MonitoRadio Conversations; #121; Postman and Kidder - Amusing Ourselves to Death [1985-12-16]

Good evening, this is Lisa Taylor, producer of Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. Tonight is show number 121, December 16, 1985. The segment times for tonight's show are as follows, number 1, 101, number 2, 623, number 3, 810, number 4, 546, and number 5, 39 seconds. The promo tonight is 30 seconds long to be used during the day on Tuesday to promo Tuesday night show. The following times are based on a running show time and they denote when each commercial break starts. We are assuming that each break is two minutes long. Number 1 starts at 101, break number 2 starts at 924, break number 3 starts at 1934, and break number 4 starts at 2720. The promo's as usual will follow the show feed by about 10 seconds. Please pull off yours since there's one for each station. The show will start in about 15 seconds and have a real good night. This is Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor, your host, Bob

McDonnell. Welcome to the program where glad you could join us. Our featured guest tonight says in his new book that, quote, there is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this, that the world is given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre, unquote. Critic, writer, educator, and communications theorist Neil Postman is with us to discuss how television as a medium is affecting our lives. Mr. Postman teaches at New York University and he's well known for his best -selling books, teaching as a subversive activity and the disappearance of childhood. His new book is titled, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Joining us in the discussion will be Rush Kitter, columnist on social trends for the Christian Science Monitor. Please stay with us, I'll be back with Neil Postman and Rush Kitter right after this. This is Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor.

Rushworth Kitter is columnist on social trends for the Christian Science Monitor. Rush, welcome to the program once again. Thanks, Bob. Our featured guest tonight, Neil Postman is author of the new book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Neil, welcome to the program. Thank you, Bob. Neil, at the top of the show, I use the quote from your book. There's that you feel there's no more disturbing consequence of our electronic age than the fact that the world is given to us through television seems natural and not bizarre. Isn't the point of television, say especially in news and documentaries, to give us glimpses of reality from around the world? Well, I think, Bob, that as some people say, television is a window to the world, cannot be disputed. But I think it is a peculiar sort of window with interesting and even bizarre refractions and distortions. And what I meant by the quote you cited at the beginning of the

program is that this world, the television shows us, is a strange world and it's disturbing that people accept it as natural and accept it as the world. Example, on our news shows, we get 15 or 16 stories in maybe more in a 30 minute news program. Each story is 25, 30 seconds. They are fragments of events, having no emotional or contextual continuity with one another. A 35 second story on a terrible fire in New York, in which maybe dozens of people die, may be followed by a human interest story about a new restaurant that's opened in Boston. That's followed by a story about

a mudslide in Columbia. You know, you clearly state that the premise of your book is that the form in which these ideas, which this is the examples you're giving us, the form that the ideas are expressed affects what those ideas are going to be. That's right. Well, especially because on television, what would be presented as news would be very much governed by the availability of film footage. I mean, every TV director knows that the first question you really want to ask when you come into work that evening is what film footage do we have and then you will build your conception of what the news is around that film footage. Moreover, the film footage is best when you see someone jumping out of a building or some sort of visually dynamic and sensational event. So that on television, it is always the visual allure

that will be the primary determinant of what the news will be. Well, let me jump in here if I may. Are you saying then that a world conceived of in visual terms is a very different thing from a world conceived of in literate or rational or linguistic terms? Absolutely. I think the whole point is that language is the principal instrument through which people make the world intelligible. And while I'm certainly not speaking against the visual arts, I think we have a major problem when a dominant medium of communication in the culture is essentially a visual medium, not a linguistic medium. And therefore, I think what is happening is that television, and this goes back again, Bob, to the initial culture right, the television presents the world as almost

totally unintelligible. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean that it doesn't, if you would watch any news show, what sort of world would you say you live in? I mean, you would say, well, for one thing, nothing seems to have anything to do with anything else. The newscaster can shift from one story to the next without any transition. He, as I indicated in the book, TV newscasters have even invented a new part of speech. I call it the now this conjunction. So, a manufacturer probably going to do this in a couple of minutes when you have to stop for commercials. Do you do that, Bob? Do you say we're going to have to do that? We're going to have to say we need to pause right here and we'll go to the commercial. Well, that, that's, I wouldn't even mind that so much. But if you just said now this, which is what they always say on

television, and what that suggests is what we've been talking about has no connection with what you're about to hear. So, that's what I mean by, when I say that the world is presented in this sort of fragmented, discontinuous picture so that especially a young person, imagine what the world seems like to someone who's nine years old is looking in on a new show. I sense that Bob is about to say now this before he does. You mentioned the book that Americans no longer talk to each other. They entertain each other. And one thing I'd love to pick up on when you get back is this question of, as you also say, our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense. I think that's an interesting point there that it's not only trivial, it's somehow dangerous. Okay, we're going to pause right here in Neil Postman, Rush Kitter, and I will be back right after this.

Welcome back to Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. Monitor columnist Rushworth Kitter is with me, and our guest is Neil Postman, author of the new book, I'm using ourselves to death public discourse in the age of show business. Rush? Neil, I was mentioning before our break a quotation from the book in which you say, our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense. Why dangerous? Well, if you just look at it, Rush from the political point of view, and consider, for example, what now passes for the meaning of the word debate in American life, then perhaps we can see why I use the word dangerous there. In American political tradition, a debate, for example, the Lincoln -Douglas debates, implied extended discourse and explanation of a point of view. Typically, in

the Lincoln -Douglas debate, one of them would speak for three hours, the other for three hours, and then the first would have a one -hour rebuttal time. Now, on television, Barbara Walters says to the president, well, what do you think the solution is to the problems of the Middle East? You have two minutes to answer, and vice president Mondale will then have one minute to rebut. So this is now a new meaning of the word debate in political discourse, and I think this is a very dangerous idea. Well, it's new that in that it's shorter, is it new that it's a different way of conceiving how you respond and answer one another? Well, it's more than shorter. It's impossible. In fact, if Mondale and Reagan were sane people, they would turn to Barbara Walters and say, well, what do you take us for? We're serious. Man, we're running

for the presidency. How can we address a question such as this in two minutes? Or if they don't say that, they say, well, what do you take the American public for? Do you think they are so moronic that they believe a question like this could be answered in two minutes, and then someone can rebut that answer in one minute? But of course, no one says that, because now they accept the terms of television. Now, speaking of content in amusing ourselves to death, you do talk that it's difficult for us today to imagine how Americans of say a hundred years ago, how familiar they were not only with great legal issues, say that Lincoln and Douglas might have been debating, but that they were familiar with specific language, the language of specific lawyers, and that was something that they could converse about with each other. So it seemed to me that you're implying that the content of these debates was a lot different than what we hear, even in an abbreviated debate on TV today. Yes, I think that can be documented that the

audience, say, for the Lincoln Douglas debates, was much more of a coherent public than, let's say, the audience for the Mondale Reagan debates would have been. By coherent public, I mean that they had the same reference points, so that Lincoln could make references to certain quarrels of a political nature, certain the Dred Scott decision or other even Supreme Court rulings, that the public would know the meaning of, whereas with Reagan and Mondale, and this is another difference for us, not only is this two -minute debate short, but it has to be at a level of abstraction that is so high that it could encompass everyone who's listening.

So neither Reagan or Mondale would make reference really to anything that everyone could not immediately understand. Well, this is the sort of lowest common denominator idea, right? That's right. I mean, if Reagan in trying to answer the question about the Middle East had made a reference to, let's say, the president of Lebanon or some Syrian political figure in Damascus, he would, the audience wouldn't know what he's talking about. So he not only has to be short, but he has to be vague, and also he's got to be good -looking. Well, I mean, because in two minutes, people are going to attend, I think, more to the visual presentation than to the substance of the language. And you may remember in those

political debates, people said of the first debate, well, they were where there was something wrong with Reagan, perhaps you remember, he looked sort of uncertain, and then they said, well, in the second debate, he looked sharp, you know, his jaw was firmer, and his hair had been newly dyed. So it's very telling that our first reaction is a visual one, how they looked, how they came across, not what the concept was. The person I watched the first debate with, his first comment was, why doesn't Mondale use a hair dryer? He said Mondale is a wet head, and see, Gary Hart uses a hair dryer, which is one of the reasons I think he was able to catapult himself to national prominence. Well, let me just play the devil's advocate for a moment, because when you go back to the Lincoln Douglas debates, there was a tiny fraction of the

American public that saw that. Now, one of the things clearly we've moved away from in the age of television is that kind of elitism. All right, we do have a lowest common denominator problem, but isn't it true that we're getting out some sense of the news to a vastly much broader spectrum of the population? And isn't that a good thing, or is there something there I'm missing as well? Well, I think I will concede this rush that television does make more people aware of more things, but I seriously question whether it makes them aware about things. So that, well, I mean that people will know of a hijacking, and they will know about it instantly. If, but they will know nothing really about the hijackers, even as we speak, I'm sure most Americans do not know anything about the

various, say, Shiite groups that have been behind many of these things. Know nothing about their politics, know nothing about their religion, really know nothing about these people. But we know of this event. But as for its meaning, as for its origins, its significance, I think people know very little. Now, so here's the point, Raj, it may be that it's more dangerous to know of things, but about nothing. Then not to know of, you know, not to know of many things as would have been the case, say, in the mid 19th century. People then knew about things they needed to know about. Neil Postman, Rush Kitter, now we'll be back right after this. This is Bob McDonald, and you're listening to conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. Rush

Worth Kitter, columnist on social trends for the monitor, is with me, and our guest is Neil Postman, author of the new book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Rush? Neil, when you're talking about television, you say that one of the problems is how do you defend yourself if this really is dangerous nonsense? How do you take arms against a sea of amusements? Television is going to be with us, apparently. It's not about to go away, and maybe what we ought to do is figure out ways to make the best of what's there. I read your book with great care, and at one point I came across one sentence which in very hedging language begins to suggest that maybe there's something we can do. You say, quote, I do not say categorically that it is impossible to use television as a carrier of coherent language or thought in process, and I just love to get you to expand on that. What can television do? How can we make it better? Well, you have to remember, first of all, Rush, that line comes in a context in which I talk about my remembering, listening to

Major Bo's amateur, I think it was, on which he had a mime on his, and this radio. Yes, on radio. Also, I recall that in those years, the leading radio program featured a ventriloquist, Charlie McCarthy. So there are instances where people have done things on certain media that seem to go against the grain of the media. And I think this might be possible on television. Certainly there are examples on TV, mostly on PBS, the McNeill Lera report, which I think brings a great deal of intellectual decorum to their discussion of the

news. I think a program like William Buckley's firing line in Richard Hefner's The Open Mind are attempts to bring people of substance to television and have people use language in a coherent and intelligible way. Now, the problem is that if such programs go up against a visually dynamic program, they'll always lose. But that doesn't mean that people of goodwill and who care shouldn't make an effort to provide TV audiences with examples of what coherent discourse can be like. Neil, I was wondering, you've been writing on this subject for quite a long time because not only this book is about television,

but a lot of your previous books are about the effect of television. You have three children. How does your family use television? Well, first, let me tell you, Bob, that I like television. But I never look for any substantive content on television. I think television is at its best when it has no content. And what I like to do is view television as sort of an aesthetic experience from a visual point of view. For instance, if I'm in a bad mood, what I do is with the color set, I turn everything green. Or if I want to cool down and turn everything sort of blue. I do say in the book that I think the best things on television are what people call its junk. When it's not pretending to be serious, and it's dangerous things are things like 60

minutes and nightline and the nightly news and the political campaigns. Because these things preempt other forms of serious discourse. I mean, when these fundamentalist preachers do the religion on television without any tradition, without ritual without principles without dogma, just the charisma of the preacher, that's a serious matter. Not, you know, not St. Eltsware or something of this sort. And when political campaigns are run on the basis of 30 -second commercials, that's a serious matter. And when these news shows that we talked about before, do their stuff, that's a serious matter. The other stuff, including the sports, I think really can be quite delightful. And I like to watch those things. Because I watch the other stuff too, but

more as a critic. Neil, thank you very much for being with us tonight on conversations. Thanks a lot, Bob. And thanks, Rush. Rush, thank you for joining us once again. Thanks, Bob. And thanks very much for coming, Neil. The book, once again, I'm using ourselves to death public discourse in the age of show business. It's author Neil Postman. I'll be back with a preview of Tomorrow Night's program right after this. That's it for tonight's edition of Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. Tomorrow night, we're going to hear about how 100 of the world's leading photojournalists set out to record a typical day in Japan this past June. Our guest will be David Cohen, co -director of the new book of photography, A Day in the Life of Japan. Thanks for listening. This is Bob McDonald for the Christian Science Monitor. Have a good night. This has been Conversations

with the Christian Science Monitor, produced in Boston, Massachusetts, and is a copyrighted broadcast. Hi, this is Bob McDonald. Join me for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. Tonight, we're going to hear about how 100 of the world's leading photojournalists set out to record a typical day in Japan. Our guest will be David Cohen, co -director of the new book A Day in the Life of Japan. I hope you can join us. Tune in tonight at 1134 Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor on WEEI 590 AM. Hi, this

is Bob McDonald. Join me for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. Tonight, we're going to hear about how 100 of the world's leading photojournalists set out to record a typical day in Japan. Our guest will be David Cohen, co -director of the new book A Day in the Life of Japan. I hope you can join us. Tune in tonight at 1134 Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor on WOR 710 AM. Hi, this is Bob McDonald. Join me for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. Tonight, we're going to hear about how 100 of the world's leading photojournalists set out to record a typical day in Japan. Our guest will be David Cohen, co -director of the new book A Day in the Life of Japan. I hope you can join us. Tune in tonight at 1030 for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor on WNIB 97 .1 FM. Hi, this is Bob McDonald. Join me for Conversations with the Christian

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