The TV critic
Commentary With the death of Neil Postman, a prophet of popular cultural criticism who was primarily concerned with the penetrating power of his fundamental criticism has passed away, writes Samuel Helbling.
Commentary With the death of Neil Postman, a prophet of popular cultural criticism who was primarily concerned with the penetrating power of his fundamental criticism has passed away, writes Samuel Helbling.
Anyone who doesn't know his name will at least have heard the titles of his relevant works: "We're Amusing Ourselves to Death" or "The Disappearance of Childhood". The recently deceased American cultural critic Neil Postman painted a picture of the downfall of the West and the USA with media impact like no other. Today, people are no longer being softened and incapacitated by totalitarian ideologies, but by total TV entertainment. This was the verdict of his grimly culturally pessimistic indictments of our TV-dominated culture in the 1980s. In Postman's own words: "Television was not created for idiots - it creates them." The media professor and bestselling author constantly warned against the trivialization, tabloidization and infantilization of society through the brave new media world. The problem with commercial television is that it presents every topic as entertainment. Postman's critical analyses of television seem strangely antiquated today, even if his judgments are gratefully received by left-wing and conservative cultural pessimists and are still widely circulated. A sober assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of visual communication was not his thing. Consequently, he refused to use PCs and
e-mail and always wrote his pamphlets with a pen. The media apocalyptic did not want to admit that media entertainment can also be informative and argumentative, that popular TV programs are not just a distraction. But TV content not only has a meaning and therefore not only an effect; it is not always controllable and can certainly be emancipatory or even subversive by creating meaning and identity for certain groups in society. Popular TV programs do not always function according to the intentions of their producers.
Postman's fundamentalist criticism of the media and television is based on the well-known theory of manipulation. It sees the audience only as victims of sophisticated media strategies. Anyone who argues in this way ignores the fact that the mass media are part of reality and that we can also see through how they work. Anyone familiar with media history knows that the more good advice the media were given, the less they were impressed by it. After all, viewers also decide what they want to see. What they don't like is mercilessly zapped away. In the competition for attention, ratings and reach determine the existence or non-existence of broadcast formats. Nobody is forced to be bored to death in front of the TV.
The audience is not so easy to educate, manipulate or enlighten. They know that no major TV event such as "MusicStar" or "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" can take place without their active participation by pressing the phone button. They manipulate the medium in order to assert their wishes and have fun. It knows that the medium of television has become plebiscitary. Those who do not submit to the will of the audience are punished with a withdrawal of love, while those who comply are rewarded with good ratings.
> Samuel Helbling, Editor-in-Chief
Anyone who doesn't know his name will at least have heard the titles of his relevant works: "We're Amusing Ourselves to Death" or "The Disappearance of Childhood". The recently deceased American cultural critic Neil Postman painted a picture of the downfall of the West and the USA with media impact like no other. Today, people are no longer being softened and incapacitated by totalitarian ideologies, but by total TV entertainment. This was the verdict of his grimly culturally pessimistic indictments of our TV-dominated culture in the 1980s. In Postman's own words: "Television was not created for idiots - it creates them." The media professor and bestselling author constantly warned against the trivialization, tabloidization and infantilization of society through the brave new media world. The problem with commercial television is that it presents every topic as entertainment. Postman's critical analyses of television seem strangely antiquated today, even if his judgments are gratefully received by left-wing and conservative cultural pessimists and are still widely circulated. A sober assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of visual communication was not his thing. Consequently, he refused to use PCs and
e-mail and always wrote his pamphlets with a pen. The media apocalyptic did not want to admit that media entertainment can also be informative and argumentative, that popular TV programs are not just a distraction. But TV content not only has a meaning and therefore not only an effect; it is not always controllable and can certainly be emancipatory or even subversive by creating meaning and identity for certain groups in society. Popular TV programs do not always function according to the intentions of their producers.
Postman's fundamentalist criticism of the media and television is based on the well-known theory of manipulation. It sees the audience only as victims of sophisticated media strategies. Anyone who argues in this way ignores the fact that the mass media are part of reality and that we can also see through how they work. Anyone familiar with media history knows that the more good advice the media were given, the less they were impressed by it. After all, viewers also decide what they want to see. What they don't like is mercilessly zapped away. In the competition for attention, ratings and reach determine the existence or non-existence of broadcast formats. Nobody is forced to be bored to death in front of the TV.
The audience is not so easy to educate, manipulate or enlighten. They know that no major TV event such as "MusicStar" or "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" can take place without their active participation by pressing the phone button. They manipulate the medium in order to assert their wishes and have fun. It knows that the medium of television has become plebiscitary. Those who do not submit to the will of the audience are punished with a withdrawal of love, while those who comply are rewarded with good ratings.
> Samuel Helbling, Editor-in-Chief
