understandable but also debatable.

Other people do vote, but many vote in ways that I feel can be careless. These generally involve either not thinking real change is possible, not taking political questions very seriously, or not taking their own political voice very seriously, or both. Some examples of ways Canadians may make it easy on themselves when voting, but that I feel are often not very responsible:

They vote for whoever their families have always voted for

"We're a conservative household." "This town has always been a Liberal riding." Obviously, this is in another sense always a "conservative" way of voting, based on continuing a tradition and avoiding change.

They practice "flip-flop" voting

In Canada, a practice has developed that starts by assuming there can only ever be either a Conservative or a Liberal prime minister; there are only two parties that could ever win. This simplifies things for the voter, but helps keep the same "two-party system" in place. Some people will vote one way in one election and then depending on how they "feel" about how the party in power has done, or how they imagine it has impacted them personally, they will vote for the other party at the next election, because in their view it has to be one of the two parties and it keeps the party in power on its toes if there is a danger of flip-flop. "This hasn't been great, let's see what the other party will do for a few years." "I'm sick of that guy's face; let's try the other guy for awhile." (Generally those two parties have male leaders...)

They vote based on who they believe will save or make them money personally

In modern Western democracies a lot of people have embraced the basic assumption that they are voting for their own interests only. Whether it is money or some other interest, they may vote as if they are the only person that matters, and not care at all about the impact a particular government will have on other Canadians, the other people on Earth, the environment, etc. For many Canadians this focus on personal self-interest is centered around their finances, and they may vote, for instance, for a party that says it will create jobs or lower or not increase taxes, despite whatever other policies the party has.

They vote for whoever they think is going to win

Many people watch the polls carefully, and some take them as a guide to how they should vote. As thoughtless and irrresponsible as it sounds, they may vote for whoever they think will win, so that they can feel part of the majority and the people who made the "right" decision.

They vote for a personality; for whichever candidate they "like the look of"

Voters can be very focused on personalities and their media images and understand little about the policies these figures represent. Voting for a party because the leader wears a turban, or not voting for a party for the same reason are hasty decisions that show little understanding of what else the person stands for. (Although, on another level voting for a party whose leader wears a turban could be a strong political statement of its own; it's not necessarily a statement about the policies he represents, apart from the implicit inclusivity.) Voting for someone because they are good-looking and well-dressed, or because they look like you and "your people" or somebody you wish you were or because they "seem honest" is really a comparatively shallow way of making a decision. (As anayzed in Amusing Ourselves to Death)

They vote for whoever's ads they liked the best

Without knowing anything about the long-term implications of a party's platform, some people will vote based on the persuasiveness or rhetoric of the campaign slogans, fear created by the party's attack ads, or mere enjoyment or appreciation of the way advertising was handled. (Again, as discussed in Amusing Ourselves to Death)

I don't think it's that hard to see how "the Society of the Spectacle" -that encourages and allows us to treat realities as passive spectator consumables and can de-real-ize a lot of real stuff happening - plays into some of these "voting strategies." When it comes right down to it, too many people's democratic rights are exercised with less thought and effort put into the process than would be true voting for Homecoming Queen at a High School. Many humans can barely be said to have matured past high school, and arguably in 2025 the most powerful country in the world is being run by an old man with the maturity level of an 8-year-old boy, aided and abetted by the richest man in the world, who seems to be more like about 12 or 13. Do we still want democracy? Is it still good for us? Do we still deserve it?

This lesson looks at none of the ways our fabulous media can make people smarter, more informed, and better prepared to be democractic citizens. I've tried to suggest that the worries Neil Postman had in the 1980s may translate into some similar, or even worse, aspects of political media today. Do you think Postman's criticisms still have validity? Are they still important? Is there anything we can do about them? What?

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* Apparently, this well-known example is actually a bit of a myth, as it was based on somewhat flimsy data from one survey. In recommending caution, Marie Morelli added, however, that "The myth may have gained some currency from the reported reactions of the running mates. Both vice presidential candidates -- Henry Cabot Lodge for Nixon and Lyndon Baines Johnson for JFK -- thought their man had lost. Lodge watched on TV; Johnson listened on the radio." (Morelli 2016). Poorly substantiated or not, I think we can all easily see how it could have been true.