death by television

A detailed Summary of death by television

In reading through the Borzoi College Reader, looking for a topic to write on, I came to the section entitled "Television and Reality." As I started reading through "Amusing Ourselves to Death," by Neil Postman, he made some points that hit me and made me think. The quote that hit me the most was:

The problem is not that TV presents the masses with entertaining subject matter, but that television presents all subject matter as entertaining. What is dangerous about television is not its junk. Every culture can absorb a fair amount of junk, and, in any case we do not judge a culture by its junk but by how it conducts itself in its serious public business. What is happening in America is that television is transforming all serious public business into junk.

He also continues to point out interesting facts, which I feel, do not need to be accredited to Neil Postman. The reason I feel this way is because they are too true, everybody know them. Yet, as per requirement, I also found these in "Amusing Ourselves to Death," by Neil Postman: he points out that a fat person cannot be a politician, due to the "unpleasant" image seen on television and how this image overwhelms any point that may come out of the

To see if I could experiment and see what kind of importance TV held, I decided to search the holder of all knowledge, the Internet. I went to a large search engine that I find works every time I need it to and searched for the word television. I quickly received almost ten million results. The web pages ranged from small rural TV stations to large cable stations like A&E. I decided to look up other, contrasting words, such as reading, books, and family. Each of these returned results between thirty and forty million. As I looked down the list of sites, four out of ten referred in some way to television, whether it is through VHS tapes or a television series that compliments the learning experience or helps with family values. What could be a better way to get to know your family or learn how to read then to sit around silently starring at a radiation box? As Neil Postman states in "Amusing Ourselves to Death:"

As TV moves typography to the edges of our culture and takes its place at the center, the television shows become our most compelling model and metaphor of all communication.

These thoughts moved America's death back to the front burner. In this case, TV diverts attention from what keeps people alive on the inside, to what they think

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Approximate Word count = 844
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous

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death by television

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