Thoughts on Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death) is mistaken in his belief that television is incapable of transmitting a serious message, but here we are talking about non-American television, which lies outside the scope of his book. Television is fully capable of conveying objective, educational facts, but American culture creates the problem. This forms an interesting bond with Moyers/Moore/Chomsky’s perspective, that financial/commercial considerations are overriding the media’s ability to be fully utilised. In the chapter, “Now…This”, Postman explains how even supposedly serious news shows are presented as discrete segments (average items less than 45 seconds), with entertaining commercials spliced colourfully between talk of nuclear holocaust, giving the impression that nuclear holocaust is not to be taken too seriously. Newscasters are charismatic and attractive, and the news-shows themselves are actually advertised in the form of forthcoming entertainment. From the TV station-owner’s perspective, this is sweet music; a “serious” image is offered (and the illusion of objective reporting) while capitalism rolls on unobstructed, aside from those pesky stop-gaps with only the entertaining newsreader for distraction. News items are often accompanied by dramatic music, which provides a guide for how we are supposed to feel about what we’re seeing, like in a movie or a commercial.
Moore/Moyers/Chomsky are looking at this phenomenon from the roots rather than the flower, so to speak. They see where the influences are coming from, and realise that considerations other than entertainment and commerce are responsible. For example, in the rest of the industrialised world, the sight of Israeli helicopter gun-ships pounding Palestinian apartment blocks with missiles represents an extremely grave and obvious disregard for human rights, by any standard. Apart from America’s. America knows only of the evil of the suicide bombers, and the comradeship of Israel in our “war on terror”. In a complete reversal, when Americans see footage of devastation in Northern Ireland wrought by IRA bombs, they celebrate the “war on oppression” but are totally incapable of differentiating between Catholics and Protestants, be they Irish or English, or what any of it truly means. They associate the Irish situation with events of two-hundred years past here in the U.S., even though British Army movements in Northern Ireland are minimal. It is no coincidence that the largest population centre in America is composed largely of Jewish, “Irish” and “Italian” Americans (and how we love those glamorous gangster movies), and it’s naive to think this isn’t a factor in our contradictory political attitude. Why shouldn’t you support a free Ireland, or Israel, if you are of that ethnic persuasion? I probably support both, and can only lay tenuous claims to both. But the systematic massaging of ethnic ego is occurring simultaneously with a capitalist steamrollering of objectivity and morals. Americans are out of control, and they have no idea why. Big business is appealing to peoples’ most basic instincts, and using them as a government uses a standing army; pumping them up with fostered opinions, and marching them off to the mall (or the Middle East, where our McCulture feels the boot of foreign hegemony hardest of all).
Bill Moyers described an incident where the American chemical industry went to some pains to discredit a documentary about the effects of pesticide residuals on children. The rough script for the production was “purloined”, and an extensive campaign to discredit the project was launched, in several media. A number of government agencies, industry figures and public relations firms were involved. Moyers also discovered that a Congressman responsible for public broadcasting funds received large campaign contributions from the chemical industry. The general picture begins to look very bleak.
Moyers explains how corporate underwriters had a very real influence on the kinds of journalism he would consider engaging in. Nothing that would “upset” anybody was allowed. Basically, nothing serious was allowed. It is an eerie feeling to contemplate what effect this situation has had on hundreds of millions of Americans; force-fed a steady diet of fast-served lies in an atmosphere of utter subjective amoralism. The root is the source of the flower’s existence, and Moyers/Moore/Chomsky are addressing the more important issue. The question is will their flower ever see the light of day, or will it remain entrenched amid the fringes, in the weird corridors of public television?