Amusing Ourselves to Death

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman is one of the required readings for our Mass Communication class. It is on the other hand a reading that in my honest opinion anyone in the media field should read. Sure it starts out pretty damn boring, but it does pick up the pace around the second half, and even in the dry parts there is something to be said. This sort of social criticism piece is effective in displaying the way the media is perceived by society and the way society perceives the media. This tandem arrangement works well in this piece because it gives Postman the opportunity to give support to both sides of the argument as well as stay focused on a specific point and I think because of this, it is effective writing. When Amusing Ourselves to Death was written, TV was not even that prominent yet Postman’s main argument is basically that anything that tries to take the upper hand on T.V and physical media will fail because it simply is not visual and not as appealing to the typical body. I completely agree with this, and being in the Image Arts program at Guelph Humber, a big part of my credibility comes from my images, and my feeling by going in to a stream that deals a lot with the physicality of proving points and giving opinions through photographs is my belief that the physically attractive arguments are more interesting and more appealing than writing. Sure, I love writing, and I know it is a BIG part of being successful in an image arts/media stream my main goal coming here and in the future is to prove my points through my photographs, and that’s all there is to it for me.

One part I liked in Amusing Ourselves to Death was part 5: The Peek-a-boo World. This section deals with my opinion and point exactly, talking about both photography, as well as T.V. Postman discusses how photography “shows” and how that is effective as well as how when people watch T.V they simply accept it and take it for what is; that is the simple but most easy to understand reason why T.V is so effective.