Entertaining TV (Postman)
To say that television is entertaining is merely banal. Such a fact is hardly threatening to a culture, not even worth writing a book about. It may even be a reason for rejoicing. Life, as we like to say, is not a highway strewn with flowers. The sight of a few blossoms here and there may make our journey a trifle more endurable.
But, what I am claiming here is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. Our television set keeps us in constant communion with the world, but it does so with a face whose smiling countenance is unalterable. The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether.
Author: Neil Postman (1931 – 2003). Book: “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. Publisher: Viking Press, 1985. Illustration: Nam June Paik [Corea + USA] (1932-2006) ~ 'TV Buddha', 1972 (Photo by Saber Esfahani). Moderator: MozGoDER vELičANsTvENi →
